Israeli Wall Highlighted During Immigration Week
Wednesday, 23 March 2011 19:02
Walk along the University of Arizona mall this week and you will notice a tall fence lined with barbed wire blocking people from crossing the grass in all but a few places. The wall, part of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Immigration Week, is supposed to represent the wall along the Mexico-United States border and is sponsored by No More Deaths, a group dedicated to curbing deaths that occur when migrants attempt to cross the border.
But the Mexico-U.S. border is not the only focus of the wall. Some student groups were asked by No More Deaths to set up an exhibit portraying the wall Israel has set up along the disputed Israel-Palestine border.
“We were asked to hold a segment of this wall to show parallels between the U.S.-Mexico wall and the Palestine-Israeli wall,” said a student representative of Students for Justice in Palestine, who set up the display along with Jewish Voices for Peace. “A lot of the same rhetoric that’s used when we talk about the Palestine-Israel wall, those are the same arguments used when we talk about the U.S.-Mexico wall, and so they thought it would be nice to have that connection.”
“We’re not here to promote one general opinion; we just want discourse,” he continued.
Discourse is something they have certainly received over the last few days. People from the Hillel Foundation have posted defenses of the wall alongside maps, showing that the number of suicide bombers in Israel has gone down since the wall was constructed.
Some students have even been standing along the wall promoting an alternative viewpoint. One such student is Max Rusinov, an Israeli studying at the UA.
“I think that it’s kind of only a one-way perspective…because people who are interested in Israel, if they come here they should know another part and see the whole picture, not just the perspective from the Palestinian side,” Rusinov said, citing that the display didn’t show the wall’s successes in preventing suicide bombings.
“I’m trying to bring it here that Israel is not a horrible place, just killing civilians,” he said.
Bryan James Gordon, from Jewish Voices for Peace, was happy to be able to host such discussion.
“Facts don’t contradict good causes; they’re just a part of a complicated picture,” he said, referring to the graphs that showed suicide bombings declining since the fence’s construction. “We’re not an anti-Israel group…but we do think Israel needs to respect human rights and give full political representation and stop colonizing and settling lands that don’t even belong to it under anyone’s control of the law.”
One student who felt quite passionate about the display was Tatiana Covington.
“The only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything about history,” Covington said. “I’ve seen quite a number of walls put up then come down.”
“Wipe [borders] out,” she said.
The wall will remain along the mall for the remainder of the week, “to interrupt the UA campus community’s freedom of movement across the mall in order to dramatize the effects of US immigration and border enforcement policies which dramatically limit access to safe transit across the US/Mexico border,” according to the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences website.
Written by Kevin Cottingham and Sam Sais You are reading Israeli Wall Highlighted During Immigration Week articles
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