Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The Israeli model of racism and discrimination receives cheers in Congress

"Representative John L. Mica, Republican of Florida and a critic of the Obama administration’s new screening methods, says the Transportation Security Administration should look at Israel, which uses early detection techniques at airports. An editorial in The Washington Times last week praised El Al, the Israeli national airline, as employing the “smarter approach” of using “sophisticated intelligence analysis which allows them to predict which travelers constitute a possible threat and which do not.”
As it turns out, the security methods employed by Israel’s famous Shin Bet security service at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv are frequently stricter and more intrusive than the full-body scanners and pat-downs American officials put into place Nov. 1, said security analysts and the travelers who regularly show up at Ben-Gurion four hours before their flights for screening.  At Ben-Gurion, some passengers have been searched so thoroughly that they have had to walk through the terminals, the gates and up to the doors of their planes with no handbags, wallets or even shoes."