Oh, no way this could go wrong. Civil rights groups in Israel are trying to stop Israeli security, which has successfully stopped all hijacking of Israeli planes, from profiling potential hijackers/bombers.
Airline security faced a legal challenge yesterday from a civil rights group charging that its practice of ethnic profiling is racist because it singles out Arabs for tougher treatment.
At a Supreme Court hearing, civil rights lawyers demanded an end to the policy, which they say violates Israeli law. Such profiling is illegal in the U.S., where passengers must be singled out for security checks on a random basis.
And the whining:
[…] 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’s ever stood in line at 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.
Let’s stop for a moment and think back all of two weeks. Who, exactly, was the perpetrator of the largest massacre of Jews in the last several years? That’s right. An Israeli Arab. So excuse me if I don’t shed any tears over the different treatment of Arabs and Jews boarding Israeli planes.
I think, however, the lawsuit will fail. In Israel, security trumps political correctness.
“A bomber on a plane is likely to be Muslim and young, not an elderly Holocaust survivor. We’re talking about preventing a lot of casualties, and that justifies inconveniencing a certain ethnic group.”
Uh-huh. You’d think the U.S. would have figured that out by now.
The great thing about Israeli airline security is that they actually use their brains. Most of the time when they ask questions, they’re watching the reaction as much as or more than they’re listening to the answer. For example, people who are dressed frum, they’ll often ask “What’s this week’s Parsha?” Now, this is probably well known enough that any terrorist who disguised himself as a Hasid would know to memorize the information, but there’s a different look on your face when you’re trying to recall a fact you’ve memorized, rather than relate something that’s a part of your daily life.
DIdn’t we just have an Israeli Arab murder 8 students at a Yeshiva?
Yeah, but we all know that female American Presbyterians are just as dangerous.
At least that’s what CNN’s commentators keep on insisting.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 03/21/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.