Forecast Highs

Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport was named ‘Best Performing Airport in the Middle East’ for the second year in a row this week by The Airports Council International.

Airports in in Abu Dhabi and Doha came in second and third respectively.

Ynet News reports that the Israel Airports Authority allocated NIS 3.7 billion ($873,000,000) towards improving safety, security and customer service at the terminal.

I wonder if the ACI rankings took into account that in a recent report the US Federal Aviation Authority recently found several flaws in safety procedures at Ben Gurion Airport, and has lowered the safety ranking given to Ben Gurion from Category 1 to Category 2, a classification usually assigned to third world countries.

Even Europe is weighing whether to blacklist Israeli airlines over safety and other issues.

The following is a letter I received from a reader complaining about the security checks at BGA - including a very interesting reference to questions of religious identity asked by the young security staff. I’ve also been asked what my Jewish identity is, who is Jewish in my family, i.e. if both my parents and grandparents are Jewish - a very intrusive and irritating question. Is it necessary for security? We’ll check it out later this week - but in the meantime, here is the letter to the managers of Ben Gurion Airport [congratulations on your award by the way]:

Anna Hájková March 11, 2009
Kladenská 7
160 00 Praha 6
Czech Republic

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to file a complaint about the misbehaviour of the security check team at the Ben Gurion airport. I am Czech citizen and live in Canada, where I am doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. My dissertation deals with the social history of the Theresienstadt transit ghetto. I have been spending the past six months in Israel, conducting research at a number of Holocaust-related archives. I have a valid visa for Israel.

On February 18, I was leaving for Berlin via Vienna, with OS 858. The security, on that day working under Daniel Dvorkin, selected me for a check, and after a short examination, they decided – without bothering to tell me the reason – to proceed with a closer check. I was helpful and let them do whatever they needed with my luggage, only pointing out that I have a business meeting in Berlin for which I have to keep my clothes in order. The team was not polite, and I had to insist to be given a seat, and not to have to stand on the floor for the one hour, during the check. Not only it is a fairly humiliating experience to have one’s underwear examined piece by piece by two male security people. What was much worse was that once the “check” was finished, my suitcase was returned to me in a shape of complete chaos. Creams, gifts, bottles, toothbrush stockings laying together, entangled; crumbled oxford shirt and my business clothing, that I had specially dry-cleaned and ironed for my trip. Also, the security disentangled the inside bags in the suitcase, which are on purpose on a rope. I have never been able to attach them again as they were. I became upset and reproached the team for their humiliating and respectless behaviour. They were evasive in their answers, telling me that they were not a “packing service”. In particular, Yael Klein (young, curly woman) behaved rude. As a consequence of this, I had to spend a longer time in Berlin trying to put everything to order, clean and iron my clothes again; and what means more to me, the check was badly upsetting and I spent the whole trip shivering and unable to concentrate.

You may be aware that the security check is the last occasion visitors to Israel get to remember the country. Every time I leave Israel, I am subjected to a check; none of them was pleasant, but this one was by far the worst. Firstly, I object to this racist criteria, selecting single female travellers who appear to look Gentile in the eyes of the selecting security worker. It is always people who look like me that are selected.

The questions are humiliating and idiotic, the security people young, inexperienced, and lacking anything in experience of simplest manners, respect or at least language skills: they don’t speak English properly, and ask straightforward offensive questions. One of the particularly annoying questions is whether I have any Jewish background. You don’t have the right to ask such a question: the only thing that matters is one’s citizenship/s and corresponding passport/s. Once you establish the person before you does not dispose of Israeli passport, there is no reason to continue asking. By quizzing whether one has a Jewish ancestry, you are adopting the mentality of Nuremberg laws – an aspect I can tell, as a researcher of structural racist persecution: which is categorising people according to their assigned ethnicity, without any respect to their self-identification.

While I don’t criticise the system, I strongly disagree with the ways it is exercised. It is humiliating, abusive and arbitrary. The people in security checks are immature, have no proper training, and conduct the job only as part-time. I can tell this, because I frequently travel to the US, where the check is no less thorough, but incomparably more professional. If you continue like this, you scare, offend and alienate people friendly to Israel. I appeal most strongly to change your procedure. In this way, you annoy and upset visitors, who are friendly towards the country, and who would be happy to keep their positive impression. Wherever I related my recent grievance with your security, I have been told others, and much worse stories, by average, friendly, helpful and educated fellow visitors. As a historian and a human being, I would like to continue coming to Israel, and keep in touch with my colleagues and friends. It is vital that the State of Israel in general and the airport security in particular realises that it has certain responsibility towards the visitors, who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

Sincerely,
Anna Hájková

Copies are addressed to the Czech embassy, the Haaretz and Jerusalem Post.