Israel Proves Border Fences Work

But Candidates/Congress Don’t Want To Know

By Donald A. Collins

Recently, I was talking with my friend, Pat Choate. He told me he had just spent a week in Israel, traveling around the country and meeting a number of key people.

Pat, perhaps best known for being the 1996 Reform Party VP candidate as the running mate of H. Ross Perot, joined the Federation For American Immigration Reform (FAIR) board some years ago, having grasped the dangers of unfettered legal as well as illegal immigration, now reaching flood proportions.

Consequently, since Pat was well aware of the slow progress being made with the fence that was to be constructed on our Southern border, he inquired about the fence which the Israelis have put up. Recall that after scores of suicide bombings and daily terrorist attacks against its civilians that have killed more than 850 people and wounded thousands more since September 2000, Israel’s government decided to construct a security fence near the northern part of the pre-1967 “Green Line” between Israel and the West Bank to prevent Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating. The project has had the overwhelming support of the Israeli public which sees the barrier as vital to their security.

The Israelis were not the first to act on construction of a security fence. Many countries have built fences to protect their borders:* Spain built a fence, with European Union funding, to separate its enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco to prevent poor people from sub-Saharan Africa from entering Europe.  

* India constructed a 460-mile barrier in Kashmir to halt infiltrations supported by Pakistan.  

* Saudi Arabia built a 60-mile barrier along an undefined border zone with Yemen to halt arms smuggling of weaponry and announced plans in 2006 to build a 500-mile fence along its border with Iraq.  

* Turkey built a barrier in the southern province of Alexandretta, which was formerly in Syria and which Syria claims as its own.  

* In Cyprus, the UN sponsored a security fence reinforcing the island’s de facto partition.  

* British-built barriers separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Belfast.

And, as reported by the Jewish Virtual Library (JVL), “Ironically, after condemning Israel’s barrier, the UN announced plans to build its own fence to improve security around its New York headquarters.”

Knowing how tight the security including fences is around our Congress and White House—a fact I observe daily and which I applaud—it is also ironic that similar protection against drug trafficking and illegal aliens intruders could not be provided for the American people.

http://www.vdare.com/collins/080615_israel.htm

2008-06-16