Sunday,
\nJanuary 3, 2010, 11pm – I’m sitting at Newark airport waiting for my
\nentire family – my wife and nine children – to disembark from an
\naircraft that landed hours ago. They arrived from Chicago where we all
\nattended a beautiful family wedding. The kids have school tomorrow and
\nwould have had a mostly decent night of sleep. Except that some guy
\nwandered backward through an exit and into the secure area of the
\nContinental Airlines terminal, sending the entire airport into
\nlockdown. (Sometimes I wonder if G-d is playing a trick on me by making
\nme the Forrest Gump of current events. How did I ever get into this
\nstory?). My wife is calling me every ten minutes with an update that
\ndoesn’t exist. The pilot will only say that they are delayed
\nindefinitely. The entire terminal is being cleared out. All the
\ndeparting planes are being unloaded and the passengers are having to go
\nthrough security all over again. And all because one guy walked
\nbackward through an exit. They’ve scoured the airport and they can’t
\nfind him.<\/p>\n
How embarrassing.<\/p>\n
\nThis is the level of farce that passes for airport security here in
\nthe United States. Just over a week ago a Nigerian man sewed explosives
\ninto his skivvies and would have blown up hundreds of innocents except
\nthat his underwear thankfully failed to ignite. The fact that his
\nsuper-credible banker Dad had gone to the American Embassy to warn that
\nhis son was an extremist nut – just think of what it takes to blow up
\nthat part of your anatomy – wasn’t enough to get his visa revoked or
\nget his name on a no-fly list. And here we are, just a few days later,
\nand one of New York’s three premiere airports is shut down because a
\nman walked straight through a secure exit without being stopped. Nice
\nto know we’re being protected by the keystone cops.<\/p>\n
Let’s state the obvious. They can install the most sophisticated
\nmachinery in every American airport. They can X-Ray our boxers, they
\ncan check for explosives in every bodily orifice. We’re still not going
\nto be safe. It’s not only people’s bodies you’re supposed to check but
\ntheir backgrounds, their nationalities, and especially their eyes.
\nIsrael has the most secure airport in the world. I cannot imagine for a
\nmoment that a man with nitroglycerine in his undies would ever have
\nmade it on a plane. And why? Because they would have asked him some
\nsimple and direct questions with the purpose of studying his reaction
\nas he responded. You’re from Nigeria. You’re going to the US. Why? How
\nlong are you staying? What is your purpose? And where is your return
\nticket? All along they would be scrutinizing not his bodily bulges but
\nhis twitches. What Israel excels at is not even ethnic profiling so
\nmuch as psychological profiling.<\/p>\n
But how can we ever hope to study people’s suspicious behavior when
\nthe TSA agents are wasting their precious time on the most innocent of
\npassengers who don’t fit any kind of terrorist profile whatsoever. On
\nthe way to Chicago last week my eleven-year-old daughter’s backpack
\nsomehow merited secondary screening. For ten minutes a TSA agent
\nperformed about seven explosive swab tests on every knickknack a young
\ngirl might carry on a plane. Her reading books seemed to be of
\nparticular interest. I could only roll my eyes and pray for patience.
\nWhile this went on approximately fifty adults passed through without
\nany secondary screening because my eleven year old occupied the rapt
\nattention of the TSA. Could this have gotten any more ridiculous?<\/p>\n
The answer, unfortunately, is yes. I travel often. They degree of
\nsilliness I have witnessed is staggering. I have seen seventy-year-old
\ngrandmas with hip replacements being combed by two TSA agents (who
\nknows what those surgeons implanted there!) I once saw an octogenarian
\nman with a cane forced to remove his neck brace as it was repeatedly
\nswabbed for explosives.<\/p>\n
Good you say. Terrorists come in many forms. And if we principally
\nlook out for young men from known terrorist countries to carry
\nexplosives on planes, the terrorists will quickly adapt and activate
\ntheir sleeper-agent Edith from Valley View Retirement Home to detonate
\nthe nitroglycerine hidden in her dentures. I concede that indeed there
\nhave been unsuspecting young women who have been given bombs by their
\nterrorists boyfriends to bring on planes, which is why we have to
\nabsolutely check everyone. But airport security is never going to be
\nomniscient. And you need to focus your energy on those who pose the
\ngreatest threat. Nationality is not any real predictor of terrorists.
\nRichard Reid was a Briton who was half-Jamaican. Umar Farouk
\nAbdulmutallab is not from the Middle East but Nigeria. Timothy McVeigh
\nwas an American. But these and nearly every other terrorist bomber was
\na male of a certain age group. None were eleven-year-olds with
\nschoolwork stuffed in their backpacks who happened to be travelling
\nwith eight other siblings. Would it not therefore make sense to
\nconcentrate on those who most fit the terrorist profile while letting
\nup on the three-year-olds with their toy tractors?<\/p>\n
Here is where Israel has a unique opening. A country that routinely
\ngets terrible press because of how effectively its enemies portray it
\nas repressive can come to the West’s rescue with sound advice on how to
\nsecure airport and air travel. In the process the West will gain a
\ngreater understanding of the level of threat Israel is up against. I’m
\nsurprised that Prime Minister Netanyahu has not already given a major
\naddress sympathizing with the American people for the intended attack
\non Christmas Day and offering Israel’s assistance in securing American
\nair travel. Israel, after all, often dispatches humanitarian rescue
\nteams to various parts of the world after an earthquake or a Tsunami.
\nWhy not immediately dispatch a high-level security team to Washington,
\nDC, to advise an increasingly hapless Homeland Security Administration
\nabout the right way to deploy limited resources in securing a vast air
\nnetwork. I realize that Israel is a tiny country and has to secure only
\none major international airport. But then again, unlike the United
\nStates it lives surrounded by terrorists yet has an exemplary record in
\nprotecting air travel.<\/p>\n
Well, here I am at the end of my column and my family is still stuck
\non the plane. Aside from the subject matter this unfortunate nuisance
\nhas provided for this column, this has been a real hindrance to nine
\nchildren who have school tomorrow. I can only hope that by the time
\nnext week’s column is due I’m not still here waiting for the TSA to
\nfind a man who, in this age of extreme terror, simply waltzed into one
\nof America’s most guarded airports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 11pm – I’m sitting at Newark airport waiting for my entire family – my wife and nine children – to disembark from an aircraft that landed hours ago. They arrived from Chicago where we all attended a beautiful family wedding. The kids have school tomorrow and would have had a mostly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":203,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"yoast_head":"\n