Obama criticized ‘wall’ once in Jerusalem– and ten times in Berlin

There is an actual wall, sometimes nearly 26 feet high, going through Palestine and East Jerusalem. In his speech in Jerusalem “to the people of Israel” 3 months ago, President Obama referred to that wall once, and elliptically, when urging the Israelis to make peace with Palestinians:

Given the frustration in the international community about this conflict, Israel needs to reverse an undertow of isolation.  And given the march of technology, the only way to truly protect the Israeli people over the long term is through the absence of war.  Because no wall is high enough and no Iron Dome is strong enough or perfect enough to stop every enemy that is intent on doing so from inflicting harm.  (Applause.)

The Berlin wall fell 24 years ago. At Brandenburg Gate yesterday, President Obama repeatedly spoke of the Berlin wall as a blockade against democracy and history itself. Here are all the references, with some of his additional statements.

But the fact that we can stand here today, along the fault line where a city was divided, speaks to an eternal truth:  No wall can stand against the yearning of justice, the yearnings for freedom, the yearnings for peace that burns in the human heart.  (Applause.)…

Today, 60 years after they rose up against oppression, we remember the East German heroes of June 17th.  When the wall finally came down, it was their dreams that were fulfilled.  Their strength and their passion, their enduring example remind us that for all the power of militaries, for all the authority of governments, it is citizens who choose whether to be defined by a wall, or whether to tear it down…

And this is what was at stake here in Berlin all those years.  And because courageous crowds climbed atop that wall, because corrupt dictatorships gave way to new democracies, because millions across this continent now breathe the fresh air of freedom, we can say, here in Berlin, here in Europe — our values won.  Openness won.  Tolerance won.  And freedom won here in Berlin.  (Applause.)…

And yet, more than two decades after that triumph, we must acknowledge that there can, at times, be a complacency among our Western democracies.  Today, people often come together in places like this to remember history — not to make it.  After all, we face no concrete walls, no barbed wire.  There are no tanks poised across a border…

And as long as walls exist in our hearts to separate us from those who don’t look like us, or think like us, or worship as we do, then we’re going to have to work harder, together, to bring those walls of division down. Peace with justice means free enterprise that unleashes the talents and creativity that reside in each of us; in other models, direct economic growth from the top down or relies solely on the resources extracted from the earth.  But we believe that real prosperity comes from our most precious resource — our people. ..

But we must accept the challenge that all of us in democratic governments face:  to listen to the voices who disagree with us; to have an open debate about how we use our powers and how we must constrain them; and to always remember that government exists to serve the power of the individual, and not the other way around.  That’s what makes us who we are, and that’s what makes us different from those on the other side of the wall. ..

[H]ere they will find the people who emerged from the ruins of war to reap the blessings of peace; from the pain of division to the joy of reunification.  And here, they will recall how people trapped behind a wall braved bullets, and jumped barbed wire, and dashed across minefields, and dug through tunnels, and leapt from buildings, and swam across the Spree to claim their most basic right of freedom…

The wall belongs to history.  But we have history to make as well.  And the heroes that came before us now call to us to live up to those highest ideals —

It’s always easy to take a stand later.

We have history to make as well.

Thanks to Annie Robbins.