UPDATE
Following the publication and distribution of this communique, The Guardian has amended the article, which now correctly refers to “electronic fencing” rather than “electrified fencing.”
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It appears that Israel isn’t the only state preventing terror through the construction of a physical barrier. The Guardian reports that Kenya is to build a wall on the Somali border to keep out al-Shabaab terrorists.
The report also makes comparisons with Israel’s security barrier:
Kenya is going to build a wall. Not just any wall, but a “separation barrier”, to employ the euphemism coined by Israel to describe the towering, snaking structure that now separates it from Palestine’s West Bank.
Not a huge surprise that The Guardian has unilaterally given a non-existent Palestinian state ownership over the West Bank. However, the report also contains a glaring factual error:
Most famous, however, is Israel’s separation barrier – nearly 500 miles long, it alternates between rows of barbed wire and electrified fencing and eight-metre high concrete walls.
“Electrified fencing” implies that anyone who touches the structure will be electrocuted, perhaps even fatally. The reality, however, is that the barrier is electronic, meaning that anyone who touches or interferes with it will trigger an alert to a central monitor that can send IDF forces to investigate.
Israel’s security barrier is a non-lethal means of preventing terrorism.
A request for a correction has been sent to The Guardian.
