No violence, no fence

Editorial

Two legal opinions will be rendered in the case of Israel's security fence. The World Court, in the Hague, is set to hear arguments over the construction, while the Israeli Supreme Court will consider the fence as well.

The International Court of Justice, like the United Nations that gave birth to it, is an idyllic humanitarian concept. Imagine if a forum had existed to negotiate our way out of two world wars, centuries of colonialism, revolutions, civil wars and all the disastrous human conflicts of the past. Sadly, even this forum of dialogue remains imperfect. As demonstrated in innumerable United Nations resolutions, Israel is always guilty until proven innocent. (And, according to the UN, it always is proven guilty.) Past experience with the United Nations – with the sole exception of one resolution in 1947 – gives Israel no reason to lay its trust in the decisions of any international body under UN auspices.

The irony is that Israel's own Supreme Court may well come to the same conclusion that the Hague does. Just as the supreme courts of Canada, the United States and other democracies often overturn policies of the elected governments, Israel's Supreme Court has halted countless military and civilian policies it determined to be illegitimate. Israel, despite everything you may have heard, has a responsible, democratic system of government, which operates under strict ethical and moral guidelines. This is far more than can be said for international opinion.

Construction of the fence has elicited arguably more outrage than the world works up over dead Israelis. Those who condemn the fence as a "Berlin Wall" or an "apartheid fence" ignore both the motivation and the impermanence of such a construction. Always ready to blame Israeli policies for the murder of Israeli citizens, opponents of the security fence are now ready to take the next step: to tie Israel's hands behind its back while homicidal terrorists continue to target civilians.

World opinion tacitly or explicitly accepts Palestinian terror as a byproduct of poverty and thwarted nationalism. Killing Israeli civilians is accepted by many Canadians and others as justifiable homicide as long as "the occupation" continues: How desperate those martyrs must be to take their own lives for their cause. Yet there is no commensurate understanding of the Israeli desperation that has led to the appalling necessity of erecting a barrier to murderers. Never mind that a fence can be torn down: A human life can never be restored.

In addition to the very existence of the fence, which ignites a particularly self-righteous fury, the path of the fence is cause for a more particular critique. The placement of the barriers apparently separates Palestinians from their work, orchards and homes, which exacerbates the economic and human tragedy the Palestinian people already endure. But, as always, the blame for the fence falls not on terrorism, but on an imagined Israeli delight in oppressing its neighbors.

The optics of a massive fence around a country are not good. But neither are the optics of limbs flying through the air. Palestinians and their allies, including some here in Canada, like to chant "No justice, no peace." Israel rightly responds: "No violence, no fence." Israel's Supreme Court will determine which side prevails.

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