The AP ran a story yesterday that airport officials from various US cities traveled to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport to study Israel’s airline passenger screening system, which is world famous as being one of the world’s toughest and most effective.
According to the report, the visitors took note that the main difference between the US and Israel was that the Israeli security openly employs profiling – by singling out passengers for stricter screening based on their appearance or ethnicity. That is currently banned in the United States.
Since the Israeli security use profiling, the Israeli citizens move through security with minimal questioning, unless they are Israeli Arabs, who are often subjected to humiliating body searches and interrogation. The security process has triggered many complaints, but since Israeli security is the top priority, little has been done to ease the checks.
The Israelis believe this is one of the keys to their success, and the airport officials from the US could only speculate about how it would affect their work.
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16 Responses
If it really works which it appears that it does. Than go for it in the USA.
that’s objective.
the searches and interrogation of arabs by Israelis is “humiliating”
A waste of time. The American politicians are a pack of cowards so profiling will never be done. In addition, the Saudis, the leading financial sponsors of Islamic terrorism sponsor all kind of fronts such as CAIR and other organizations that profess to be peaceful and to only foster better understanding of Arab culture. But, it is only propaganda to intimidate the American politician.
nothing like a jewish brain!
Racial profiling is a “cardinal sin” in this country. There’s no way they’d bring that here, except, maybe, as it is now, in reverse: old ladies and families with 3 babies in tow, get stopped, while single businessmen of any nationality go right through.
Have any of you been in Americas airports lately? The security personal are all of middle eastern decent.(I mean Muslims & Arabs not Israelis.) So I don’t think there’s to good of a chance of this working.
The report is innaccurate. The Israelis do NOT do RACIAL profiling. They do PREDICTIVE profiling, which is based on BEHAVIOR, NOT RACE. El Al determined Richard Ried (the shoe bomber) was a threat, based on his BEHAVIOR, not based on his appearance. (At the time, he was doing surveillance of El Al, so they let him on the plane so they could monitor him.)
I took a 2 day course in the US in Predictive Profiling given by the company which sponsored the trip. It is a very effective technique for spotting would-be terrorists.
The problem in the US and elsewhere (other than Israel), is that we’re looking for the bomb, not the bomber. This type of course and trip is effective in that it is bringing people around to looking for the bomber. DHS and the FBI are adopting predictive profiling, which is NOT politically incorrect.
Shazam: Where in the piece above did you see the word RACIAL?
the americans are looking for yesterdays terrorist, the isrealis (bli ayin hora and with siyato dishmayo) are looking for tomorrows terrorist
Great reporting, AP.
thanks for making sure that the terrorists in this country should know what to look out for and be carefull of.
feivel
How do u know its humiliating?
It is proper gender investigations.
Joe Scmo:
“by singling out passengers for stricter screening based on their appearance or ethnicity”
appearance or ethnicity = racial.
classact:
while no system is perfect, it is nearly impossible to defeat predictive profiling, even if the terrorist knows it is being applied.
himmelstein:
The Americans are slowly coming around to the Israeli way of thinking.
Joe Scmo: what does …. ‘by singling out passengers for stricter screening based on their appearance or ethnicity’… mean?
if that’s not called RACIAL profiling, please explain to us what IS.
the bad news is that the radical left in Israel has recently been pushing cases to the Israeli supreme court callling for less profiling at Ben Gurion.
as Israel is currently a pretty mixed up country….these requests are actually being given some credence.
This will never happen in the US because of political correctness. I thought that Israel was tough but I was in Germany yesterday and every passenger had to go through a metal detector and was then checked manually (this was because most of us had some small change, or a belt buckle). I know that even in Israel if I have a decent amount of change I can get through. In Germany they made me empty every pocket of everything and they ran the wand over every part of my body with the screener had on the other side patting me down. And like I said above this wasn’t the only one that this happened to. It happened to every person that went through.
I just got back from EY & it was quite amusing to watch Americans take off their shoes in Ben Gurion airport only to be told by security to put them back on as it’s not neccesary. It is strictly an American TSA Mishigas. The Israelis definitely have it right in looking for, & profiling the BEHAVIOR of the PERSON (NOT ethnicity) vs. looking for the suspicious OBJECT.
Himmelstein @ 4:18 also sums it up well.
There is a famous ElAl story from many years ago where a pregnant Israeli woman raised suspicions during the screener’s questioning. Apparently an Israeli woman was married to an Arab, got pregnant, & her dear husband was sending her alone on a trip to meet his parents whom she hadn’t yet met. Turns out, unknown to her, her darling husband had packed a time bomb in her checked baggage. A perfect example of how well their system works. 1) Woman 2) Israeli 3) Pregnant, no ethnicity profiling here. It was the questioning that raised the warning flags. Do you honestly think this same woman would not have been allowed to board a Domestic US flight pre 9/11? Or, even today without Israeli style screening questions?