I got this yesterday from my girlfriend - a belated Valentines gift.

Yes, it's on the Palestinian side of the Separation Wall. No it's not photoshopped.

Of course, I'd rather she pitched in to buy the Palestinians an armoured bulldozer so they can knock the wall down, but I guess that wasn't really an option.

I remember a graffito on the Berlin Wall "Happy Birthday, Karen and the Wall. Just can't get over you." Once upon a time that wall went down and we thought we were done with walls as political "solutions." Alas, it seems we were a trifle naive.

On the Texas border....

Sadly so.

Belfast. Texas. Gaza. What was it about the utter failure of the Berlin Wall that makes us decide walls are a good idea?

It's not us though Jubal, it THEM. But we continue to enable them! Why???

You, some times all my knowledge, rational and reasoning goes out the window and I'm left answerless.

Happens to me all the time. Ultimately it's fear. For all our fancy technology and social systems, at bottom we're savannah-dwelling primates huddled around a flickering fire, staring into the darkness in palpitating terror and lining up behind any big male who looks like he can protect us, regardless of how brutal and/or insane he has demonstrated himself to be.

Then it's about time we found a better way. - Trouble is, too many are still living in the sort of fear you describe.
It's so frustrating that they seem unable to see that it's their fears which perpetuate the conditions that give rise to fearful circumstances (i.e. enemies). 'Nothing to fear but fear itself' and all that...