Ann Coulter Invites Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Talk About Why Border Walls Work

Colin Fredericson
By Colin Fredericson
January 10, 2019Politics
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Ann Coulter Invites Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Talk About Why Border Walls Work
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech before lighting a menorah during the start of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, in Ramat Gan, Israel on Dec. 2, 2018. (Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

Writer and political commentator Ann Coulter said Israel’s prime minister should come to give a speech in the United States about why a border wall works.

“As a gesture of friendship, you should come to the U.S. and give a speech to Congress about your wall!” she tweeted on Jan. 9.

The tweet is in response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tweet from Jan. 2017:

“President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea”

According to Twiplomacy, it’s his most retweeted tweet ever.

Ann Coulter’s comment came less than a day after President Trump gave an Oval Office speech on why a border wall is necessary. Due to the border wall issue, the federal government is in Day 20 of a partial government shutdown.

President Trump is trying to control the massive problem of illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and human trafficking taking place in areas of the U.S. border with Mexico that still have no effective barrier. He wants Congress to agree on funding for a border wall.

The Media Line explored the effectiveness of Israel’s many areas of border walls and those in areas most comparable to the U.S. southern border.

The article indicates Israel’s border with Egypt is the one most similar to the U.S. southern border.

Yehuda Ben Meir, head of the National Security and Public Opinion Project at the Institute for National Security Studies, told The Media Line that it “was erected to prevent illegal [African] migrants from crossing over a once-porous border into Israel.”

“It was constructed in cooperation with Cairo and includes some military crossing points so that the Israeli and Egyptian armies can collaborate when needed,” he added.

The barrier was completed in 2013. Before its completion, 9,500 Africans crossed illegally into Israel in the first half of 2012. That number dropped to less than three dozen in the first half of 2013, before dropping to 11 in 2016, and zero in 2017. The barrier also greatly reduced contraband smuggling, according to The Media Line.

Another border barrier mentioned in the article is the one in the West Bank. Before it was built, 70 suicide bombings orchestrated from the West Bank killed almost 300 Israelis during the Second Intifada, which took place between 2000 and 2003. After a significant portion of the barrier was completed, only 12 suicide bombing attacks occurred between Aug. 2003 and the end of 2006.

The border barriers are considered essential to Israel’s security. Israel is still technically at war with Lebanon and Syria in the north. Israel also deals with issues caused by the terrorist group Hamas, active on the Gaza Strip, and terrorist attacks from areas of the West Bank with no barrier.

“While these have their weaknesses and holes, they have proven themselves as effective measures against these threats,” Ben Meir told The Media Line.