By Chris Powell

Chris Powell

While he got little notice, former Connecticut Gov. and U.S. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. made a remarkable charge the other day in an address to a conference on the Israel-Arab conflict, held at a church in Old Lyme. It was about the border fence Israel has erected between itself and the Palestinian territory to the east.

“When I think of Israelis, Palestinians, and today’s wall,” Weicker said, “I’m reminded of yesterday’s East German wall, and when that obstruction came down I remember an America that stood up and cheered. What then is the difference between that wall and the one that stands as an abomination in the Holy Land today?”

But of course the difference is that the Berlin Wall and the wall that divided the communist part of Germany from the free part were erected to keep people in. The communist border was strengthened by explosive mines and people were shot from watchtowers for trying to escape.

In contrast, the Israeli fence was erected to keep people out – people sworn to Israel’s destruction, people who seek to carry weapons into Israel for terrorism. Israel doesn’t seek to keep Palestinians penned up; it seeks only to keep them out of Israel even as, practically every week, rockets are fired into Israel from the Palestinian enclave to the west, Gaza, to which Israel nevertheless is expected to provide electric power and other necessities of life so that Gaza’s terrorist government may continue to wage war.

Indeed, the terrorist regime of the Hamas organization in Gaza is what happened when Israel withdrew from that territory, which was occupied by Israel after one of the constant Arab wars against the little Jewish state. Hamas does not control the eastern Palestinian territory but it is active there, and without the border fence there would be much more terrorism against Israel.

“Instead of insisting that Israel get to the business of peace in short order,” Weicker said, “the United States fuels indifference to Palestinian suffering by continuing a steady flow of military and economic aid to Israel as if they were the sole aggrieved party in the present standoff.” And yet in 2000 the United States extracted huge concessions from Israel for a comprehensive peace and sovereignty proposal for the Palestinians. It was rejected by the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, who knew that any Palestinian leader conceding permanent borders to Israel and leaving it a primarily Jewish nation would be assassinated by the irreconcilables in his own ranks.

Of course, it is a tenet of political correctness that Israeli oppression is the cause of Palestinian terrorism. But polls find that to most Palestinians, Israeli oppression is mere Israeli existence.

Such opinion does not necessarily justify every aspect of Israeli policy toward the Palestinian territories. Even Israeli courts sometimes find that policy too heavy-handed and reverse it, a phenomenon of due process of law and limited government that is astounding for occurring in a wartime context; a phenomenon never seen in the Palestinian territories and seldom seen anywhere in the Arab world. But Weicker’s likening Israel’s defense against terrorism to East Germany’s confinement and oppression of its own people is ridiculous.

Unlike anything in the old East German practice, Israel might be glad to assist the emigration and resettlement of all Palestinians feeling oppressed if the vast Arab world would accommodate them just as Israel has resettled Jews fleeing oppression everywhere and particularly those fleeing it in Arab countries. But despite its vast oil wealth, which easily could finance it, the Arab world refuses such emigration and resettlement of Palestinians, finding them on the whole too much of a risk of political subversion and terrorism. As a practical matter the Arab fences are far higher than the Israeli one Weicker finds abominable.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.