Why Israel's air security model wouldn't work in the USA

Our view on airport screening: Why Israel's air security model wouldn't work in the USA

For weary holiday travelers coping with the hassles of airport security, some politicians and TV pundits are peddling a simple solution: Just do what the Israelis do. Several members of Congress are praising "the Israeli model" as an alternative to the U.S. screening process. What the Israelis do "is the way it ought to be done," adds Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. Fox News' Sean Hannity extols the Israelis because "they target, they profile, and they do not have these body checks."

OPPOSING VIEW: Follow the Israeli model

There's no question the Israeli system has been a success in a country beset by terrorist threats and suicide bombers. But if you can count, and if you understand American values, it's easy to see why that system wouldn't translate to the United States.

To start with, Israel has one major international airport, Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv, which handles about 11 million passengers a year. The USA has 450 airports, through which 770 million people pass. Put another way, U.S. airports handle more passengers in a single week than Israel — a New Jersey-sized nation with few domestic flights — does in a year.

Moreover, in Israel, where screeners are highly trained and El Al pays for much of the security costs, the airline spent about $57 per passenger last year, according to The Washington Post. And in the United States, where the government picks up most of the tab? Less than $7 per passenger. We don't hear the Transportation Security Administration's critics calling for an eightfold increase in this year's $5.3 billion air security budget.

Even if volume and cost weren't obstacles, Americans wouldn't put up with such Israeli practices as having to get to the airport as much as four hours ahead of departure, being interrogated at length by airport screeners, or having their luggage confiscated. Everyone still has to pass through metal detectors.

Central to Israeli security is ethnic profiling and background checks. While many travelers pass through Israeli airports with minimal scrutiny, Israel singles out Arabs, including many who are Israeli residents, and other foreign nationals for intrusive questioning, screening and searches. In July, Israeli news media reported, former Clinton Cabinet member Donna Shalala, now president of the University of Miami, was detained for more than two hours of questioning because of her Lebanese name.

Israelis have been willing to trade both personal privacy and civil liberties for air security. But even after 9/11, many Americans have balked at that trade-off, as a vocal minority made clear in the recent uproar over full-body scanners and enhanced pat-downs. In 2003, a TSA plan to tap into fliers' personal credit card and other data, then assign them security risk ratings, ignited such an outcry that it was scrapped.

Nor is it clear that ethnic profiling would work. True, most terror suspects have been young Muslim men. But such profiling would have missed "Jihad Jane," the petite, blond-haired, blue-eyed Philadelphia woman arrested in March for allegedly recruiting Americans and others for terror plots. Or Richard Reid, the white British citizen who tried to blow up an airliner in December 2001 with a shoe bomb.

Religious radicalism can infect the brains of people of any complexion or ethnicity. On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder told ABC he's worried about terrorist attacks on the U.S. by Americans.

Certainly, it would be helpful if the TSA used more common sense and sophistication than it does now in picking fliers for extra screening. But its critics have to recognize that facile advice about Israel and profiling crumbles under the weight of a single question: How, exactly, would you make that work here?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... 2_ST_N.htm

Opposing view on airport screening: Follow the Israeli model

By Asra Q. Nomani

America is at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we face a battle front closer to home: our airports and airliners.

OUR VIEW: Why Israel's air security model wouldn't work in the USA

In 1998, after a foiled plot by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to bomb U.S.-bound jets, Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to down U.S. and Israeli jets in "pitiless and violent" attacks. Since then, we've had a series of al-Qaeda-inspired plots, including three schemes against Los Angeles and New York airports, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, the Christmas 2009 "underwear bomber" and the recent air-cargo bomb attempt. And, of course, the plot we will never forget, on Sept. 11, 2001.

Sadly, to me, as an American Muslim, there is one common denominator to these plots: The perpetrators are all Muslim.

As a nation, we need to be less politically correct and more pragmatic in assessing threats. It's a painful choice, but we should follow the Israeli model and allow profiling based on religion, race, ethnicity, gender, national origin and age, as part of a wider screening strategy that includes behavioral profiling. Profiling makes sense whether it involves screening white Christian extremists to find those intent on bombing abortion clinics or Muslims to find al-Qaeda operatives targeting airliners.

The Justice Department has said that because of the "incalculably high stakes involved" in preventing "catastrophic events," such as jet attacks, airport screeners "may consider race, ethnicity, and other relevant factors."

There are several ways to implement this strategy:

•Ensure that profiling is limited to threat assessment, not harassment or discrimination.

•Have passengers input into a database vital information — Social Security, driver's license or passport numbers — when they make an airline reservation to clearly establish identities, travel patterns and, when possible, other elements as part of pre-screening. Let fliers voluntarily add more data, such as race, religion, ethnicity and national origin, to the database. Let security officials access that database for use in secondary screening at the airport.

•Train a larger cadre of professional screeners in identity and behavioral profiling so they can respectfully use both to identify people for extra screening.

With an honest national conversation about the threat from a small, radicalized group of Muslims, I believe we can marginalize and defeat their interpretation of Islam. And, I hope, soon see a day when Muslims will no longer be a part of the threat profile.

Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who covered airlines, is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She teaches journalism at Georgetown University.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... _ST1_N.htm

The population of Israel is about 7.5 million
10.9 flights divided by 7.5 population =1.45 flights per person
The population of the USA is 307 million
500 flights divided by 307 population =1.62 flights per person
1.62-1.45=.17
So we fly .17 more times than the population of Israel

The number of flights (per person of population) is almost identical.


We could follow Israel's method but that would mean we would have to have better trained agents and an efficient screening process. Also, that wouldn't support the buying of all the expensive xray equipment using our tax money and subjecting us as Americans to the unconstitutional abuse by our current government.