How can she love the wall?

This weekend there was an op-ed piece by Irshad Manji. She has become a darling of both "liberals" and "conservatives" because she is a Muslim highly critical of Islamic fundamentalists. I would take her viewpoint more seriously, if she wasn't always comparing Muslims to Jews. I am as suspicious of Judeo-philes as ofJudeo-phobes. Just like it is ridiculous for Muslim and Arab fanatics to blame all their woes on the Jews, it is equally ridiculous for Manji and to go around proclaiming "Why can't we Muslims be like the Jews?" Hey Manji, I got news for you: Jewish fundamentalists are prettymuch the same as their Islamic and Christian counterparts. The big difference is there are 1 billion Muslims and 12 million Jews in the world, so there are just a hell of a lot less Jewish fundamentalists causing trouble. (As for Christian fundamentalists, they have the might of the US army doing their dirty work, so they can kill indiscrimantely without the suicide bombers.)

But I lost even more respect for Ms. Manji when I saw the following op-ed piece in the weekend Times. It is written by someone pontificating on a topic they obviously know very little about. Its headline is truly appalling (I truly hope she didn't come up with it). I was moved to write a letter (which wasn't published), which follows her piece. If what she writes about Islamic fundamentalism is as equally superficial, then she is betraying her own cause.

How I Learned to Love the Wall

By IRSHAD MANJI Published: March 18, 2006

New Haven

ON March 28, Israelis will elect a new prime minister to replace the ailing Ariel Sharon. But I'd bet my last shekel that I'll continue to hear the phrase "Ariel Sharon's apartheid wall." It's a phrase spoken — make that spewed — on almost every university campus I visit in North America and Europe.

Among a new generation of Muslims, this is what Mr. Sharon will be known for long after he leaves office: unilaterally erecting a barrier, most of it a fence, some of it a wall, that cuts Arab villages in half, chokes the movement of ordinary Palestinians, cripples local economies and, ultimately, separates human beings.

The critics have a point — up to a point.

They're right that Palestinians are virtually wailing at "the wall." When I went to see its towering cement slabs in the West Bank town of Abu Dis last year, an Arab man approached me to unload his sadness. "It's no good," he said. "It's hard."

"Why do you think they built it?" I asked.

The man shook his head and repeated, "It's hard." After some silence, he added, "We are not two people. We are one."

"How do you explain that to suicide bombers?" I wondered aloud.

The man smiled. "No understand," he replied. "No English. Thank you. Goodbye."

Was it something I said? Maybe my impolite mention of Palestinian martyrs? Then again, how could I not mention them?

After all, this barrier, although built by Mr. Sharon, was birthed by "shaheeds," suicide bombers whom Palestinian leaders have glorified as martyrs. Qassam missiles can kill two or three people at a time. Suicide bombers lay waste to many more. Since the barrier went up, suicide attacks have plunged, which means innocent Arab lives have been spared along with Jewish ones. Does a concrete effort to save civilian lives justify the hardship posed by this structure? The humanitarian in me bristles, but ultimately answers yes.

That's not to deny or even diminish Arab pain. I had to twist myself like an amateur gymnast when I helped a Palestinian woman carry her grocery bags through a gap in the wall (such gaps, closely watched by Israeli soldiers, do exist). It made me wonder how much more difficult the obstacle course must be for people twice my age, who must travel to one of the wider official checkpoints nearby.

I appreciate that Israel's intent is not to keep Palestinians "in" so much as to keep suicide bombers "out." But in the minds of many Palestinians, Ariel Sharon never adequately acknowledged the humiliation felt by a 60-year-old Arab whose family has harvested the Holy Land for generations when she has to show her identity card to an 18-year-old Ethiopian immigrant in an Israeli Army uniform who's been in the country for eight months. In that context, fences and walls come off as cruelly gratuitous.

For all the closings, however, Israel is open enough to tolerate lawsuits by civil society groups who despise every mile of the barrier. Mr. Sharon himself agreed to reroute sections of it when the Israel High Court ruled in favor of the complainants. Where else in the Middle East can Arabs and Jews work together so visibly to contest, and change, state policies?

I reflected on this question as I observed an Israeli Army jeep patrol the gap in Abu Dis. The vehicle was crammed with soldiers who, in turn, observed me filming the anti-Israel graffiti scrawled by Western activists — "Scotland hates the blood-sucking Zionists!" I turned my video camera on the soldiers. Nobody ordered me to shut it off or show the tape. My Arab taxi driver stood by, unprotected by a diplomatic license plate or press banner.

Like all Muslims, I look forward to the day when neither the jeep nor the wall is in Abu Dis. So will we tell the self-appointed martyrs of Islam that the people — not just Arabs, but Arabs and Jews — "are one"? That before the barrier, there was the bomber? And that the barrier can be dismantled, but the bomber's victims are gone forever?

Young Muslims, especially those privileged with a good education, cannot walk away from these questions as my interlocutor in Abu Dis did. If we follow in his footsteps, we are only conspiring against ourselves. After all, once the election is over, we won't have Ariel Sharon to kick around anymore.

Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale, is the author of "The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith."

My Response

I was surprised that such an intelligent and articulate woman like Irshad Manji, could write such an ill-informed article. Perhaps she felt that by defending "Zionist provocations" she could tweak the nose of Islamic fanatics more forcefully - "the enemy of my enemy" and all that. But to choose the Wall of all things, was a poor choice indeed. Shouting out the words "terrorism" to justify counter-brutality, is an act of propaganda, not intelligent discourse. By stooping to this tactic, Manji denigrates her justifiable criticism of religious fanaticism.

First, her argument that the wall is directly related to the lowering of suicide bombing is speculative, at best. The wall is far from complete, and there are plenty of routes into Israel by prospective suicide bombers. Indeed, in a recent article in Ha'aretz, a report by Israel's security forces publicly declared that the wall had little, if anything to do with the drop in suicide bombing. Rather, the security forces argue that it is a result of a political decision by Hamas that they had more to gain by engaging in a tactical cease fire. The Hamas' recent political victory indicates they made the right choice.

More importantly, even if a wall did have security benefits, it wouldn't be this wall. A wall built along the Green Line was a viable alternative that wouldn't cause Palestinian hardship. As Manji herself says, this wall cuts through villages, splits families apart, imposes harsh and brutal collective punishment on innocent civilians and appropriates kilometers of land which are under international dispute. The International Court of Justice declared this Wall to be in violation of international law. Even the lone Court dissenter on that decision, wrote that he considered at least some of the effects of the wall to be a brutal violation of human rights,

Sharon didn't build this wall for security reasons. His goal was to force a political solution down the Palestinians' throat and to draw the boundaries of Israel the way he saw fit. Rather than increase security and protect the lives of Israeli citizens, the construction of this Wall only brings shame to the state of Israel and will continue the conflict.

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