Joe, you wrote:

I think there are valid arguments on both sides of the Palestine issue. It's true that the wall has helped curtail the frequent bombings that were taking place in Israel, and I do believe that was a valid concern for the Israelis. But on the other hand, the wall was detrimental to the lives of the vast majority of residents of the Palestinian territory who were not guilty of any participation in the bombings. The wall made it impossible for many Palestinians to go to work or shopping, or to visit family and friends on the other side of the wall.

Same with the wall in Berlin. The border in Berlin was the most permeable border in Europe until the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. Until then, Berliners worked and shopped and lived on both sides of the border, and had friends and family on both sides. The Wall was built mostly for economic reasons - East Germans were leaving in droves, and this created severe instability in the workforce. Stabilizing the workforce was a valid concern for the GDR
(German Democratic Republic/DDR). But the wall caused the same serious problems for innocent people that the wall in Israel caused. ....

Both Israel and the DDR could argue that they needed their walls for basic survival, and that's a valid argument. The Castro regime could argue the same for restricting emigration from Cuba.


With your third paragraph, I think you have either walked or stumbled badly into equivalency.

All the walls mentioned by you above are controversial and can be argued about in their local contexts. But they are not equivalent. I am saying that Israel, a democratic country with a mult-ethnic population is not equivalent to the DDR, a Communist totalitarian regime. Your argument assumes that Israel and the DDR have the same valid right to existence.

By assuming equivalency, you could make a similar argument that by establishing concentration camps, the Nazis were simply trying to maintain the social order that was the heart of their raison d'etre. That the Soviets' extensive gulag system was merely their means of maintaining their onerous rule.