{"id":28329,"date":"2013-05-11T09:31:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-11T05:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=28329"},"modified":"2013-05-11T09:31:46","modified_gmt":"2013-05-11T05:31:46","slug":"in-china-or-israel-something-there-is-that-doesnt-love-a-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-politics-analysis\/in-china-or-israel-something-there-is-that-doesnt-love-a-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"In China Or Israel: ‘Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Wall’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Israel's<\/a><\/p>\n

Bibi Netanyahu is visiting China where he\u2019s negotiated trade deals, lobbied unsuccessfully for a tougher Chinese diplomatic stance against Iran, and likely cooked up some secret arms deals with the Chinese military. But one of the oddest of his public appearances was at the Great Wall, where he extolled its supposed virtues and promised to adopt them for Israel:<\/p>\n

You know, this Wall served as an inspiration for me. We built the barriers to protect Israel from the south. Ultimately, we\u2019ll have Israel covered with them everywhere.<\/p>\n

He was later quoted<\/a> amplifying on this thought:<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as the Chinese defended themselves by barricading themselves behind the Great Wall, so to will we [Israel] fortify ourselves along the southern border, the Golan Heights and all fronts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaving aside the debate about the utility of Israel\u2019s Separation Wall, let\u2019s look at walls in human history. There is a human impulse to isolate oneself from enemies. If you don\u2019t have to see things that are unpleasant, it makes life so much more comfortable. Hadrian did it. The French did it with the Maginot Line. The Israeli tries tried it with the Bar-Lev Line. And the East Germans tried it in Berlin.<\/p>\n

Deb Reich penned a study of various historic walls and found that none, including the Great Wall, ultimately succeeded in their goal of keeping undesirables out of the homeland:<\/p>\n

Emperor Meng T\u2019ien (Qin Dynasty) began the Great Wall of China in 221 BCE, with 300,000 workers, to keep out the Huns. Additions were made over the next 1,700 years. All told, it\u2019s around 6,400 km long, up to 50 feet high, 15 to 30 feet wide at the base, and dotted with guard towers. Nowadays, of course, it\u2019s a tourist attraction: Westerners admire it, but for the Chinese it signifies mainly their eventual defeat by the Manchurians.<\/p>\n

Roman Emperor Hadrian\u2019s Wall (2nd century CE) was meant to keep the northern neighbors out of Britain, but its location split the tribal lands of the Brigantes, the most powerful Celts\u2026at the time. This little detail insured continuing trouble. A later emperor then built another wall farther north, but the cheeky Celts just rebelled again. These days, Hadrian\u2019s Wall and Antonine\u2019s Wall draw hikers and day-trippers; the Roman empire is long gone.<\/p>\n

The Berlin Wall, its remnants now preserved for tourism, was erected in the middle of the night on August 13, 1961, and subsequently beefed up (to keep the East Germans in, and everyone else out). It was higher tech than the Roman stuff \u2013 150 km of barbed wire and concrete, 3.5 meters high. JFK visited divided Berlin in June 1963 and, famously, gave good solidarity (\u201cI am a Berliner\u201d). Imagine what he\u2019d say today if he came to Qalqilya.<\/p>\n

Sharon\u2019s Wall, planned at 500 km in length and meantime expanded to nearly 800 km and counting, is much, MUCH higher tech than the Berlin Wall ever was\u2026 But of course Sharon\u2019s wall, too, is destined to evolve into a tourist attraction eventually. (Just ask Hadrian or any of those other guys.) Ah, for a working time machine! We could skip this cheerless, macabre interim phase and segue straight to the future theme park\u2026<\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s father was a professor of Jewish history. The son seems not to have absorbed any of the lessons of history his father may\u2019ve imparted. Or else his father taught him the wrong lessons. Alternately, Bibi might\u2019ve paid more attention to Robert Frost\u2019s wise and knowing poem<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Before I built a wall I\u2019d ask to know
\nWhat I was walling in or walling out,
\nAnd to whom I was like to give offence.
\nSomething there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall,
\nThat wants it down.<\/p>\n

At any rate, Bibi has lost sight of the fact that walls don\u2019t work. Ultimately, the people or forces you\u2019re trying to keep out have greater will than you and they overwhelm your defenses.<\/p>\n

Unless, of course, you come to terms with them before this happens. No chance of that happening. So we\u2019re left with the alternative, which is an Israeli wall that will eventually become a historical curiosity, because it failed in its goal of keeping Israel free of \u201cterrorists\u201d and marauders, those pesky Palestinians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Benjamin Netanyahu waxed enthusiastic about the inspiration that the Great Wall of China has provided for him. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":468,"featured_media":28332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,171,483,60,482],"tags":[17215,10958,18343,17212,17213,17214,17217,18311,17216,17211,17210,18286,17209,17208],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28329"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28335,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28329\/revisions\/28335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}