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From the article: Passengers line up for a security check at
Ben-Gurion International Airport (archive).
Photo by Nir Keidar
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Ezies Elias Shehadeh is an Israeli teacher who has been teaching for
19 years at a Jewish high school in Tirat Carmel. She recently accompanied her
students on a school trip to Eilat. But the fact that she is a Christian Arab
immediately aroused the suspicions of the airport security screeners, turning
her trip into a gantlet of humiliations.
Orly Vilnai reported in Haaretz that when Elias Shehadeh and her
students arrived at the airport, she was separated from them, then forced to
strip and stand in her underwear to undergo a “security check.” The checkers
even ran their hands through her hair and over her body. “When I complained,
they asked me: ‘Do you want to do this the easy way, or stay here?’ I went
through close to an hour of humiliation that way,” she related.
[…]
The Israel Airports Authority and the security agencies have a
plethora of excuses and justifications. They claim that all such procedures are
carried out in accordance with the law, in order “to make sure that the
passenger would not board the airplane with objects in her purse or on her
person that could endanger the security of the plane and the passengers.” But
passenger security can be ensured without unnecessary humiliations. Today,
there are plenty of technological devices that can be used in place of
humiliating procedures.
This incident once again proves that the religion of security drives
the authorities out of their senses. Nobody questions the importance of
security, especially in strategic locations like airports. But even there, not
everything should be sacrificed to the Moloch of security. The airports
authority must change its procedure for security checks fundamentally and
institute checks devoid of racism and humiliation.
