December 6, 2011

The Good Fence

As we all know from reading the Northeastern press, a fence along the Mexican border couldn't possibly restrain illegal border-crossers. It's a law of physics, or something!

For some reason, however, the laws of physics don't apply in Israel, which, over the last decade, has been industriously building fences that have proven quite successful at keeping out suicide bombers and other highly motivated would-be intruders. Now, to cut down on illegal immigration of Africans passing through Egypt, Israel is building a 5-meter tall razor wire fence on its 140-mile border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. The Washington Post complained yesterday about the colossal expense and waste of sending all of 1,200 National Guardsmen to protect America's border, but its recent article on Israel's latest fence is much more respectful of Israeli justifications for securing its border.

38 comments:

Passion of the Butt. said...

It's not just the fence. Israelis don't mind using guns and beating up Palestinians who get out of line.

In the US, when border patrol beat some Mexicans who crashed their van across the border, the media went wild, accusing the border patrol with 'human rights abuses'.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It doesn't have to restrain them all. If it funnels them into chokepoints, that at least reduces the opportunity and the number.

Even when manned by incompetents.

Anonymous said...

You still have to click through on one of their links to catch an admission that the illegal immigrants that Israel is trying to stop threaten the character of the nation. Given that article also states that the police are doing SFA to get them out of the country, they really don't have that much choice but to stop them at the border. I suppose they could deport them to the Muslim Brotherhood and Black September parts of 'Palestine' as a sort of win-win solution, but it seems unlikely to occur.

Baloo said...

Israelis aren't taught from childhood that non-Israelis are better and more deserving than they are.

Paul Rain said...

Ah.. and while the other Post article claims despite community concerns that "police statistics show that the crime rate among the Africans is significantly lower than among the general population.", the
reality is that this is simply down to the fact that at present, most excess crimes as a result of this phenomenon are committed within the intruder community, against victims who avoid reporting them to the police.

What's next for the Washington Post.. how the culture of Western countries encourages Muslims to commit more honor murders?

Ed said...

The hilarious thing about this is that Israel, unlike the United States, has never bothered to define where its borders are. Does this fence keep the would be immigrants from entering Gaza, or can they get into Gaza but can't cross the 1967 lines?

But if you really care about the survival of Israel but for some reason not of the United States, you can wind up approving Israel doing this sort of thing and not the United States. The strange thing is that I suspect not many actual Israelis would have a big problem with the United States building similar border fences.

Truth said...

"Bayu, a migrant from Ethiopia who is one of the few who have received refugee status, said that Israel, whose absorption of Jewish immigrants has served as a model for countries around the world, “has to extend its hand to this population, too.”"

Well, the man does have a point.

Whiskey said...

Steve, Israel has problems too with illegals. Israel faces opposition to deporting Aliens. Money quotes:

""Facing issues that echo the U.S. immigration dilemma, the Israeli parliament's Internal Affairs Committee on Monday began taking up Israel's so-called Prevention of Infiltration Law. Originally promulgated in 1954 to curb Palestinians seeking to return to their homes—and to counter cross-border attacks by militants—it is a law that the government now wants to modify to enable three-year detentions without trial for illegal migrants entering from Africa via Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Migrant-rights advocates say that would be in violation of a 60-year-old United Nations convention on refugee rights, adopted largely as a response to the world's inaction to the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.

"Israel has an obligation because of its history," says Oded Feller, a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. "The refugee convention says refugees can't be penalized because they came illegally."

...

Today, the emergence of African districts in cities including Eilat, Ashdod and Tel Aviv is alarming to many. "Look at Tel Aviv," says Ya'akov Katz, of the religious National Union party, who complains that the city is already experiencing a variant of "white flight" from some districts. Within five years, he warns, "Tel Aviv is going to be an African city."

Mr. Katz approves of the new legislation, which envisions more money to complete a security fence along Israel's border with Sinai, and new funds to complete a detention city where African "infiltrators" can be held for up to three years without formal charges or trial. Detainees may be brought for administrative hearing in front of a judge who determines the term of detention. Critics call it a "concentration camp."

Illegal immigrants deemed to be from "enemy" states, like Sudan, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel, could be held indefinitely.

Liberal politicians including Yael Dayan, chairman of Tel Aviv's city council and the daughter of one of Israel's most renowned military heroes, say establishing a detention city for Africans would be morally wrong. It would also, she said, be a "budget buster."
---------------
The EXACT same rhetoric. The EXACT same ideas. The EXACT same problem.

Israel lost the Lebanon War. Hezbollah kicked its ass. No one likes losers, and the swing voters in Israel (as in the US, White Professional Women) don't feel Israel should be defended because no one abides a loser. While everyone loves a winner. Not even a Tel Aviv Councilwoman is willing to stand up and say, hey Tel Aviv should not be over-run with Africans. If that happens in ISRAEL, where there is no where to run to, it ought to tell you something. The issue is deeply rooted in how Westerners organize their societies. It is endemic, not something out of the Frankfurt School or Bill Ayers evil voodoo.

Puppy said...

Israelis treat their borders not merely as a security line but as a military front.

And of course, Israel is a lot smaller than the SW of America. And Israelis handle their own security... whereas much of American security is managed by Mexican-Americans.

Whiskey said...

I say as a follow-up that the biggest problem Israel has in getting support for a border fence and the idea of not letting Tel Aviv be an African majority city, is that Israeli Nationalism aka Zionism is not acting like an Alpha Male. Not Big Man enough, not swaggering enough, not putting other countries, nations, and peoples down enough.

Thus, with most swing/decisive voters, White professional women, feeling secure and not really bothered by mass immigration, the taint of "loserdom" rather than Alpha winning hangs over Zionism/Israeli nationalism. It is why Israel faces so much internal opposition with the same stuff said, "too expensive," "concentration camp," etc. If you are a Jew, in Israel, you have really nowhere else to go. Egypt and Jordan are not going to take you in, neither will Greece, and if you leave you lose property, money, etc. Yet that fence being built faces considerable opposition.

That is telling.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

So what's your point, Whiskey O'Tam-o-Shanter? Don't build a fence? Don't bring troops home to secure their own backyard?

It's funny how the Scots-Irish get all riled up when Steve talks seriously about nailing the border shut. "Don't even attempt it! Not even the Israelis can do it!"

Anonymous said...

It's amazing how far left Wapo and NYT are on everything except Israel. and 90% of lefties I talk to who read it can't fathom why.

Anonymous said...

Israelis aren't taught from childhood that non-Israelis are better and more deserving than they are.

American public opinion has still generally been against immigration. And yet this view gets overridden.

beowulf said...

"The strange thing is that I suspect not many actual Israelis would have a big problem with the United States building similar border fences."

Hire Israeli contractors to build it. Win-win.

Anonymous said...

This is for the poster who goes by the handle Whiskey. For God's sake you appear on every right-leaning blog I read, iSteve, Mangan's, SBPDL and some others. Other than pushing your white women hate beta males theme, which you lifted from Roisy, you can always be counted on to represent the neocon wing of the republican party.

Question: Do you hang around neocon blogs and try to convince their readers that they need to dial it down a notch or so on their open borders, free trade, and interventionism policies? Do you let your friends at Commentary know that their push for open borders is scaring the hell out of us? Do you fill up their blog posts over and over again with the same comments chastising them to make common ground with us?

And if not, why not?

Captain Jack Aubrey said...

Well, here's Israel's policy on citizen ID.

For those (often pro-Israel and/or neoconss) who think laws like Arizona's and Alabama's are odious:

"Any resident sixteen years of age or older must at all times carry an Identity card, and present it upon demand to a senior police officer, head of Municipal or Regional Authority, or a policeman or member of the Armed forces on duty."

And the card also identifies its bearer by ethnoreligion. It used to do so explicitly, but now only does so implicitly by listing, only for Jews, the birthdate in the Hebrew calender as well as the Christian calendar.

J said...

Israel has a land border with Africa. There are estimates that 2 million "refugees" are currently walking from Sudan, Erythrea, etc. towards the Israeli border. Once inside Israel Human Rights do-gooders make sure that they get residence permits. The Africans dont even try to get into the rich Arab countries like Saudia, Kuweit, Dubai - sure death awaits them there.

Anonymous said...

Fences are obstacles, and to be effective obstacles need someone present when bad guys try to go through them. Obstacles by their nature just slow down the fence-jumper; the point is to make the fence-jumping slow enough to vector in a human to stop it. If it's just a fence in the desert it will get ripped down or bypassed. You can do a lot of damage to a fence with a 4X4, a winch, and a couple hours.

It would be useful for preventing or canalizing vehicle traffic, though. Put up some video cameras and you can probably automate vehicle detection.

RVT said...

America is a Jewish nation too! Where's our fence?

Anonymous said...

"In the US, when border patrol beat some Mexicans who crashed their van across the border, the media went wild, accusing the border patrol with 'human rights abuses'."

And the DoJ goes after them, but only if they are drug runners for some strange reason.

Anonymous said...

Also worth noting is that the world's biggest and most formidable anti-people fence is being built by India to keep Bangladeshis out.
Yes, that's right.The same India that aggressively demands the 'right' to export its surplus population on to western nations.

IHTG said...

When I was in the IDF, you got mainly Eastern European, Balkan and Turkish migrants going through the Egyptian border, at much smaller numbers. Many of them were female and intended for prostitution (I don't want to think of what the Bedouins did to them out in the desert).

This African Exodus is unprecedented.

Anonymous said...

Surprised iSteve hasn't noticed the difference in the way ESPN and the New York Times have covered the Penn State Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal versus the Syracuse Bernie Fine child molestation scandal. At ESPN and the NYT, it's all-Sandusky all-the- time. Not so much with Bernie, though.

Hell, for 8 years, ESPN even had in its possession a taped conversation of Mr. Fine's wife acknowledging her husband's uh, strange tastes, and more or less apologizing to one of her husband's alleged victims. But there's no national moral outrage over that, as there was when we learned that Penn State graduate assistant Mike McQueary followed protocol and reported Sandusky's alleged molestation to his boss, Head Coach Joe Paterno, instead of calling the police. Or when we learned that Paterno also followed protocol and reported the alleged Sandusky incident to his institution's Athletic Director and University President, rather than turning Sandusky over to the police.

Perhaps ESPN is inclined to cover for Syracuse and Bernie Fine due to the over-representation of Syracuse alums who staff its executive, production, reporting and on-air ranks.

hadley said...

Aubrey and others, you guys keep forgetting the fundamental tenets of Judaism. It is a two caste religion. God has created two peoples, Jews and everyone else (gentiles/goyim/ben Noach).

The Jews obey one set of laws (613 mitzvot). Everyone else shall obey another set of laws (Noachide laws).

God doesn't want any non-Jew to become a Jew because he has rules, roles and duties for each group.

ID cards and fences in Israel are OK, since they are for the eace purity and survival of Jews. They are not OK for you because you are in the other, lower caste, and God doesn't give a sh!t whether you survive as a people or not. Read your Bible, it's all there.

But you keep acting shocked like it is hypocrisy for Jew-ruled country like Israel to have ID card laws and fences and for Jews in America to fight against the same protective measures.

It isn't hypocrisy.

It is perfectly consistent with over 3000 years of Jewish law and theology.

hadley said...

Whiskey, it is NOT the "EXACT same". Not by a long shot.

To use just one example, consider the Sudanese "enemy" refugees argument you quote.

The Jews in Israel keep Darfurians out because they are not Jews. Whether they are from an "enemy" country or not makes no difference.

Ask yourself this: if a Jewish refugee came to Israel from Sudan do you think for a second that she would be sent back as coming from an "enemy" country? Of course not.

If a Jewish refugee came from a real enemy of Israel like Iran, would the greater "enemy"-ness of Iran make Israel more likely or less likely to expel them? The latter, of course.

Further, the evil "enemy"-ness of the Sudanese Muslim rulers is why we Americans are encouraged to accept Sudanese refugees (by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, among others).

Yet, oddly enough, the "enemy"-ness of the Sudanese rulers is the very reason Israelis justify expelling Sudanese refugees at their border.

Try this out: the next time you hear some thumb-sucking and sulking about America being anti-Semitic for not accepting boatloads of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, tell them, "Of COURSE we could not accept Jewish refugees from Germany; we were AT WAR with Germany; Germany was the ENEMY!"

We know what their reaction will be.

This dual treatment of Jewish refugees versus all others may seem inconsistent or hypocritical. It is not.

In the dual caste moral hierarchy of Judaism, all of humanity is obligated to rescue Jews. It is only a moral obligation on gentiles to rescue fellow gentiles. Further, there is no God-approved reason for one Gentile group to prefer and protect its own nation over any other.

So, no, Whiskey, it is not "exactly" the same. The very article you quote shows it is not "exactly" the same.

A couple final points: there is nothing wrong with Jewish supremacism and race loyalty in Israel. They are entitled to accept or expel whomever they like. They own their land as a legacy for all Jews all over the world.

We should not, however, be infected by Jewish theology and see ourselves as fungible lower caste people with no right of national self-preservation--no right to borders or national identity. One needn't hate Jews to reject their 3500-year-old theology.

Anonymous said...

"30 years ago, no one would ever have predicted that Israel would be overwhelmed by black Africans - but now it's happened, and the Iraelis don't know what to do."

The planet is swamped with black Africans because we keep feeding them.

They can't feed themselves which is why historically they had very low population density. Left to their own devices they will starve and eat one another. They only do as well as they do outside of Africa because they are not in charge... uh... oops...

Anonymous said...

The sad thing is that the U.S. taxpayer probably paid for Israel's security fence.

Aaron in Israel said...

...fences that have proven quite successful at keeping out suicide bombers and other highly motivated would-be intruders.

That's what I'd always thought, too, but that claim is disputed. One of the journalists at +972 pointed out that the West Bank security barrier has never been completed, and that it's not that hard for Palestinians to cross through the gaps. She claimed that the barrier was left uncompleted because Israeli-PLO security cooperation practically stopped terrorist attacks from the West Bank. I asked her (in the comments) if she was sure that that was the reason, and she quoted someone, I think it was the head of the Shabak at the time, saying something more or less to that effect.

Again, this was +972, so she had her political views, but she seemed honest and informed. I guess I'm agnostic on the question, now.

Average Joe said...

The really amazing thing is that the Israelis want to use this fence to keep out AFRICANS! Isn't keeping black people out of your country a racist thing to do? For some reason Israel doesn't have to follow the same rules that we do when it comes to blacks.

Average Joe said...

Israel, whose absorption of Jewish immigrants has served as a model for countries around the world

I wonder why Israel favors Jewish immigrants over non-Jewish ones? Nope, can't think of any reason.

Anonymous said...

If fences don't work why do people have fences for their homes and properties? Why do private businesses have them? Why do military bases and nuclear facilities have them if they "don't work"?

Anonymous said...

12/6/11 6:11 PM

Thanks for your usual, statistics-free but assertion-laden discussion of the Israeli immigration issue. You prove my points every time you comment.

Anonymous said...

Rotgut's lesson: If you want to give Rotgut and the rest of your online legion plausible denial, just quote a few open-borders NGOs in the paper. You don't have to cite any numbers. Hell, the NGOs don't even have to be real NGOs or get anything done. They don't even have to try to get anything done. They just have to provide quotes to the paper. Rotgut & co. are an easy lay. They just want a shred of plausible denial.

Never mind that people like Katz would never be quoted in the American press the way he's quoted by the Israeli. Never mind be allowed to be elected to Congress.

30 years ago, no one would ever have predicted that Israel would be overwhelmed by black Africans - but now it's happened, and the Iraelis don't know what to do.

Can we actually get to the part where we show that this supposed fait accompli has actually happened?

Because until we do, it's all hasbara lies.

Many of them were female and intended for prostitution (I don't want to think of what the Bedouins did to them out in the desert).

Agreed. I'm sure being on the sex-slavery carousel within Israel's borders is just peachy.

Not so much with Bernie, though.

Or this:

Recent Charges of Sexual Abuse of Children in Hollywood Just Tip of Iceberg, Experts Say

Anonymous said...

Note how the WSJ article Rotgut posted is behind a paywall (no pun intended). It's known around here that the Israeli press is far more honest about touchy subjects like this than the American press, never mind the neocon WSJ. But Rotgut, a guy who seems to care more about Israel than America, can't find an Israeli paper to cite? Instead we get a link to a pay-walled article in a neocon American paper.

Anonymous said...

Immigration looms large among the readers of this blog, but I don't think it's a coincidence that Israel started building the fence in the winter after "Arab Spring". Likely, Israel expects utter collapse of Egyptian society.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Don't know about the Times but ESPN/Disney was quiet about Bernie Fine for self-interest, mainly (see Allen Barra column at dailybeast.com). On a lighter note ESPN also has a black-on-feminist VP melodrama on its hands.

Anonymous said...

Rotgut.

Closely related to tommyrot.

Silver

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