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Tuesday, April 16, 16:05:17 [ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2] ]

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Date Posted: 03:23:53 02/26/04 Thu
Author: Pat Craddock
Subject: Re: Noam Chomsky: A Wall as a Weapon
In reply to: C. Breeze 's message, "Noam Chomsky: A Wall as a Weapon" on 23:38:49 02/24/04 Tue

>Noam Chomsky: A Wall as a Weapon:
>
A Wall as a Weapon

By NOAM CHOMSKY
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security
concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext
for something else. Careful scrutiny is always in order. Israel's so-called
security fence, which is the subject of hearings starting today at the
International Court of Justice in The Hague, is a case in point.

"Few would question Israel's right to protect its citizens from terrorist
attacks like the one yesterday, even to build a security wall if that were
an appropriate means. It is also clear where such a wall would be built if
security were the guiding concern: inside Israel, within the internationally
recognized border, the Green Line established after the 1948-49 war. The
wall could then be as forbidding as the authorities chose: patrolled by the
army on both sides, heavily mined, impenetrable. Such a wall would maximize
security, and there would be no international protest or violation of
international law.

"This observation is well understood. While Britain supports America's
opposition to the Hague hearings, its foreign minister, Jack Straw, has
written that the wall is "unlawful." Another ministry official, who
inspected the "security fence," said it should be on the Green Line or
"indeed on the Israeli side of the line." A British parliamentary
investigative commission also called for the wall to be built on Israeli
land, condemning the barrier as part of a "deliberate" Israeli "strategy of
bringing the population to heel."

"What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. It is also - as
the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Israel's war of
"politicide" against the Palestinians - helping turn Palestinian communities
into dungeons, next to which the bantustans of South Africa look like
symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination. ...

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