Defending Air Travel from Bad Guys
"Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s--- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, 'We're not going to do this. You're going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport." That, in a nutshell is "Israelification" - a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.
It's an informative and interesting item. On the positive side it should be added that the last time an El Al plane was successfully attacked by a passenger was in 1968 - and the security layers at Ben Gurion really aren't very intrusive, you don't have to take off your shoes, no-one measures how much liquid deodorant you have in your bag and the duty-free area at the airport is chock-full of consumers who weren't held up on their way in. El Al doesn't forbid folks to go to the loo before landing (and if they try they really will have something to fear from the passengers).
On the negative side it ought to be added that while the system does work, it also severely aggravates innocent travelers who none-the-less do get caught in the net. Someone like myself will always sail through the six (or more) security layers, since I'm obviously not who they're looking for. A single Israeli Arab male is likely to be held up for a while, even though in 99.9% of the cases he'll be as innocuous as I. I've never heard of an Arab family with children being held up. Single non-Jewish Europeans will likely fall in the middle: they'll be questioned closely for a few minutes before being waved through. Another group who has notorious problems are the radical Israelis: the security types apparently have a shortlist of Israeli Jews they're wary of, and at times of tension some of these people will be interrogated until after their plane has taken off. Still, read the link in my previous post and you may begin to comprehend why an agency that is expected to maintain a 100% success rate for generations, with no slips ever, may not always bend over backwards to be lenient in the cases it thinks it needs not to be.
In the 1980s there was a case where the Israeli security types at Heathrow uncovered a plot where a Muslim man had packed a bomb into the suitcase of his pregnant English girl-friend. He intended to kill her, his unborn child, and all the rest of the passengers. She didn't know of the plot, of course, but the agents figured it out.
Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
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