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Mexico Is Like Gaza

Says Texas governor, in Israel

by
Jesse Oxfeld
August 17, 2009

You may have learned over the weekend that Texas Gov. Rick Perry, now locked in a primary battle to run for reelection against the state’s senior senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, represents the ideological, hard-right conservative side in the ongoing battle for the Republican Party’s soul. (Apparently it has one.) What you may not know is that Perry—who has recently, among other things, mused about Texas’s secession from the union, over the stimulus bill—was in Israel last week, where he compared Mexico to the Gaza Strip and suggested that Texas could learn from Israel how to better manage its border. Indeed, after visiting the southern Israel town of Sderot, which has been hit by more than 6,000 Gaza-launched rockets since 2000, Perry argued that Texas’s situation might even be worse. “Kassam rockets have killed 28 Israelis over the last eight years,” he told the Jerusalem Post. “Well, 1,000 people have been killed in Juarez since the beginning of the year [in drug-related violence.”

Jesse Oxfeld, a former executive editor and publisher of Tablet Magazine, is a freelance theater critic. He was The New York Observer’s theater critic from 2009 to 2014.