Walls

“Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came a-tumbling down.” To Blacks in the antebellum American South, the song is said to have celebrated hope the walls of slavery would crumble. To Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, the fall of Jericho is part of the ancient tale of their ancestors’ return to the Promised Land.

One group’s protective enclosure is another group’s prison. Who over age fifty or sixty doesn’t remember watching footage of East Germans in 1989 tearing down the Berlin Wall, free at last to escape its confines? My memory of visiting that wall much earlier features a dead zone on both sides, with graffiti and decrepit buildings along the west side and pristine, empty streets to the east.

By contrast, medieval city and castle walls were built to protect the people and buildings inside. Many have crumbled long since. Heavy cannons, aircraft, and bombs made their military use obsolete.

The Great Wall of China, the Long Walls of Athens, the Great Zimbabwe, and hundreds of lesser walls are vital to world history. That’s unlikely to end soon. A partially finished wall along the United States border with Mexico aims to stem the flow of dangerous weapons, drugs, and people into the U.S. Migrants trapped south of the wall may return to the political or gang violence they were trying to escape. In 2021, Israel completed construction of a “smart fence” around Gaza equipped with sensors, cameras, and remote weapon systems, to shield southern Israelis from terrorism. People trapped inside Gaza are dying from bombs and starvation.
Protection or prison? It depends on your point of view.

Image: Raphael and workshop, The Fall of Jericho, 1518. Fresco, Loggia of Pope Leo X, Pontifical Palace, Vatican.