As many pious, civil rights-minded people have noted, constructing fences to cage people in is “inhumane.” As some have editorialized, it is even “racist” and creates an “apartheid” state. No wonder Israel is so criticized. After all, what kind of country would construct high walls, ditches, and trenches and use sophisticated surveillance and armed border patrols to keep two people divided?

Oh, that’s right, we do. Specifically, we maintain a 2,000-mile fortress with Mexico. Israel’s 300-mile planned divide is puny in comparison. Neither is wrong. Both work.

As the Department of Justice reported in 1999, after we increased border security, alien arrests fell to 25-year lows near San Diego. Crime rates fell over 40 percent in border towns like Nogales, Ariz. As the DOJ’s Fact Sheet later bragged: “Today, Gatekeeper is the model for operations in other vulnerable border regions.”

And before all the high brow, Frappuccino-drinking, erudite reading critics cry foul, keep in mind that our enhanced, beefed-up divide is a Bill Clinton initiative. That’s right, “Operation Gatekeeper” was launched Oct. 1, 1994 to stem the tide of illegal aliens across our porous border.

Our wall only “protects” us from people who mainly seek passage for work and a better life. The people on the other side of our wall dream only to join us, not kill us. Yet we keep them out, or try.

Imagine what we would build — or do — if instead of trying to take a job, those on the other side were trying to take our lives. Imagine what we would do if people 10 miles away swore our destruction and “taught” their children with textbooks whose maps omit our country. Imagine what we would do if instead of suffering one terrorist attack since 2000, almost 20,000 were attempted against our people.

Viewed in this light, I only ask, what took Israel so long?

Simply stated, Israel’s “inhumane” wall is the effect — the cause is terrorism.

William Choslovsky

Chicago, Ill.