You know how people say the US is the envy of the rest of the world? That’s probably true, until they come here and see how screwed up we really are.
“It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago,” said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He’s worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.
“Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don’t take s— from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, ‘We’re not going to do this. You’re going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport.”
That, in a nutshell is “Israelification” – a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.
Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel’s largest hub, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?
Read the article to find out how they solved the airport security issue. If Israel, a place one would think has a tad higher potential for terrorist activity than the US, can do things intelligently, why can’t we?
You know EXACTLY why we can’t do it this way. Because they profile and if we do that, we’re “racists” and “bigots”.
“If Israel, a place one would think has a tad higher potential for terrorist activity than the US, can do things intelligently, why can’t we?”
Because air travel security is the secondary goal here. Corporate welfare, a jobs program, and “changing your rights” is the primary goal.
Follow the money.
They don’t have as many airports, so they have an easy time finding the required number of qualified individuals. When TSA was first being setup, the goal was to make it like Israel. Ironically, it was Lieberman who proposed TSA. The agency became another government program, but not unionized, and Democrats ended up losing an election over the issue.
I’ve been saying the Israeli method is superior for years.
The Cheney administration installed the TSA so the frightened sheeple can feel the warmth and pay for another government jobs program like the military.
Muslim Obama would be impeached by the Republisheep in Congress if called for the disbanding of the TSA.
This should work. Israel has one international airport. I think everything should go through Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport. It’s a nice little airport, I’ve been there.
No? How about Reno.
OK, JFK? Atlanta? Dallas? LAX?
OK, I got it. O’Hare. Everyone likes O’Hare. Right?
Hmmmm.
No offense, but this country has NOT been the envy of anyone for quite sometime now. It’s about time for you, Yanks, to start realizing that.
You know how people say the US is the envy of the rest of the world? That’s probably true
What people?
Of course putting everybody that might be a threat to them in a camp and building a big wall around it is also pretty effective – the trouble with the USA is that it would need to be a rather large territory
#7,8: I don’t have time to look it up, but there have been numerous comments on posts on DU in the past where arguments have been made about how those in the rest of the world want to come here to live because they don’t have our freedoms, etc.
Decades ago, I heard the best comparison between the US and the Soviet Union that I think, when expanded, says it all. They were open in their oppression, corruption and so on while we kept it hidden away. What’s changed is that we’ve decided to bring it all out into the open, apparently without shame.
We’re sort of like the ugly old whore who looks good when the guy is drunk and the lights are low, but now she’s come out in the daytime. He sees her and crosses the street in disgust because he realizes what she’s really like.
Berlin Wall, both sides guns were pointed in the same direction.
Actually Pedro, you have it backwards. For this site, it is OK when Bush does it, not OK when Obama does it.
http://dvorak.org/blog/2006/12/01/phoenix-airport-begins-x-ray-passenger-searches/
#1 Spot on!
If I had my choice, I’ll take being called a racist and a bigot over some big TSA goon playing with my testicles.
Where are you going to find the dedicated, intelligent, and very well trained staff for this in North America? I have the highest admiration for the Israeli methods, but they don’t scale. It seems the me the TSA recruits fired DMV employees. It’s now another government agency looking for problems to justify it’s existence.
#13 Stop it already with your “neener, neener you do it too” argument. Sheesh.
I want to be on your death panel.
“why can’t we?”
Two reasons. Israel has only 2 international airports. We have dozens.
Two, Israel opted for training of intelligent people who can make reasoned decisions. We chose to save a buck and hire high school drop outs. Seemingly, those with a grudge!
#15: Hire and train people as if it were for a special ops team. In a sense, they are — their special ops is observation and intelligence. Train them like the Israelis do. Don’t go for the ‘if they’re a warm body they’re hired’ approach. Treat it like the military.
Right now, TSA employees are a short step up from the ‘fries with that?’ crowd. Pat downs and yelling to get in the scanner are about all they’re good for.
With the economy like it is, there are tens of thousands of highly intelligent people who are out of work who would be ideal if they were trained and treated (and paid) as professionals.
#5 hit the nail on the head. there are less than 70 flights in Israel each day and more than 4000 each day in the US. They do background checks and screen all the passengers in advance of their flight, which costs a great deal in money and manpower.
A lot of that money comes from the billions of dollars in foreign aid we donate to them each year to keep that country in existence.
Here is how to make flying safe and fun:
You know those cute little ‘garments’ you get to wear when you get any medical tests done? The ones with your ass hanging out?
Everybody boarding an airplane gets to wear one.
Your luggage goes on a separate UPS type plane. You get no carryons.
TSA officials monitor you putting on your garment.
No touching. Little kiddies too.
Lastly, you are ‘sniffed’ by bomb dogs on your way into the aircraft.
Remember that Apple commercial, before the girl throws the hammer at the screen?
Like that.
Or, you could drive a car yourself, like in the fifties.
And stop for a burger and fries served by a pretty teenage girl with a pony tail, on roller skates.
#19 El Al’s security is not just Israel.
I flew from Munich to Vienna to Tel Aviv.
There was extensive questioning by El Al security at several points in Munich. I counted 6 stops along the way to the secured room at gate. There was a police car in front of the transportation bus and one behind. There were 4 armed guards with automatic weapons on the tarmac guarding the plane on all 4 corners.
In Vienna, I stayed on the plane for 45 minutes about a mile from the gate. There was a 4 man armored vehicle circling the plane on the tarmac. And amazingly, there was a helicopter that was scanning the woods when we landed and when we took off again.
In the USA? Either face
– Radiation from the naked scanner or
– a hairy big TSA guy who grabs my balls.
And does the naked scanner really work? It can’t see stuff hidden in “body cavities”. And it is fooled by creases in clothing.
http://goo.gl/M1XRJ
Don’t you mooks get it yet?
You’re not supposed to want to fly. (Later you won’t be supposed to want to take the train.)
The passenger airlines are going to revert to a service for the rich, who don’t wait in lines to get groped by some TSA troglodyte. They have their own planes, airports and pilots.
The trains are going to revert to freight only (after they’ve duped you into paying for high-speed corridors and expropriated huge swaths of land under eminent domain and then blown up a couple of trains and killed a few hundred passengers before letting the TSA molesters loose on your asses at the ol’ train stations.)
Then you’re going to have to pay huge amounts for stuff you were supposed to already have paid for, a better internet.
Virtual presence means that the gummint will have you by the long and straight (as opposed to the short and curlies.)
When they decide you should “shut up, slave,” they’ll just have to throw a switch.
What are you gonna do bout it?
Write an email to the editor? There won’t be a paper left (and they’ll have pulled your plug.)
Write a letter to your congress-critter? There won’t be a post office left.
Obama was elected therefore I believe the majority of Americans judgment on character would not work at our airports.
Stolen from some other blog:
Hypothesis: If I write the words HAPPY DONGLE on my chest and belly with zinc oxide ointment, very thick, then let it dry and head to the airport for a scannin’… do you think the TSA scanner readers would know what the words mean? I’m guessing it’s visible in the scan through clothing…
#19, you’re argument has a glaring flaw in it.
How many international airports in Israel (3) versus how many in the US? (100s)
How many people in Israel (7,308,800) vs how many in the US? (307,006,550).
The US has around 45 times the population. It also has about 45 times the number of large international airports.
(Lets not pretend that Ketchikan International Airport in Alaska or Denver International in Colorado, or even William R. Fairchild International Airport at Port Angeles in Washington state are as well trafficked as Gen. Edward Lawrence Logan International airport in Massachusetts or the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International in Georgia.)
The reason we don’t implement proper airport security is because we don’t want to be bothered.
That’s why we hire high-school G.E.D. graduates to get their poor pathetic jollies groping our balls and our tits and asses, to DISCOURAGE us from flying.
And don’t ask about the ACLU.
When’s the last time you saw a lawyer working for the ACLU flying steerage with us proles?
Same thing for sports figures. Bet you dollars to doughnuts that security doesn’t apply to a plane full of jocks on their way to defeat at the hands of some other bunch of jocks. (‘Sides, who’d care? They’re interchangeable anyway. Today’s hero is tomorrow’s unknown. The Taliban used to hold executions in the sports stadia in Kabul.)
We’re idiots for paying them that well.
As usual, the crazies have it backwards.
The fact that we have many more airports than Israel is precisely why we need a system like Israel’s.
The Israeli system is wonderfully scalable, unlike our pathetic system. How do scale to handle new threats like the expected bomb hidden in vagina or baby bomb.
Where are the grow-ups to deal with the problem?
In a perfect world the US would implement Israeli style security but they would never find enough qualified people. The employees at El Al and Ben Gurion have a solid military background. In Israel the best and brightest go into the military and excel in their careers based on their experiences there.
In the US the TSA is made up of people who would otherwise not have a job at all. It is a huge gov’t program to keep people employed doing crap jobs.
Also, as someone else pointed out the USA is not anyones envy anymore. I moved to Israel a year ago and enjoy a higher standard of living for less money and have a lower carbon footprint.
Dallas, you have a totally false view of the fundamentals of the Republican Party. At least, those that it espoused just a couple of decades ago. The TSA is an afront to those ideals because it necessarily creates bigger government, draws more taxes and impinges further on freedom. The TSA has been single-handedly responsible for this aerospace engineer’s progressive loathing of the thought of actually taking a flight somewhere. I would be the one telling them “don’t touch my junk” and all hell would break loose when they tried getting their supervisors involved.
The US, in its current state, will never adopt the Israeli model. For one thing, the US is largely anti-Semitic right now. That, in itself, is scary. To admit that Israel is doing something better (by far) than we are would be a matter of world humiliation. To turn to them and offend Obama’s Muslim brothers would be tantamount to an act of war.
Of course, I also have an elitist attitude. The majority of TSA employees have double-digit IQs (and I’m being kind in giving them that) and don’t give a rat’s ass about security or anything other than the fact that they have a cushy government job AND for a few seconds or a couple of hours, they hold near complete power over a person’s life. How they wield that power depends on how their baby-momma treated them that morning. The Israelis are surrounded by their enemies and deal with the threat of military action every day. That, in and of itself, probably gives every man, woman and child in the nation a completely different world view than the idiots in our country.
TSA is just flat out wrong and needs to be disbanded.
This would never work in the US due to the inability to find the people that believe 100% in protecting the US, and it is up to them to protect it. If they fail, they’ve failed the country.
That is not how the US thinks. The US thinks…me…me…me…me…
Like most countries in this position, the US needs to think about why they’re a target for terrorism, and change that behavior. Just like Israel needs to ask themselves the same question, and act accordingly…
#29 Pedrito, this is not Walmart and you don’t have to direct the sheeple to the correct aisle.
I’ll just assume you’re doing your civic duty to educate the Dvorak sheeple.
Dallas and Pedro, knock off the 3rd grade crap! Everyone’s tired and bored with it!