I make frequent flights from Israel to my homeboys in Canada. Usually I’ll find a good cheap flight to and from my destination, but with one catch. Somewhere along the way, I have to land in the United States of America. At this point I will stare at the options given to me by Walla Travel and pick the more expensive no-USA option. Why? Because after 30 hours without changing my underwear, the last thing I want to do is put up with American airport rent-a-cops who think they’re making a difference.
Yesterday, Rafi Sela, former head of security of Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, or as we locals affectionately call it, “Nutbag” posted a very entertaining article on Cracked. Go here to check it out. The best was his anecdote on the laser pointer (#5).
Yes, many visitors coming into Israel face additional questioning, applying extra care to who comes in and out of the airport, but here are a couple things 99.9% of people travelling through Ben Gurion Airport never need to do:
- Throw out their water bottles, shampoo, contact lens cleaner
- Remove their shoes
- Remove their belts
- Have their private parts outlined by that cancer inducing thing they used in the movie “Contact” to communicate with aliens.
- Deal with military style verbal attack-laden communication with security personnel
- Many other completely unnecessary security “precautions” that do absolutely nothing.
For example, can someone explain to me why in most European airports, when making a connection, we need to go through a metal detector and throw out our water etc when we LEAVE the airplane? And then if we were foolish enough to pay 8 euros for a water bottle while in the terminal, we need to throw it out AGAIN when boarding your flight?
Although written on a comedy site, this article should be taken seriously by airports around the world. He speaks from the experience of protecting the most threatened airport in the world from 50-70 incidents a day that it is possible to screen people, without racial profiling. That Israel doesn’t dumb down security by applying the same rules to every single person that flows through the terminal. And “tfoo tfoo tfoo” Israel’s airport has been safe for many years.
So here’s the whole thing. Read it. This is one of MANY things the world can learn from Israel.
