After suffering a series of terrorist attacks — most recently the slaughter of more than three dozen mostly British tourists in the beach resort town of Sousse — the Tunisian government has had enough. Speaking on Tunisian state television on Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Habib Essid announced that Tunisia would build a 100-mile long wall to separate Tunisia from civil war-torn Libya, where the Islamic State is rapidly taking root. “With our army we are building a protective [wall] along [the border], especially in the area between Ras Jedir and Dehiba, which is approximately 168 kilometers long,” he said. He expects the wall will, along with other counterterrorism tactics, decrease terrorism now pushing Tunisia to the brink of collapse.

Kudos to the Tunisian government for doing what is necessary to defend its citizenry from terrorists and predators who migrated illegally into the country. Tunisia has every reason to believe such a wall would be effective. At the same time, however, its efforts show both international counter-terror hypocrisy and how American politics sacrifices security for posturing.

First the hypocrisy: The international community still condemns Israel’s security wall (which, in reality, is more of a security fence) even though its counterterrorism effectiveness is clear: Since its construction, terror attacks inside Israel have declined 90 percent. Despite their opposition to Israel’s security wall, walls now exist between India and Pakistan (and a new one is coming), Saudi Arabia and Yemen (and a new one is coming there as well), Morocco and Algeria, and Turkey and Syria. Kenya is building one along its border with Somalia. All of these, like Israel’s with the West Bank, cover disputed borders or are built entirely on disputed territory. The United Nations is perhaps the most hypocritical of them all, as it condemns Israel on one hand, and yet on the other built a buffer zone to separate Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus from independent Cyprus through which it restricts movement of those with origins in the opposite side. Simply put, the question of disputed borders has absolutely no bearing on the utility and legality of walls (the latter based on the precedent set by the United Nations).

Then, of course, the question for American policymakers: No country tolerates illegal immigration to the extent that the United States does. One of the ironies of the current influx of Mexicans and citizens of Latin American countries northward across the American border is how much more stringent Mexican laws are with regard to illegals inside Mexico compared to the United States. It’s intellectual nonsense to suggest that walls and border fences cannot be built or do not work, when so many countries in the world’s most insecure regions through harsh experience have determined the opposite too be true. Nor is it correct to draw moral equivalence to the Soviet-built Berlin Wall unless, of course, those who make this argument mean to suggest that Mexico is a totalitarian dictatorship like East Germany was.

The Tunisian premier is right, as is the Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Morocco, Kenya, and India. How tragic it is that political posturing prevents President Obama from understanding the same.