More useful idiots
The New York Times/International Herald Tribune publishes a piece from two useful idiots from southern France, who discover that the Kalandia checkpoint at the entrance to Jerusalem has - gasp - cameras, and that people who go through it are actually searched. 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. Do they have orders to slow everything down on Friday mornings in order to discourage the men who come to pray? Or perhaps to reduce the numbers of people who want to spend the weekend with their families?Kalandia checkpoint is less than five miles from my home. When you have lived through a couple of suicide bombings, please call me and let me know if you'd prefer death to them being 'degraded.' Those are the stark choices Israelis face.
One can easily imagine the feelings of resentment that are born from this experience. This treatment is unwarranted from the perspective of legitimate security imperatives; it is degrading and inhumane and not understandable coming from a nation that wants to be perceived as democratic, a nation among nations.
/Useful idiots.
Labels: Jerusalem, Kalandia checkpoint, Palestinian terrorism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:31 AM
3 Comments:
Maybe these idiots would prefer to go through the "moral and physical suffering" meted out by TSA agents and get strip-photographed by backscatter cameras (gasp!) at a US airport.
You have Jewish anti-Semites pretending there is no need for rigorous security searches of Arabs.
Israelis haven't forgotten all those killed in the last intifada. Western memories are conveniently short.
I have been to Israel once, on business. I had to go through a check point when my host took me from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (on the West Bank road, apparently, they like to do that to Americans to see if we get concerned (in actuality, the road is fairly safe).
As for the checkpoint, it is a BORDER. The PA (the want to be state of Palestine) is on one side, the State of Israel on the other. Go to the US border with Mexico and you would see similar sights.
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