2013-03-17 Arrival in Tel-Aviv and my experience with security screening

Ben Gurion Airport has a lovely, compact design: there's a central hub with a multistory fountain, an upper level for incoming flights, a lower level for departures, and a massive pair of ramps that flips incoming and outgoing as you enter/exit. Of course, depending on your demographics and/or stamps in your passport form such places as Egypt or Afghanistan, you'll probably be spending an hour waiting in a small partitioned off section of the customs area. As waiting rooms go, that area is pretty drab if not featureless: there's a television and few vending machines. As you'd probably expect, I was a standout and most of the people in that area likely had some sort of Arabic ancestry.

The security interview process for me was about what you'd expect. It took less than fifteen minutes, albeit with of a total wait of about an hour. The questions were varied but nothing that you wouldn't see on a U.S. security clearance plus a more detailed version of the usual customs question. I answered in my usual information dump style and my questioner seemed professional and made the connection to other people traveling for Guy's funeral. They also ended up not stamping my passport without my even requesting it, which will make my life easier should I travel to a few other countries in the future. A friend of mine wasn't so lucky and ended up wasting three hours, two interviews, and getting oddly insistent questions about Guy's cell phone number.

I hadn't actually discussed Israeli airport security much with Guy. That said, his general philosophy often involved using technology to mitigate the costs of conflict. I've got to imagine that were he designing the system, there would probably be some displays with estimated wait times and the like. He'd have made sure that travelers that get detained for an hour at least get accurate information on which baggage carrousel their luggage could be found at. Admittedly, the amount of time I wasted there was largely my fault; once I saw the length of the lost and found lines (picking the wrong one didn't help) I should have searched the rest of the terminal immediately. Lesson learned.

On the whole, I think the interview process does probably result in a greater marginal increase in security than much of the security theater in the U.S. Also, it makes a lot more sense as a first step than strip searches and the like. However, let's be straight for a minute. The idea that we need more selective security is typically a euphemism for just questioning Muslims in greater detail while leaving the rest of the population alone. I'm an international relations professional; if that gets me extra screening I've got no objection, but I'd feel differently if I had to wait an hour every time I traveled because of my ancestry. So while my interview experience (and not my friend's) might be a reasonable example and TSA security theater needs to be toned down, I wouldn't support moving the U.S. towards the Israeli model. That said, I have heard horror stories for foreign friends coming in through U.S. customs, so I don't consider our system an exemplar.