Thanks for bringing up these points. I think these are common misconceptions among educated people. Mentioning them shows that you exercise a good amount of critical thinking.

1. Israeli security. While passengers wait in security lines, Israeli security officers ask questions to each individual about their journey. However, these checks only occur at Israeli airports. Board El Al from Amsterdam, and you'll find the same checks as other airlines to non-Israeli destinations. Another point: the "hinky" factor. Ethnic and religious profiling is practiced regularly and overtly in Israel [1]; U.S. law protects travelers from this method of profiling. I do agree that we should increase the amount of specialist investigators available to perform interviews while passengers are in line. I don't agree that Israel is a relevant model for the U.S., which is full of small airports and is less politically centralized. I compare this to the one major airport in Israel (yes there are 5 int'l airports but Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv gets the lion's share of flights).

2. TSA's uselessness. TSA is an effective deterrent. It increases the risk of getting caught to a nonzero factor. The amount of airplane hijackings has reduced to zero in the United States since the creation of the TSA. Hijackings in other countries' airspace still occurs. Is TSA doing a horrible job? Objectively yes. Is it useless? No.

3. Airplanes as enticing targets. Airplane crashes target middle and upper class people who politicians care about. The Malaysian Airlines crashes dominated airwaves for weeks. Airplane crashes are sensational and can spur politicians into a course of action (overreaction) favorable to terrorists' agendas. A McDonald's poisoning is difficult to attribute to malice. ISIL might have claimed responsibility for the Chipotle e. coli outbreak, but would that have been credible?

4. Schneier. Mr. Schneier is a brilliant cryptographer who does not have credible expertise outside that realm. His blog is popular and he is vocal about computer security. However, several outstanding security professionals (Thomas Ptacek, on this site) have noted that many of his statements and predictions regarding computer security are plain wrong, and belie a lack of understanding of software vulnerability analysis. That said, his opinion of the TSA and Israeli security is as valid as any other layperson social commentator; he just doesn't have any expertise in the domain.

[1] http://www.haaretz.com/in-israel-racial-profiling-doesn-t-wa...