Dealing with Terror the Israeli Way
With air travel a mess after the Christmas day underwear-bomber incident that Northwest Airlines passengers thwarted, it’s time to re-think airport security.
Instead of the present system of patting down everyone, removing shoes (next, will passengers have to remove underwear?), one carry-on bag, no toilet visits in the last hour of flight, no blankets in the last hour, no using a laptop computer, and three-hour lineups for airport security, why not emulate Israeli airport security?
Israel is the world’s most threatened country.
It has more direct experience with terrorism than any country.
Yet the last time an Israeli airliner was attacked was in 1972 when 24 people were killed by Japanese Red Army terrorists. Since then, Israeli airport security has been such that no fatal incidents have occurred.
How do the Israelis do it – and why can’t we learn from them?
The “layers” of Israeli security at Ben Gurion airport (some 11 million passengers a year – small by U.S. standards) are more intense than in Canada or the U.S. They include uniformed and plain clothes security, nervous or odd-behaving individuals.
To Israelis, individuals are more important than baggage. We check baggage more than we do people – ever fearful of “racial profiling,” which is illegal.
The Israeli Supreme Court must deal with civil rights groups that argue security measures violate Israeli law by singling out Arabs or Muslims for tougher scrutiny. Terror experts point out that Israel’s security precautions are effective precisely because they factor in ethnicity, which our system does not.
Israel’s Association of Civil Rights accepts that screening is necessary but wants it done equally on all passengers. Terror expert Ariel Merari has been quoted saying “It’s foolishness not to use profiles when you know that most terrorists come from certain ethnic groups and certain age groups. A bomber on a plane is likely to be a Muslim and young, not an elderly Holocaust survivor.”
Saving lives justifies inconveniencing certain ethnic groups.
The U.S. has concentrated on devising technology to detect weapons, and tended to avoid profiling people likely to use these weapons. This is an ass-backwards approach, that eventually will have to change. It’s people who are dangerous, not weapons.
Over the years, the Israelis have absorbed the reality that the person is more important than his/her luggage, which explains why some passengers quickly pass through security. In North America we don’t have the extensive expertise of the Israelis who are ever on the alert at Ben Gurion, observing, noting, assessing – and chatting with “passengers of interest.”
Anyone flying in our country can hardly be reassured by security measures.
Our planes don’t even have the armored luggage compartments, reinforced cockpits, or armed sky marshals that Israeli airliners boast. Nor can frequent flyers be assured a fellow passenger isn’t another Muslim radical like Richard Reid the shoe-bomber, or Umar Abdulmutallab the would-be underwear bomber.
While racial profiling is illegal, “reasonable suspicion,” which cuts across ethnic differences, is acceptable in law for a trained security officer to question a passenger. After all, the 1972 terrorists who attacked Ben Gurion airport were Japanese, not Arabs.
“Profiling” should analyze behavior, as well as ethnicity.
Israel won’t reveal some security measures, but Arabs and Jews are treated differently when boarding Israeli planes. Low risk passengers may get cursory checks, but their hand baggage goes through a pressure chamber aimed at detonating explosive devices.
We could learn a lot from the Israelis.