The Coming Of Age Of The Blast Wall

(click for full size)
In this newswire shot -- just outside a bomb shelter in Sderot, the town in the Israeli north infamously known as a target for crude and occasionally lethal Palestinian rockets -- I think a unique thing happens, the foreground lending new weight and meaning to the background.  The presence of today's most famous war veteran, and the war-obsessed potential next President of the United States, begins to elevate the blast wall to a new level of recognition.

Given that McCain is in Israel, there might be a tendency to associate this background with the Israeli separation wall.
Can anyone argue, however, that these harsh, more portable and yet disarmingly grayish-white half-militaristic, half-political human dams have become the defining post-9/11 symbol for authoritarianism, culture war and the lost art of diplomacy?

Update: Below is Michael Kamber's eloquent image of a worker taking a moment to pray at the booming Kurdish blast wall factory near Kirkuk.  There are two more images accompanying a post at the NYT Baghdad Bureau blog describing the operations. 

Visually, the walled perimeter and the pit, combined with the heavy cloud cover, is almost haunting.  Regarding the content, the act of piety, the man kneeling on this deteriorated wall, the base of rubble, and the realized blast walls makes this seem all too much like a cycle.

McCain visits rocketed Israeli town (Reuters)
In Kurdistan, Brisk Business in Blast Walls (NYT)

(image: Uriel Sinai/Pool/Reuters. Sderot, Israel. March 19, 2008. via YahooNews. image 2: Michael Kamber for The New York Times.  March 2008.  baghdadbureau.blogs.nytimes.com)

Comments

[black dog barking]

Mr Frost famously observed that to some "good fences make good neighbors" within the larger context of "mending wall". Sen McCain's backdrop is not the result of neighbors cooperating as in Mr Frost's wall, it's a make-do solution, a band-aid treating a deep problem by managing the symptoms.

Visually, the backdrop wall is built from impossibly tall tombstones, packed toe to toe. Is there enough tombstone or is there ever enough? The senator's presence recalls another, a black and polished wall.

[futurebird]

A gray man with gray hair with a gray plan to keep us in a gray place.

This is soooo OLD, and colorless.

[Puka]

It looks like McCain is walking in front of the prototype of the Iraq War Memorial Wall.

[jtfromBC]

ref, " and occasionally lethal Palestinian rockets"

From June 28 2004 - March 20 2008
A list of notable and/or newsworthy Qassam rocket attacks. Thirteen people have been killed .. as a result of Qassam rocket fire at Israeli targets (Sderot and the Negev)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Qassam_rocket_attacks

"When one is attacked, one responds and retaliates. One has to respond to attacks" said McCain while his coach, "Lieberman stated that he was shocked to see the rockets' landing sites across town, comparing **Sderot's plight to what the US experienced following September 11.**
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3521259,00.html

He no doubt heard of the deaths and saw the collection of 4 years worth of rockets.
How might he have described the destruction in Gaza in just 1 year I wonder ?

The 2004 Israel-Gaza conflict refers to the series of battles between Palestinian militants and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Several qassam rocket attacks on Israel (Sderot and the Negev) forced the IDF to retaliate with airstrikes and land incursions. The fighting included two IDF operations, Operation Rainbow and Operation Days of Penitence. Arab deaths in the hundreds 1,500 homes destroyed, just for starters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel-Gaza_conflict