The unbearable lightness of being a Guardian journalist: Israel’s life & death decisions as comic inspiration

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
23 April '11

The only thing even remotely funny about comedian Mark Thomas’s account of his tour along Israel’s security fence, in My travels: Mark Thomas on walking Israel’s West Bank barrier, Guardian Travel Section, April 23, is his comical historical comparison between the barrier and the Great Wall of China.

Israel’s security barrier, which he casually refers to as a “military folly”, is a source of amusement for Thomas, and, indeed, Thomas’s comedic travel diary prose assumes a sense of emotional detachment consistent with the reports on the region from the Guardian’s “serious” journalists, such as Harriet Sherwood.

The irreverent tone of Thomas’s narrative is best illustrated when he mockingly suggests that Israeli soldiers stationed along the fence’s parameter act to prevent infiltration according to their whims and moods:

“A buffer zone exists on the Palestinian side of the barrier and the degree to which it varies in size, and the rigor with which it is enforced, depends on the mood of the soldiers.”

Of course, the fence, and the soldiers he refers to deployed along its parameter, has led to a 90% reduction in the number of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis. And, indeed, the decision to construct a security fence in and around the West Bank in order to protect Israelis from suicide bombers was taken during the height of the 2nd Intifada, in March 2002 – a month in which there were 32 separate Palestinian terrorist attacks, including 8 separate suicide bombings, as a result of which 135 innocent Israelis were murdered, and a further 721 were injured.

(Read full "The unbearable lightness of being a Guardian journalist")

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