[BretLudwig]

Israel Proves Border Fences Work€”But Candidates/Congress Dont 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:
bullet 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.

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

bullet 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.

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

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

bullet 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.

Of course, you will recall the highly touted US law enacted 2 years ago
to
build a fence to keep out illegal Mexicans. Unfortunately, on December
19,
2007, just before the Christmas recess, when the Omnibus Appropriations
Bill was passed, it had an amendment attached by Senator Hutchinson
(R-TX)
which effectively gutted the law. Our elitist Congress' Christmas gift of
security to American citizens!

Many open-border types in Congress and in mass media have claimed that a
US fence couldn't work. But the JVL notes:

"Before the construction of the fence, and in many places where it has
not
yet been completed, a terrorist need only walk across an invisible line
to
cross from the West Bank into Israel. No barriers of any kind exist, so
it
is easy to see how a barrier, no matter how imperfect, would at least
make
the terrorists' job more difficult. Approximately 75 percent of the
suicide bombers who attacked targets inside Israel came from across the
border where the first phase of the fence was built.

€œDuring the 34 months from the beginning of the violence in September
2000 until the construction of the first continuous segment of the
security fence at the end of July 2003, Samaria-based terrorists carried
out 73 attacks in which 293 Israelis were killed and 1950 wounded. In the
11 months between the erection of the first segment at the beginning of
August 2003 and the end of June 2004, only three attacks were successful,
and all three occurred in the first half of 2003.

€œSince construction of the fence began, the number of attacks has
declined by more than 90%. The number of Israelis murdered and wounded
has
decreased by more than 70% and 85%, respectively, after erection of the
fence." [Israels Security Fence by Mitchell Bard (Updated December 2,
2007)]

Now wouldn't it be great to quickly cut the flow from Mexico to the US by
that amount?

Again the JVL reports:

"As a result of the modifications, the length of the barrier is expected
to be approximately 490 miles. About 300 miles of the barrier have been
completed. The full length is anticipated to be done by 2010. The
security
fence is the largest infrastructure project in Israel's history. The cost
of the project will be about $2.1 billion. Each kilometer of fence costs
approximately $2 million. "

Our contemplated fence would be 854 miles long, which would make its cost
perhaps $3 billion. That would hardly compute in the daily expenditures
of
our profligate government's war in Iraq.

The JVL says:

"Although critics have sought to portray the security fence as a kind of
€˜Berlin Wall, it is nothing of the sort. First, unlike the Berlin
Wall, the fence does not separate one people, Germans from Germans, and
deny freedom to those on one side. Israel's security fence separates two
peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, and offers freedom and security for
both. Second, while Israelis are fully prepared to live with
Palestinians,
and 20 percent of the Israeli population is already Arab, it is the
Palestinians who say they do not want to live with any Jews and call for
the West Bank to be judenrein. Third, the fence is not being constructed
to prevent the citizens of one state from escaping; it is designed solely
to keep terrorists out of Israel. Finally, only a tiny fraction of the
total length of the barrier (less than 3% or about 10 miles) is actually
a
30 foot high concrete wall, and that is being built in three areas where
it
will prevent Palestinian snipers from around the terrorist hotbeds of
Kalkilya and Tul Karm from shooting at cars as they have done for the
last
three years...

"Most of the barrier will be a chain-link type fence similar to those
used
all over the United States combined with underground and long-range
sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles, trenches, landmines and guard paths.
Manned checkpoints will constitute the only way to travel back and forth
through the fence. The barrier is altogether about 160 feet wide in most
places. The land used in building the security fence is seized for
military purposes, not confiscated, and it remains the property of the
owner.

€œLegal procedures are already in place to allow every owner to file an
objection to the seizure of their land. Moreover, property owners are
offered compensation for the use of their land and for any damage to
their
trees."

Of course there were and are still politics in Israel to overcome, but
the
Israeli people understand the vital threat of failing border security.

Our governing elites apparently understand protecting the US Capitol and
grounds, but they have been willfully not acting to secure our Southern
border.

Where are our Presidential candidates on this vital issue of real
security? Mostly making empty promises so far.

Now that the treasonous Hutchinson amendment has passed, getting back to
where we were 2 years ago is harder€”but still possible.

The latest efforts to revive the U.S. Fence were mounted by a real reform
group, Grassfire. It has just presented a "Build The Border Fence As
Promised" petition with 250,000 signatures to Congress. It states:

"As a concerned citizen, I am signing this petition calling on Congress
and the President to reinstate and fully fund the original mandate of the
Secure Fence Act. I am appalled that Congress took action to undo the
Secure Fence Act. I find the actions of those involved reprehensible, and
demand the following:
bullet Repeal the Hutchison Amendment.

bullet Restore the Secure Fence Act.

bullet Restore the deadlines for construction of the 854-mile fence.

bullet Restore the double-layer mandate that was promised.

bullet Existing fencing does not count in satisfying the mileage
requirement.

Border fences do work. Pat Choate's comments on the Israeli experience
represent a clarion call to action."

Pat's powerful new book, Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization
to
America, a Book of the Month Club selection, will be out this August.

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

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