Roth - Evidently that cursed good-for-nothing security barrier is good for only one thing...

We snapped this from our picnic table at Mitzpe Ofir
on Tuesday.You can see, if you look very closely, some of
 the tens of thousands of picnickers and campers
 below on the shores of Lake Kinneret, aka
the Sea of Galilee.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
12 April '12..

Traveling this beautiful country, as hundreds of thousands of Israelis (our family among them) and tourists are during this Passover holiday week, you are struck by the compactness of the land.

We set out from Jerusalem in the south of Israel before seven one morning this week, and managed to get all the way up to the northern end of the Jordan Valley and into the Beit She'an Valley for a delightful breakfast beside a pool fed by the natural spring at Ein Moda before 8. We lunched at the stunning Mitzpe Ofir and then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with friends a lovely spot on the Golan Heights as well as traveling the circumference of the Sea of Galilee. We were back home in Jerusalem around midnight.

The distances are much shorter than people unfamiliar with this land often comprehend. It's a tiny and vibrant land with a minor length and virtually no breadth.

We were reminded yesterday of what the close proximity of extremely hostile neighbours can mean in an environment like this. Thankfully this was just a reminder because no serious harm was done... though it could easily have ended in a far, far worse outcome.

Anti-Israel smears get new boost all across Europe....

.... as Pink Floyd star sprays preposterous remarks on security barrier
Robin Shepherd
Think Tank Blog
20 August 09

So what happens when you put together an ageing British rock star, a Finnish director, and a spokesman for the United Nations to launch a short film about Israel’s security barrier, sorry, “Apartheid Wall”? Let’s begin with the money quote. As Pink Floyd front man Roger Waters had it this week (using the catch line from one of his most famous songs) in a story quoted all across Europe by French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP):

‘”It fills me with horror, the thought of living in a giant prison,” Waters says as he spray-paints “We don’t need no thought control” on the wall.’

Oh dear, oh dear. One of the problems with political fanaticism, of course, is that the people who participate in it quickly lose all sense of what they are saying and doing. But this — ‘We don’t need no thought control’? — is preposterous even by anti-Israeli standards. Time then for a bit of loopy logic from the United Nations just to guarantee this particular piece’s entry into the idiotic-story-of-the-year competition.

For full effect, I have left the narrative and the quotations from the AFP story intact:

‘Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said he hoped the virtual disappearance of [suicide bombing] attacks in recent years would encourage Israel to rethink the barrier.

“The number of suicide bombings has dropped from about 38 a year to one in the last two years,” he said ahead of the premiere. “This might be an opportunity to reflect if the reasons still prevail for continued construction at the expense of tens of thousands of Palestinians.”‘

Hmmm. So let’s get this right. The security barrier has been highly successful in preventing suicide bombings. Since its success is now proven, this obviously means that it should be removed.

Make of that what you will.

The film, entitled ‘Walled Horizons’ and narrated by Waters, takes its cue from the fifth anniversary of the notorious ruling by the International Court of Justice in 2004 which said, in a purely advisory capacity, that the route of the security barrier was illegal and that it should be torn down.

Yohan Eriksson, the Finnish director of the film, was quoted by AFP as saying of his production:

“It is first and foremost a reminder that the world’s highest court has essentially said you cannot build a fence on your neighbour’s yard.”

Actually, in a world of sanity and decency it would “first and foremost” be a reminder of the brutal realities of Palestinian political culture which necessitated the barrier’s construction in the first place.

But as AFP reminds us: ‘The Palestinians view it as an “Apartheid Wall”‘. With which casual and seemingly innocent reference the notion of Israel as the modern day equivalent of Apartheid South Africa is once again pumped into Europe’s collective mind. And so it goes.
.