Security Profiling: A Perspective from Israel

Meredith Price

It begins with a barrage of questions: What is the purpose of your visit? How long have you been here? Do you speak Hebrew? What major holidays do you celebrate? Are you a citizen? Who did you stay with while you were here and what is the nature of your relationship? Once the questions are answered, the highly-trained ELAL agent at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel-Aviv makes a decision about where to send you and your luggage. Israeli citizens head straight to the check-in lines for the flight. I am always detained and questioned again and again by ELAL agents. My luggage is always opened and triple-checked for suspicious items and explosive powder. Baffled by the fact that a non-Jewish single woman would choose to live in Israel of her own volition, they immediately seek further explanations. I am a spy smuggling state secrets back to my country. I am in cohorts with a terrorist cell working within the occupied territories. Worse still, I am the unknowing carrier of explosives planted by terrorists taking advantage of my innocence.

Being a suspect is humiliating and frustrating. It makes me furious to know I am a potential enemy in their eyes. Why do they single me out for my cultural and religious differences? Because the reality is that my profile rings every bell in their entire alarm system. In the past, single women traveling alone have been both instigators and victims of terrorist activity. ELAL is not willing to take any chances in the present. I live in Israel with American citizenship, I speak tolerable Hebrew and I have an Israeli boyfriend. I am simultaneously the perfect spy and the perfect innocent of whom to take advantage. I pose too large of a threat not to be inspected. On my last trip home, I decided to experiment with my profile and see if it made any difference. I dressed as a traditional religious Jewish woman, wearing a long skirt and a modest t-shirt. Flanked by my Israeli boyfriend, I mentioned that I am a student at Bar-Ilan, a University known for its religious affiliation. Confused, the agent asked me what two major holidays I celebrate at home. “Chanukah and Christmas,” I answered. That only confused him further. It was the language that finally enlightened him. "So, did you speak or read any Hebrew before you came to Israel?" he asked. "No," I answered. That was the deciding factor. If I were Jewish, I would at least read some Hebrew before my arrival in Israel. So off my bags went for their second and third inspections. This time, I did notice that although I eventually failed inspection, the process took much longer, a confirmation of the fact that ELAL security agents are trained to profile on cultural, religious and gender grounds. They search for highly suspicious targets based upon statistical facts. No Israeli citizen has ever committed a terrorist attack on other Israeli citizens. No Jewish passenger has ever tried to carry explosives onto an airplane. This is the reality of the situation and they are trained to consider it.

In this country, I arrived in New York only to be whizzed through security while an elderly grandmother in front of me was practically strip-searched and a four-year-old little boy was frisked. I realize that things are rarely what they appear, but so far no elderly American citizens have committed any terrorist acts. No American children have decided to become suicide bombers. Of the recent terrorist atrocities carried out in this country, all of them were committed by Islamic extremists with the exception of Timothy McVeigh. What does this mean for airline security and ultimately border patrol security? It means that we can no longer uphold our fear of offending the innocent by abstaining from racial profiling. The targets of extra security measures should not be the unlikely passengers, but whichever group of contemporary terrorists represents a threat, whether that means Islamic, Jewish, Canadian or Martian, young or old, male or female. Our precious resources are wasted by checking people who simply do not fit the bill. And despite our best efforts to protect passengers, they will not be safe until the would-be terrorists can be completely stopped.

In a recent article by Annie Jacobsen, a writer for the Women’s Wall Street Journal, she describes her experience with what many believe to be a “dry run” by Islamic militants. Groups of extremists assemble the explosives once on board the plane, each one carrying a piece of the bomb. The FBI has issued a warning to the airlines, but so far it has failed to stop these activities. How is it possible that even after September 11 and an FBI notification, airlines are still not screening groups of young Arab Muslim men? According to Jacobsen, “Due to our rules against discrimination, it can't be done. During the 9/11 hearings last April, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman stated that …it was the policy (before 9/11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory.” (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14249) In an era of political correctness, racial profiling might sound racist. It is. I sympathize with the innocent passengers whose profile makes them a high risk and who must endure extra security. I too am held aside, questioned and searched for my differences. Rather than being offended, I feel safer and more secure knowing that no stone is left unturned when it comes to security. The innocent sometimes suffer because they are likely offenders, but this is something they should happily accept in exchange for their own safety.

This country has already been the target of terrorism, and by not racially profiling on flights, we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to yet another attack. The best airline security in the world is conducted by ELAL. What do they do differently? They single out passengers who are likely to commit violent acts or carry explosives, myself included, and they interrogate us until they are sure we are not carrying explosives and we do not intend to commit violent acts. Whether or not we board the plane offended is of little concern as long as we deplane alive. If being certain of their security measures provides better protection for everyone, being offended is worth being safe.