A civil rights group is challenging Israel's highly effective airport security practices, charging that they amount to racial profiling that singles out Arabs for tougher treatment.
At a Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday, civil rights lawyers demanded an end to the policy. Such profiling is illegal in the US, where passengers must be singled out for security checks on a random basis.
But some terrorism experts say Israel's measures work precisely because they take ethnicity into account and warn that equality at the airport could cost lives.
Israel is considered a prime target for hijackers and other attackers because of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and extremist Islamic rejection of the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Despite that, there hasn't been a successful attack on an Israeli airliner in decades, and experts point to Israel's security procedures as a key factor.
Many of the measures are kept secret, but known precautions on Israeli airliners include armored luggage compartments, armed sky marshals and reinforced cockpits. But a key to preventing attacks, experts say, is the screening process on the ground, and that is the focus of the civil rights complaint.
Israeli Jews and Arabs get dramatically different treatment when boarding Israeli planes, as anyone who has ever stood in line at Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport has seen.
Hanna Swaid, an Israeli Arab, remembers being strip-searched by gruff security guards and having his luggage taken apart piece by piece 20 years ago before he flew from Israel to London, where he was a post-doctoral student.
Today Swaid is an Israeli Arab lawmaker, and he regularly receives complaints from Arab citizens about similar treatment. He said he knows of cases in which Arabs who serve in Israel's police or military have been singled out for extra scrutiny.
But the court appeal by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel are hobbled by the government's refusal to discuss any of the policy's details.
In court, the government's attorneys would not reveal the screening criteria or admit that ethnicity was one of them. They agreed to divulge the information only in a closed session that excluded everyone but the judges and themselves.
Swaid says he understands the need for security checks.
"It's in my interest and that of all the other travelers,'' he said.
But the screening should be done equally for both Arabs and Jews and be done politely, he said, rather than the humiliating treatment commonplace today.
"In what's known as the profiling process, any Arab is seen as a threat, and it's not a good feeling for an Arab to pass through the airport with this tag of being a suspect," he said.
Swaid said Israel should adopt a model closer to the US policy that bars ethnic profiling and instead relies on random checks and screening based on country of origin. He is now drafting legislation that would change the current policy.
But since the devastating attacks in the US on Sept. 11, 2001, it's largely been the other way around: The US has followed Israel's lead in many aspects of airport security, and a number of major US airports have imported Israeli experts and advisers.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
OPTIONS: Asked if one potential avenue to a third term was having J.D. Vance run for the top job and then pass the baton to him, Trump said: ‘That’s one,’ among others US President Donald Trump on Sunday that “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029. “There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News from Mar-a-Lago, his private club. He elaborated later to reporters on Air Force One from Florida to Washington that “I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term
RSS