News Watch

Analysis

Deserving
Of Death

IT'S OUR BIGGEST SALE

OF THE SEASON

International court
grants Arabs a right
to terror — and Israelis
a right to die.

JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Jewish Exponent

Philadelphia

0

n some days, looking at Israel's
security barrier close up doesn't
give the viewer much of a sense
of an international controversy.
Driving around the area covered by
the fence near Jerusalem earlier this
month on a hot Friday afternoon, I saw
little that would have justified the hypo-
critical condemnations of the world.
Even in those sections where the news
media and protesters have regularly
gathered to decry the "apartheid wall,"
there was quiet and little sign of the
dust-up that has attached itself to its cre-
ation.
Stripped of those scripted demonstra-
tions by foreigners and canned com-
plaints by local Arabs in those quiet
hours before Shabbat, it was possible to
see the barrier for what it is and is not.
That is something the United Nations
body in the Hague that calls itself an
International Court of Justice was
unable or unwilling to do.
Stand near it and look one way, and
you can usually see Israel's population
centers, where going to a restaurant has
become an experience akin to visiting an
inner-city jewelry store, where you need
to be buzzed in by wary owners.
Look the other way and you can often
see Arab villages, from whose streets
armed gangs and suicide bombers have
risen to strike at their Jewish neighbors.
Look closely and you'll see most of
these villages are not the poverty-stricken
stereotypes adored by broadcast televi-
sion cameras, but bustling towns whose
growth has continued despite the self-
inflicted collapse of the Palestinian econ-
omy.

Simply Sitting Ducks

But according to the International
Court of Justice, Israel has no right to
build a defensive barrier. The
Palestinians, it seems, have been granted
a unique honor in the history of interna

DESERVING

on page 22

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7/16

2004

820080

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