By Just when I thought Donald Trump’s idiotic and insensitive remarks couldn’t get any worse — they did.
In the latest Republican presidential debate, which essentially serves as a platform for uninformed bigots to argue like imbeciles, Trump declared:
“Walls work. All you have to do is ask Israel. Walls work if it’s properly constructed.”
I’ll give you a minute to let that enormously inappropriate and offensive statement sink in.
In other words, Trump blatantly endorsed apartheid and segregation and wants to bring it to the United States to “make America great again.”
Frankly, I’m not entirely surprised. Based on Trump’s previous inaccurate and ambiguous statements on international relations, I’m sure if he was given a map and asked to locate Israel/Palestine he wouldn’t be able to identify it, let alone articulate the harrowing history of the wall.
So here are some facts for you Mr. Trump.
The Israeli wall wasn’t built to regulate or halt immigration, as you intend to do if you — God forbid — become president. Rather, it was erected in 2002 to further isolate and separate Palestinians.
In April of 2002, war criminal Ariel Sharon announced construction of the wall amid the height of the second intifada, which began with protests against the Israeli occupation and were violently repressed by the Israeli Defense Force.
In the process of its construction, it uprooted a mass amount of Palestinian farmland and usurped Palestinian water supplies, including the largest aquifer in the West Bank. 85 percent of the wall stands on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank.
The separation barrier consists of concrete walls, fences, razor wire, an intricate electronic monitoring system and a buffer zone — which is just a euphemistic term to obscure large-scale demolitions of buildings belonging to nearby residents.
Residents living between the Green Line and the wall, called a “seam zone”, must have permits to remain on their land. These permits are extraordinarily difficult to obtain.
There are roughly 35 “security” checkpoints in and around the barrier that beat, detain, harass and humiliate Palestinians on a regular basis. This limits Palestinian movement in their own land. Essentially, the Israeli Apartheid wall serves to ghettoize and imprison the Palestinian population in a larger effort to erase Palestinian existence.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) — you probably don’t know what that is so let me explain — the ICJ is the highest United Nations governing legal body. In 2004, it issued an advisory opinion declaring that the Apartheid Wall violates Israel’s obligations under international law. Nonetheless, because of Israeli impunity and unaccountability from the international community, Israel continues to build the illegal wall, which is eight meters high — twice the size of the Berlin Wall.
So Mr. Trump, if your plan is to take charge of one of the highest offices in the land it would be really helpful if — for five minutes — you pulled your head out of your golden ass and took a look around. You see the wars going on? The kids dying? The countries falling to their knees? It’s all because of a wall. A majorly screwed up wall that has no place on the American border.
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Image grab from: The Guardian
how are the walls in Israel apartheid? are saying that the west bank and gaza are parts of Israel?