There is a Berlin Wall inside western media

Latheef FAROOK

The 20th anniversary of the demolition of the 96-mile long Berlin Wall which marked the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany’s unification and the end of Cold War was observed throughout the Europe especially in Germany with great festivity. There were fireworks and music festivals to mark the occasion.

Celebrations attended by thousands of people in pouring rain was presided by German, Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Berlin Wall was built by Communist East Germany in 1961 to prevent citizens from crossing into West Berlin .

Highlighting the importance of the event, leaders from many leading European countries gathered in Berlin to participate in the celebration.

Tyranny

These included Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In a special video address, US President Barack Obama said, “Berliners had rebuked tyranny on 9 November 1989”. The Western media, both print and electronic, published special articles and telecast special television programs in a wave of campaign demonising the Soviet Union by political analysts especially picked up for the job.

However, tyranny continues unabated in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where the erection of 790km apartheid Wall, separating Palestinians from their lands, villages, towns, families and from each other. This has been ignored by these Western leaders and their much talked of free media that is not free to write about Jewish crime.

Commenting on this double standard of western media, the well-known independent journalist, author and film maker John Pilger who was awarded Sydney Peace Prize had this to say during a lecture in the Australian city of Sydney on Thursday November 5, 2009: “Today, all mainstream media worldwide has covered the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall. Of course, there is no mention to the Israeli-Zionist apartheid wall. This is because there is a Berlin wall inside the mainstream media preventing public opinion makers to report on Zionist apartheid policies. Western media has the courage to report on everything except Israeli-Zionist apartheid and ethnic cleansing policies”.

Israel continues to build this shameful wall with the connivance and, as usual, the indirect support of these very same European countries that celebrate the fall of Berlin Wall while ignoring the Israeli apartheid wall.

Control

A spider network of settler roads, bridges and tunnels continue to surround Palestinians villages and towns further ghettoising them.

The Israeli occupation forces have been constructing 24 tunnels for Palestinian use while they remain barred from settler-only roads. The barrier which separates Israel from the West Bank is a mixture of fences, barbed wire, ditches and concrete slabs up to 8m (26ft) high.

Tunnels and settler roads imprison Palestinians in a system of apartheid forging scattered and separated ghettos.

This network of roads, together with the wall, encircles Palestinians and perpetuates the Occupation’s control over the Palestinian ghettos and people.

With one road leading to one village, or a group of villages or a whole district, the occupation forces can invade, bomb or destroy a whole community, and withdraw, leaving Palestinians trapped with no sovereignty, no security, and no control over their lives.

These roads and tunnels, along with the apartheid create the borders for a final settlement to be enforced upon the Palestinians.

Impact

The occupying forces call this ‘a viable state’ - creating separated ghettos linked by a system of tunnels and low roads controlled by occupation forces - satisfying American calls for ‘maximum contiguity’.

To date, hundreds of thousands of people are affected by the land confiscation, tree uprooting and inaccessibility to lands and water due to the caging off their communities, throughout the northern West Bank, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, with concrete walls and electric fences. These activities have shocking impact on Palestinian civil society and its reshaping of the entire West Bank. Israel’s West Bank Barrier has become the most visible manifestation of the Israeli military occupation and most pressing issue for Palestinians.

Justice

Often misleadingly called a “fence”, the considerable structure snakes through Palestinian land and isolating them from their land, extended families, and way of life.

According to figures released by the UN in July 2009, the boundary is now 58.3 percent complete, with 10 percent currently in the process of construction, leaving 31.5 percent still to be built.

On December 8, 2003, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that requested the International Court of Justice to “urgently render an advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, in occupied Palestinian territories, including in and around East Jerusalem, considering the rules and principles of international law”. The request for an Advisory Opinion was transmitted to the Court by the UN Secretary-General in a letter dated December 8, 2003.

On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an Advisory Opinion making it clear that the construction of the Wall and the settlements were illegal.

The Advisory Opinion of the Court represents the most authoritative statement to date of the content and applicability of international law concerning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. On July 10, 2005, the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of the Wall in Jerusalem and vowed the completion of the Wall by September 2005. Meanwhile, Palestinians started the anti-apartheid wall campaign to stop the wall.

The campaign calls for the immediate cessation of the building of the wall, the dismantling of all parts of the Wall and its related zones already built, the return of lands confiscated for the path of the wall, and the compensation of damages and lost income due to the destruction of land and property in addition to the restitution of land. As usual, the US-led West took little notice of this campaign and the construction continues unabated.