Liverpool opinions
Breaking down the walls of heartache - The cementing of hatred
By John Williams
"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link."
Simone Weil
This essay is not an attempt to analyse the causes or origins of Anti Semitism, [more properly Anti Jewishness], but rather an effort to highlight a concrete example of the unfair ways that the Israeli Jewish peoples are treated in comparison to the rest of the human race.
The Great Wall of China, the origins of which go back to the third century AD, is hailed as one of the wonders of the world. This places it in the same exalted company of the Pyramids, the Colossus of Rhodes etcetera, yet of all of these only the Chinese wall was built to deter invasion by foreign forces.
This fact has not prevented it being invested with a reverence usually bestowed on great temples or mausoleums. Similarly, the ramparts created by Hadrian in the early years of the first millennium, to keep out the Pictish raiders, is hailed as a great wonder and, like the Chinese wall is venerated by archaeologists and tourists alike.
It would appear then that overt defensive structures are not a priori intrinsically evil. Yet when the Jews of Israel build a wall to hold back the life hating murderers of Islamic jihadist suicide bombers then the notion of evil automatically adheres to the concept.
Lest this appear to be a an exercise in frivolity let me quote more modern examples of wall and fence building along national borders that, in contrast to the hatred engendered by the Israeli wall, barely attract international comment. However, before I continue let me attempt to forestall the obvious comment that the Berlin wall was an abomination. I agree with that assessment, but would respectfully point out that, in contradistinction to the other walls I mention, it was built to keep East Germany's people inside its malevolent shadow.
At this very moment in time there is a de facto wall being erected between Pakistan and India,
India and Bangladesh, while there are daily repairs to the 'Peace line'
in Belfast, which was built to keep apart two Christian communities. Again, I read only today of calls to create a wall between Arizona and the peoples of South America.
I ask, where is the fairness in all this, and answer my own question by asserting that the notion of fairness has as much connection in this case as love has to hate.
Simone Weil, who was quoted earlier, was part Jewish and the point of my using her words is to assert that the what is being communicated by the Israeli wall is this. 'Cease your murderous campaign to annihilate the state of Israel, and then the wall will become a door.'
Finally, I have to admit a degree of self interest here, and it is not just that I am a lapsed Catholic who holds Jewish people in affection, but rather that I have a wall around my own house, for which at times I am truly grateful. Who among us can deny similar feelings of comfort when protected from the abstract by the concrete?