Is profiling productive, let's see here shall we?
The safest airline in the world, it is widely agreed, is El Al, Israel’s national carrier. The safest airport is Ben Gurion International, in Tel Aviv. No El Al plane has been attacked by terrorists in more than three decades, and no flight leaving Ben Gurion has ever been hijacked. What are the Israelis doing that we aren’t?
The Israelis understand that it is the people who are threats, not the objects that they are carrying.
Airports in the United States and many other countries are built around convenience while in Israel it’s all about security. We get our boarding passes online and check our baggage at the curb.
At T.S.A. checkpoints, youths stare at screens, doing the best they can to not look at nor talk to us.
Contrast this with an Israeli airport where you stay with your bags until your security check is complete, and airline and highly trained security personnel talk to you and watch you constantly. You’re not allowed to approach the ticket counter until you are cleared by the security system, while in the United States, security is an apparent afterthought.
Israeli airport security, much of it invisible to the untrained eye, begins before passengers even enter the terminal. Officials are constantly monitoring passengers’ behavior, alert to clues that may hint at danger.
Profilers make a point of interviewing travelers, sometimes at length, and oftentimes asking questions that don’t seem to make any sense at all — and that’s the idea. The point of the long questioning is to find inconsistencies in a terrorist’s cover story, or to agitate him into a panic. If you are lying or distracted by something, the profilers will soon figure that out, and you will be marked as a possible threat and action will be taken.
While the T.S.A. is busy confiscating cosmetics, small pocket knives and water bottles, the Israelis understand that it is the people who are threats, not the objects that they are carrying. To a much greater degree than in the United States, security at El Al depends on intelligence and intuition rather then performing rote actions.
In my opinion, the T.S.A. should be hiring ex-Mossad operatives as advisers and college-educated screeners with degrees in security or psychology. Is there a 100 percent guarantee of safety? No there is not. But in three decades, not one El Al plane has been attacked from within, and those are pretty good odds.
I was on a cruise not long ago in Israel where some baggage was not claimed after three requests over the public address system. The result? The Mossad blew the luggage up!
Me thinks the proof is in the pudding...