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Only the wall between Israel and Palestinian areas is called an apartheid wall
- 18 April 2023
- 9:12 pm
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- 18 April 2023
- 9:12 pm
Israeli West Bank barrier near Mount Zion in 2009. (Photo: Wikipedia CC by 2.0)
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There is no need for an apartheid wall if the country feels comfortable using nuclear weapons against its enemies. That is however not the case of Israel.
Protective walls were built by many nations. The two most famous protective walls were Hadrian’s wall which lasted 3 centuries and the Great Wall of China.
Hadrian’s Wall was built primarily as a frontier for the Roman Empire. It was a defensive fortification that marked the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire for three centuries. 73 miles long, it provided protection from hostile northern enemies.
The most recognizable symbol of China and its long and vivid history, the Great Wall, was a means of preventing attacks and terrors by barbarian nomads.
Other walls
In the United States, Former President Donald Trump made worldwide headlines with his push to build a wall along the United States-Mexico border in order to keep out illegal immigrants. Just recently Finland began to build a fence to keep out “migrants”
Around the world, there are several nations that have border walls, fences, or barriers. As of December 2021, border walls are located in the following nations: North Korea and South Korea; Hong Kong; South Africa and Mozambique; Egypt; Kuwait and Iraq; Spain; Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan; South Africa; Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; Uzbekistan and Afghanistan; Botswana and Zimbabwe; India; Saudi Arabia and Yemen; Brunei and Limbang; Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan; Bulgaria; Saudi Arabia and Iraq; Hungary; Macedonia, and Israel.
Belarus built a border wall in 2021 to prevent illegal immigration. The Dominican Republic and Haiti recently announced a border wall. The Pakistan-Afghanistan border was built in 2021 and the Greece-Turkey border was recently expanded. These walls serve the purpose of controlling the border, keeping out illegal immigrants and preventing smuggling. Some nations use barriers when there are disputed or unclear borders.
So there are many walls that have been, and are being, built to separate peoples and to stop infiltration by people not wanted in the country. Israel is certainly not unique in this.
All other walls are called defensive walls or separation walls. Only the wall between Israel and Palestinian areas is called an apartheid wall. As the functions of all the walls are the same, why is Israel’s wall called by the negative emotional term of an apartheid wall? Nothing differentiates it from the other walls. So, what is apartheid?
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Apartheid refers to the implementation and maintenance of a system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights. Instead of building a wall to separate Blacks from Whites, the stronger group, the Dutch settlers, developed a political system (apartheid) of separating whites and blacks that kept the Whites (the Afrikaners) dominant and in control of an originally undeveloped area of land later called South Africa. Like walls, it was a device to keep power and control in the hands of the less numerous and culturally, religious, and racially Afrikaner group.
Jews, who are the majority population of Israel are the dominant group. Like the Afrikaner, they settled on undeveloped land and made it productive. They created a land of milk and honey out of scrubland.
They are a religion, not a race. In Israel about half the Jews come from Arab countries and so look like Arabs. In fact about 20% of the population are Muslim Arabs who have full rights as Israeli citizens.
So it is not at all like South Africa. It is not an apartheid state. It is a state approved by the United Nations that determined that Judaism would be its’ dominate religion and a refuge for all Jews persecuted in Arab and other states. Like all other countries, it kept power in the hands of those that developed the area. Once the land developed into a state, the majority Jewish population wanted to maintain the traditions of the majority of the state.
That does not make it an apartheid state. It makes it like all other states with a dominant or state-sanctioned religion.
Israel has a population of about 9 million people and a total land mass of 22,145 sq. km compared to the Arab countries surrounding it that have an area of about 13 million sq. kilometres and about 456 million inhabitants, including those on the Mediterranean Sea. Compare those figures! Israel is tiny compared to the size and populations of the Arab countries surrounding it. Yet those Arab countries have not welcomed the Palestinians as potential citizens.
“Now that Helsinki has decided to join NATO, the 1300-kilometre Russian-Finnish border will become one of the flashpoints of the new Cold War. This first section of the wall should be ready in June. Another 70 kilometres of fence will be installed between 2023 and 2025, (and) includes nets more than three metres high with barbed wire, night-vision cameras, lights and loudspeakers.” (Photo and caption: all-things-nordic.com)
Of the Israeli population, over half of the Jews come from Arab lands and so racially are Arab. Those Jews who have come from Ethiopia are of course Black. Many of the Arabs are Israeli citizens and have full rights as Israeli citizens. Although badly outnumbered, Israel won the wars initiated by the Palestinians against it, and survived as a Jewish state. It gives equal rights to all its citizens and so in no way can it be considered an apartheid state. Israel’s wall, like all other walls referred to above, is to protect its citizens from illegal immigration, armed aggression, and Palestinian terrorists.
Palestinians have popularized the term “Apartheid Wall” as a way to damage the reputation of Israel. It is a lie used especially at educational institutions where uninformed students will be influenced to believe Palestinian prejudices and hatreds. It is a lie that must be refuted.
It is time for Israel to change the conversation – not to defend itself with logic but with truth and comparison – comparison of a modern democratic Israel with a future Palestinian dictatorship that follows current Gazan practices of violence against its own people, paying its people to kill Israelis, an honour code which is dangerous for their daughters and sisters, and a policy of exclusion of the total exclusion of Jews.
Any Palestinian state that replaces Israel will become a classic, impoverished dictatorship. It is time for Israel and the world to recognize the Palestinians as the successors to the Amalekites and to deal with them as required to achieve peace for Jewish citizens and a sense of righteousness for those who support the exceptional Jewish state of Israel.
Jonathan Usher was born in Montreal. He graduated from Queen’s Law School in 1963 and moved to Toronto where he has lived since. In the past 20 years of retirement he has become a very prolific and published letter-to-the-editor writer and conservative, social iconoclast.
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Thank you for choosing TheJ.Ca as your source for Canadian Jewish News.
We do news differently!
Our positioning as a Zionist News Media platform sets us apart from the rest. While other Canadian Jewish media are advocating increasingly biased progressive political and social agendas, TheJ.Ca is providing more and more readers with a welcome alternative and an ideological home.
We revealed the incursion of anti-Israel progressive elements such as IfNotNow into our communities. We have exposed the distorted hateful agenda of the “progressive” left political radicals who brought Linda Sarsour to our cities, and we were first to report on many disturbing incidents of Nazi-based hate towards Jews across Canada.
But we can’t do it alone. We need your HELP!
Our ability to thrive and grow in 2020 and beyond depends on the generosity of committed readers and supporters like you.
Monthly support is a great way to help us sustain our operations. We greatly appreciate any contributions you can make to support Jewish Journalism.
We thank you for your ongoing support.
Happy reading!
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