Take a bowl of Skittles. Three of them are poisoned. Now take a handful. Is this a good analogy of the Syrian refugee problem? Trump and his supporters seem to think so because apparently every boat-load of refugees has enough ISIS terrorists to commit acts of terror in their host countries.
Now take a boat-load of Jews escaping from the Holocaust. Is this a good analogy for a response?
I’ve written about this before, but we’re living in world where the masses of people only seem to understand things in absolutes. The only way to explain the way things work to the public either a direct nose-dive to Godwin’s Law or go to their primal instincts and give them an unhealthy dosage of xenophobia.
The answer is BOTH analogies suck, yet both sides seem to have clung on to either one of these as their go-to argument.
One analogy assumes we’re randomly taking “Skittles” without checking them first for potential danger and the other completely ignores that fact that indeed there are terrorists posing as refugees to make their way in to their host countries. There were no terrorists hiding among the emaciated Holocaust refugees.
The other day, Donald Trump has praised Israel for its use of “profiling” has a way to combat terror. He’s mentioned this a few times and displays a huge misunderstanding of what Israel does in order to prevent terror in the country.
The answer is not to treat every grandmother with a tube of toothpaste at the airport as a potential terrorist. The answer is also not to treat everyone who doesn’t pass a colour chart.
If you want to know how Israel’s main airport stays the safest in the world, despite the 50-70 security incidents it encounters a day. Read this MUST READ piece by a former head of security at Ben Gurion Airport.
The standards of America’s TSA has become the standard across the world. Did you know that despite Israel’s airport being the most threatened in the world, no one gives a flying crap if you bring along a bottle of contact solution on the plane with you, you don’t have to take off your shoes, and nobody’s taking body-scan pictures of your junk. Because in Israel the security threats are not broadened to each and every single person being a potential threat.
Everyone gets a passport interview, behavioral patterns are studied, recognized. Actual brains are used in our security and not a broad template forcing everyone to suffer equally.
This is how Israel “profiles”. But Trump would have you think we’re stopping every person in a kaffiyeh.
Skittles aren’t people. Holocaust refugees aren’t terrorists.
Use your brain.
