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Comment by tommoor | Hacker News Reader

They do this at Ben Gurion Airport too - make you turn on all your electronics, the Israeli airports are praised for their security procedures - right?

eg: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/23/airport-security_n_...

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Israeli here, flying to Europe couple of times/year. They don't make you turn on all electronics in Ben Gurion, that's just not true; asked me to boot up my laptop once or twice (probably because it can be used as a case for explosives due to its size), but not cellphone or an iPod.

Maybe they do check Muslims more thoroughly, that would make sense. I never took any interest in it, so cannot confirm it. (In the Army, I would totally pay much more attention to Arabs than to other civilians, but that's so painfully obvious, right?)

Whenever that model is considered nice I try to paint a different picture. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3283768#up_3285789

I've lived there for a year and travelled to Ben Gurion before and after that time. It's never pleasant and often downright insane.

It's interesting the different experiences people have.

I've found LLBG to be downright pleasant. I get there at most 90 minutes prior to an international flight, breeze through security in about 15-30 minutes depending on queues and often have time to spare to get a coffee and browse through the duty free shops at my leisure.

Full disclosure: I am an Israeli citizen, but I've had this experience even prior to becoming a citizen, when I was only a US citizen.

Regarding your last sentence: May I ask whether you

a) speak Hebrew

b) are jewish?

Both seems to help a lot (got some friends from DE and the US that had less trouble than I did and .. well, that might make a difference).

I'd certainly even agree that I'd prefer the treatment in IL to any body scanner/groping experience "elsewhere", but I don't like the experience one bit and get singled out more or less every time.

Israel openly practices racial profiling of passengers[0], something which is not legal in the US (which must instead practice it in secret)[1][2].

I would not want to use Israel's security procedures as a model for the US for a number of reasons - the unabashed racial profiling is one, but a more basic reason is the fact that Israel faces a very real and direct threat, whereas the TSA itself admits that there is no threat of terrorism in the US[3].

[0] From a Jewish publication: "Arab passengers, or non-Jews, for example, are routinely subjected to greater questioning than are Israeli Jews. " http://www.cjp.org/page.aspx?id=218685

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/us/racial-profiling-at-bos...

[2]Officially, this was ended a few months ago in Israel (http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2014-03-26/israel-ends-bla...) - it remains to be seen whether or not this has truly been ended in practice

[3] http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-...

They've also done a remarkably good job of pissing off a lot of their neighbors.

Historic background:

* they have done so since they were created by UN in 1948

* all neighbouring countries declared war on them then. As far as I know only one of them has since retracted their declaration of war.

Edit: Is it downvoted because of factual inaccuracies, tone, relevance or something else? Honest question, I have noe clue.

Probably factual inaccuracies, since Israel was not created by the UN (it was supposed to, but the Israelis declared Israel themselves because the UN was sitting on their hands, and took a larger area than UN had designated to Israel) and I don't recall Lebanon declaring war on Israel.

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