Why Are There Checkpoints? NY Times Op-Ed Says They Are to Humiliate Arabs!

Eldad Tzioni
31 March '11

Everyone supposedly knows that Israeli checkpoints are perhaps the most evil structures on the planet. And since this is so well known, it seems like the New York Times had no problem publishing an op-ed on Thursday that describes exactly how terrible they are.

Written by two pro-Palestinian activists, Katia and Alain Salomon, the article describes their adventure as they voluntarily decided to go through the Israeli checkpoint at Kalandia.

We had no trouble reaching Ramallah from Jerusalem by public transportation. But we had problems on our return trip. We reached the Kalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem on Friday, March 11, at 9:30 in the morning. We chose to get off the bus with everyone else, even though as foreigners we could have stayed on.

We were stunned by what we saw: dwarfing cement structures, barbed wire, cameras. As we lined up we could see an Israeli woman soldier inside a multifaceted concrete blockhouse, peering out at us. Ahead of us there was a tunnel of bars just wide enough for one person. At its end a turnstile was blocked electronically from somewhere.

…After that narrow corridor we stepped into a small area, again in front of a metal turnstile. Many of us were wet, as it had rained in the morning, and it was cold. There were not that many people waiting but only one or two people were let through every 10 minutes or so.

At 12:10 it was finally our turn. We could see the people controlling the turnstile. There were several young Israeli soldiers inside. They seemed to be having a very good time, laughing, horsing around, like all youths. We want to believe that they had no clue as to the moral and physical suffering they were inflicting with their very slow control process.

Is it slower than waiting in lines at an airport? Or to get into a baseball game? Or the lines for popular rides in Disney World, where, if memory serves, those waiting in line have no benches either? Hard to tell from this article.

But we do see something that the authors write that reveals exactly where their biases lie:

(Read full "Why Are There Checkpoints?")

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