Lately there has been much discussion about Racial/Religious profiling. Some people like to make it sound a tad more politically correct, but, it is what it is. In light of the attempted attack on the Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, it sparked the conversation anew. There is even a bill that NYS Assemblyman Dov Hikind wants to introduce to the state assembly calling for racial profiling. This is not only wrong, but also insensitive! While we are facing a faceless enemy who will try to do anything to destroy us, we have to, in some way, rely on our security system. If someone buys a one way ticket to America and pays cash, that should ring a lot more bells than the fact that his name is Muhammed. How many times were swastikas painted on our shuls or schools? How will profiling help them if chalilah, Neo-Nazis try to do something on a plane, bus or train?? All recent terror attacks were on the radar screens of the Intelligence communities. They have failed us miserably and we have to hold them accountable. To try and introduce legislation like racial profiling is not only not smart, but we let the people that supposedly take care of our security off the hook. Pregnant ladies, donkeys, children, and ambulances were used to perpetrate terror attacks. Profiling isn’t going to help.
What we saw yesterday on flight # 3079 highlights this point. A young 17 year old boy became scarred for the rest of life. What did he do?? He exercised his first amendment right, and because a flight attendant religiously profiled, look at what happened? He will now have this hanging over his head for the rest of his life!! Even if we put this aside for a minute, think about the tremendous Chillul Hashem that this caused. Is it worth it? Where is the outrage? If we do practice religious profiling, these sorts of incidents will get out of hand and will create a huge Chillul Hashem; and I can’t even imagine the travel delays this will cause on a daily basis.
We should take a closer look at behavior profiling. El-Al in Israel is the first thing that comes to mind. In a recent interview with CNN, Isaac Yeffet, the former security chief, said this about airline security, “It’s mandatory that every passenger — I don’t care his religion or whatever he is — every passenger has to be interviewed by security people who are qualified and well-trained, and are being tested all year long. I trained my guys and educated them, that every flight, for them, is the first flight. That every passenger is the first passenger. The fact that you had [safe flights] yesterday and last month means nothing. We are looking for the one who is coming to blow up our aircraft. If you do not look at each passenger, something is wrong with your system.” If they had a journalist posing as a passenger, slip through with contraband, they would be immediately fired and not given a two week suspension and the right to sue for their job back! I remember flying in and out of Israel, while being approached by security agents peppering me with all sorts of random questions. They didn’t care which yeshiva I learned in or what Parsha it was that week. They were simply engaging me in conversation to try to get a read on me. I must say they are B”H pretty successful. I think it safe to say that El-AL and Israel are the most targeted by terrorist. They practice behavior profiling and not religious profiling. They are the ones that have a proven track record! It is very simple and easy to provide a crutch for our security system to rely on. But it is only short term. It won’t work long term. For the sake of our safety, liberty, and freedom, let’s look and try to adopt a proven method.
NOTE: The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of YWN.
(David Lobl – YWN / Can be reached at [email protected])
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13 Responses
Who told you this was ‘religous profiling’? I think it falls under ‘behavior profiling’!
“Even if we put this aside for a minute, think about the tremendous Chillul Hashem that this caused. Is it worth it? Where is the outrage? If we do practice religious profiling, these sorts of incidents will get out of hand and will create a huge Chillul Hashem; and I can’t even imagine the travel delays this will cause on a daily basis.” Chillul Hashem? exactly how is this a Chillul Hashem.
“A young 17 year old boy became scarred for the rest of life.”
On what basis are you making this statement? One of his relatives characterized him as being “internally strong” so I doubt that he is scared for the rest of his life.
However, when he starts looking for a Shidduch, he will certainly be high profile! All someone has to say about him is, “He is the fellow who was putting on tefillin on a plane that made an early landing, because the flight crew thought that he might have been a terrorist!” I think many young women hearing this will respond, “He must be interesting. I think I would like to meet him.”
Dr. Yitzchok Levine
I am literally laughing out loud over this.
I particularly love how the author wants to prove something from the El-Al newsclip by CNN. Because on the newsclip, the El-Al officials said very clearly that they use Racial Profiling. And Religious Profiling.
(which is undoubtedly the reason why CNN gave the clip such broad exposure – no doubt in hopes of creating some heat for them based on their matter-of-fact flouting of political correctness)
What does “profiling” mean?
It means statistically anticipating the possibility of certain behaviors based on sharing characteristics of those who have performed those behaviors in the past. It is quite logical. It is quite important in screening for those behaviors.
In order to screen people meaningfully for potential terrorist acts you have to ask what characteristics are generally shared by those that have committed these acts in the past.
It’s pretty simple.
Draw your own conclusions
He was marched off the plane at gunpoint and had a pack of dogs sniffing at him. That is enough to scar anyone!!
While you do have a good point, I sort of disagree with you.
I flew El-Al many times and a frequent visitor to Israel and I’ve witnessed with my own eyes how they do racial profiling. Anyone with an Islamic name. appearance or accent is pulling to the side for additional questioning or even stripping. However, I believe that this is only possible to do in Israel with a Jewish majority and one international airport. In the United States with a population of 300 million with thousands of ethnic groups and religions, a diverse nation with people of all kinds it is impossible. What happened this week was exactly this, an innocent Jewish boy took out what appeared to be a weird looking item for the flight attendant and mistakingly thought he was a terrorist. This is because she never saw something like that before and this can happen everyday with a security agent that never met a religious Jew (or any other religion for that matter). But I do agree that interviewing everyone and asking questions like ‘where are you going’, ‘why’ etc. can help (and they will be trained to detect liars and fraud). And for that reason we shouldn’t permit unionizing the TSA as the Obama appointee wanted to do and shouldn’t have agents that play pranks. We should have trained officials specifically for this and do their job.
But in essence the ‘Tefillin scare’ happened because of the low morale since the detroit attempted terror attack. Since then we’ve seen many stories and headlines of shutting down airports and landing planes because of frightened americans. After 9/11 President Bush made sure that the public had confidence in the security system and by doing that we felt safe. Obama has downplayed the significance of the war on terror and therewith gave the terrorists more confidence to attack us. We should fight them before they come to us, before they get to the airport. Intelligence should stop them at the drawing board and disable them from planning more harm.
This article is so ridiculous, that it proves itself wrong! When we condone religous profiling, this means suspect those with a Muslim connection, not a boy with tefilin! That was a dumb/mistaken/antisemitic action by a clueless stewardess, which could always happen. Even neo-nazis are not suspect of blowing up planes at this point. When this changes, they will be added to the “suspect profile” list. Donkeys and ambulances do not travel by plane, and women and children with a Muslim connection should be carefully screened as well.
The Israeli system supports behaviour profiling as well as religious profiling, simply because certain religious groups are much more suspect.
If symantics will allow the U.S. to use profiling, I’m all for it.
please can someone explain the chillul hashem. thanks.
yankele am haaretz
It was Israeli trained security guards who let the Dec 25th “fruitoftheloon” bomber get on the plane. Why did the Israelis fail?
Dear Sir,
I don’ think you know what a Chillul Hashem is.
Get it straight- DOING A MITZVAH IS NEVER A CHILLUL Hashem!!!!!
Had this young boy, (who obviously appeared Jewish with his Yarmulka and all) had engaged in silly behaviour, or had he done some ‘shtick’ to scare the passengers for nought, or had he smuggled his way into first class, THEN he would have made a chillul Hashem.
He happened to have practiced his religion in front of some idiotic, ignorant or perhaps anti semitic stewardess, and that sparked the drama!
The passengers had no complaints.
This boy was escorted off the plane for nothing. Frankly, I think HE was wronged and he might even have a claim against the airline Company.
thanks to # 11
in fact this boy made a kiddush hashem in his wearing tefillin & in his behavior throughout his ordeal. i envy him.
hello!! what does a jew putting on tefilin have to do with racial profiling. i dont mean to sound facetious but the fruitoftheloom terrorist wasnt a catholic nun or rabbi