Arabs in the airport

As an Arab in Israel, I got used to lengthy airport security checks, but my last visit to the Ben-Gorion airport was even more daunting than usual; this time a security guard stopped me at the entrance to the airport, where I went through a security questioning, right there on the entrance, while everybody else was let through; they only stopped me and one other guy who also looked Arabic. The questioning took around 20 minutes, in which I was asked questions about where I am going and the purpose of my trip, the same set of questions was repeating to me at least five more times, by five different people, at different stages of the security check. At some point I put my hand in my pocket and I was to in a threatening tone to take it out. Finally someone arrived to accompany me into the airport, and from that point at no moment I was allowed to wonder around alone in the airport. What followed were scrupulous checks of every item in my baggage and a body check, where I was asked to put my pants down, and as I already mentioned, an endless repetition of the same questions.

There is always this dilemma that I go through when I am in the airport, how do I respond to this annoying and sometimes humiliating treatment, do I make stand and risk not being allowed to board the plane, or do I just tolerate it, containing that anger seething under my skin. I did try to make a stand a few times in the past, but now I just tell myself that I have a vacation to enjoy or a business to attend to, and allowing this unpleasant experience to get to me, to ruin my mode, is not worth it; I just try to be calm and cooperate with the security checks, but sometimes that anger is too much, and I can't help myself scowl at those people, or throw some sarcastic remark.

It seems that the initial profiling they do is based on looks, anybody who looks Arabic gets the special treatment from the start, I have a friend who is half Arabic; Arabic father, Polish mother. Like his father he also found himself a Polish girlfriend, they live in Holland at the moment, but last year they dropped by for a visit, as neither of them looks typical Arabic (if there is such thing), and my friend had his Polish name used in his Israeli passport (he was born in Poland). They were put through the express lane, and they were about to be released, when they were asked a question over an item they had, they casually answered that they had bought it in Tamra; an Arabic town. The security personal found the answer strange, and he asked what where they doing in Tamra, and when they told that where they stayed their during the trip, the whole attitude to them completely changed, and people started scurrying around in panic as if they had just discovered a bomb, needles to say they were made to go through a lengthy security check.

It amuses me when people think they can recognize an Arab by looks or accent, I have seen many Arabs, who completely fooled me, neither their external appearance nor their accent gave any hint of their 'Arabness', only when they spoke to me in fluent Arabic did I realize the fact. This should come to no surprise to anyone, Arabs are a diverse ethnic group with diverse external appearances, you can find African looking Arabs, or blonds with blue eyes, and anything in between.

Flying back to Israel no more pleasant, I had my flight with El-Al; after being stuck in Bolivia for three weeks, because Bolivia airline company went bankrupt, I took what ever flight back to Israel I could get, without giving much though to what company I went back with. I arrived three hours before my flight, but that did not help me; I went through another scrupulous security check, by El-Al security personal this time, and I was very patient and understanding during the whole ordeal, alas that did not help me much; I was not allowed to go in the flight. I was told that I would be transferred to an air France flight instead, which would leave 12 hours later. That was when my patience ended, and after a combination of strong protestations and pleading, they agreed to let me go on an earlier El-Al flight, albeit without my laptop and some other items in my luggage, which would be sent separately in another flight, and no amount of arguing or pleading made them change their minds. I went on the following flight, and arrived 10 hours later than planned, and my laptop arrived the day after, but some other items that were taken out of my luggage did not arrive: My Nike tennis shoes, a bottle of wine I brought with me from Bolivia, my digital camera and some other electronic gadgets. At the moment El-Al does not know what happened to my missing items!

I don't take airport security checks lightly, I am a person who flies often, and that last thing I want to is for a plane exploding in mid air, or getting hijacked while I am on board, those thwarted bombing attempts in London a few month ago, send chilling waves through my body, I could have been on one of those planes; I flew before through London, and will probably fly again. In Israel We have security checks everywhere, at the entrance to central bus stations, malls, theaters, governmental institutions, no body complains about them, because everybody goes through the same security checks, and we all understand that they are necessary in light of the security situation we live in.

But someone decided that 1.4 million citizens of the state of Israel are considered potential terrorists the minute they set there foot in the airport, a decision I do not find justified; more than a million Arabic people live in Israel, and we share busses, beaches, restaurants and apartment buildings with our Jewish ‘cousins’, as we like to call them in Arabic (it comes from the Biblical story of Abraham having two sons, Jacob and Ishmael, the former being the father of the Jews and the later the father of the Arabs). Now the decision to consider Arabic citizens of Israel a security threat at airports, can be justified if it is made on the background of attacks by Israel Arabs on Israel Jews, but that background simply does not exist. If an Israeli Arab wanted to kill Jewish people, or hijack them, he would have plenty of opportunities to do it outside the airport, the fact they don’t do it, is just an indication that it is not on their minds. In fact, judging by recent events, it is the Arabic citizens of Israel who in are in need of protection from the Jewish citizens, not the other way around; the soldier who killed four Arabic people on a bus in Shafaa’mar, and the attack by a Jewish family on Church of Annunciation in Nazareth, are two incidents in which Jewish citizens of Israel attacked people of the Arabic community.

At work a Jewish colleague of mine told me that it was no longer fun to fly around Europe, because of the new strict airport security introduced lately, flying never was fun to me, and you think those security checks are not fun, it is nothing compared to the checks I go through here at Ben-Gorion, I thought to my self but did not say it. Another Jewish Israeli traveler who I met in Colombia complained to me that the new security checks in the US are very intrusive, but then told that she absolutely supports strip searching Arabs in the airport! I flew quite a lot around the globe: North America, South America, Europe and the Far East, but the irony is that only when I fly from and to my own country, that I am discriminated against; everywhere else in the world I am treated like a human being, here I am treated like a potential terrorist!

Until lately I never paid attention to what was written on the first page of my Israeli passport, waiting in the El-Al security room in Paris, with nothing to do, I examined my passport and noticed text on the first page (written both in Hebrew and English): "The Minister of Interior of the State of Israel hereby requests all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer of this passport to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford him such assistance and protection as maybe necessary."; a message intended for other states, asking them to respect the citizens of Israel. Apparently the state of other does not feel obliged by its own words.