why you don't want american airport security to be more like israeli airport security

The TSA has been in the news a bit lately, what with their new naked-body-scan-or-groping policy, implemented just in time to be tested by on the bajillion people traveling over the holiday season.  The conspiracy-inclined might infer that the timing had little to do with actual threats of holiday-themed terrorism and everything to do with the fact that people are less likely to stick up for their civil liberties when airports are crowded and travelers are preoccupied with holiday stresses.

Then along comes this guy, an anonymous pilot who seems genuinely concerned about airline security, who points out some glaring and obvious security flaws at SFO.  Of course for doing this he had to be punished by the TSA.  But the real reason he's getting a security-state smackdown is not for posting potentially exploitable information on Youtube, but for reminding us that US airport security is a ludicrous dog-and-pony show.

Airport security in the US is mostly for show, and a little bit for profit.  Its primary purpose is to remind everyone flying on a plane to be scared of Terrorism, while making a big performance of examining your liquids and genitals, to promote the idea that the government is Doing Something about it.  Its secondary purpose is to serve as one of the leading edges of the security state, a mass social experiment in conformity, where Americans can practice quietly and uncomplainingly submitting to authority figures who do things like frisk small children.  And of course, the security industry is big big money for some people, like the companies who make those naked body scanners, who, you can bet, have friends and lobbyists in Washington.

In discussion of airport security and Doing Something About Terrorism, it's never too long before someone says the word "Israel."  Israelis, we are told, enjoy effective and efficient airport security despite the fact that their country is menaced by Terrorists all the time.  We should be doing it more like them.  Having recently flown out of Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, perhaps I can give you a picture of what Israeli security looks like up close.

There is a widely-believed myth that since Israel has spent more than sixty years waging a counterinsurgency campaign against the indigenous people they have dispossessed and held under military rule to create their country, Israelis must be really smart when it comes to anything involving security.  This is not actually true--although plenty of former Israeli soldiers and secret police officers have built profitable careers as "security experts" by claiming it is.  Israeli security personnel aren't smarter.  They're just more brazen and less apologetic about what they're doing.

The system of racial profiling at Ben Gurion Airport is so naked it makes the US's "random checks" look sophisticated and subtle by comparison.  Of the three people of color arriving with our Interfaith Peace-Builders delegation, all were tagged by security.  One was intercepted by a plainclothes officer as we left the jetway; the other two were flagged for interrogation at passport control, along with one white dude who made the mistake of visiting the Terrorist Nation of Sudan to work on a documentary film project.

Leaving the airport, there's a different routine (maybe to keep people on their toes?) that involves a number-based profiling system.  After a few initial questions at a security checkpoint outside the main terminal building, a profiler (yes, they call themselves that) slaps a little sticker on your passport and luggage, with a number from 1 to 6, which determines how much shit you have to go through before boarding your plane.  1 is safe (Israeli, Jewish, white); 6 is ZOMG TERRORIST (person of color; anyone looking remotely like they could be Arab or Muslim; "suspicious" internationals).  Yes, it's really that obvious.  No, I'm not making this up.

When I departed Israel via Ben Gurion Airport in August, I got a 5 at security on sight, just based on the fact that I was a young international traveling alone, without an obviously Jewish surname.  Once I got inside the terminal, the woman at the second security checkpoint ran my passport through their computers, at which point (I presume) some kind of security flag popped up, probably owing to the fact that I had been interrogated by Israeli security at a different border crossing a few days prior.  After running my name, Profiler #2 promptly upgraded me to a 6, the highest security threat.  I resigned myself to a strip-search and possibly more questioning.  As it turned out, I got away with "only" a closed-door pat-down with clothes on and a thorough bag search.  The security personnel I interacted with at the airport were not hostile and even seemed somewhat apologetic for the delay.  But far more aggressive treatment by Israeli security is commonplace if you're Palestinian, Arab or Muslim.  If anything, this just reveals the racism of the whole system.

Of course, this system is just as dumb as any other system of profiling you can come up with, because it relies on over-generalizations of "suspicious" behavior and persons--definitions which are of course written by the state based on its own prejudices.  This creates a circular logic as perfect as that found in any dictatorship.  You are suspicious because we define you as such.  I'd argue that the US has already gone pretty far down the road of Israelification, adopting practices of racial profiling that Israel has been deploying with impunity for decades.  In Israel we can see the grotesque spectacle of this system in its fully developed form.  It should be a cautionary tale, not an example to emulate.