Stories like this make me grateful for the security measures taken by El Al, Israel’s main airline:
Ryan was taking his first flight, to Walt Disney World, for his fourth birthday.
The boy is developmentally delayed, one of the effects of being born 16 weeks prematurely. His ankles are malformed and his legs have low muscle tone. In March he was just starting to walk…
The boy’s father broke down the stroller and put it on the conveyor belt as Leona Thomas walked Ryan through the metal detector.The alarm went off.
The screener told them to take off the boy’s braces.
The Thomases were dumbfounded. “I told them he can’t walk without them on his own,” Bob Thomas said.
“He said, ‘He’ll need to take them off.’ ”
Ryan’s mother offered to walk him through the detector after they removed the braces, which are custom-made of metal and hardened plastic.
No, the screener replied. The boy had to walk on his own.
Leona Thomas said she was calm. Bob Thomas said he was starting to burn.
They complied, and Leona went first, followed by Ryan, followed by Bob, so the boy wouldn’t be hurt if he fell. Ryan made it through.
The Transportation-Security Administration is taking the wrong approach to preventing terrorist attacks. The TSA focuses on objects and bombs. Any suspicious object is checked. Items used in prior attacks are banned or put under inspection. The exact rules must be followed, no matter the specific context.
El Al, on the other hand, focuses on people rather than objects and rules. Anyone flying to or from Israel is subjected to a brief-but-through questioning while waiting in line prior to the ticket-counter: “Why are you flying to Israel?” “Are you Jewish?” “Where do you go to synagogue?” “Where are you staying?” And so on.
The questioners do not care what you say; the care how you say it. They, I presume, are looking at your body language to see if you are lying or otherwise deceiving them. They look for inconsistencies. If they have any suspicions, you are questioned further (and your bags likely go through another screening). But I’ve never seen this occur personally.
After you are questioned, your bag passes through a gigantic X-ray machine — before the individual metal-detectors for you and your carry-on luggage — and then are you are free to go. The whole process takes two minutes at most.
Although I don’t doubt that Arabs and Muslims are likely chosen for additional screening, the fact remains that Israel’s main airline does not obsess about each item you carry and following exact rules when old women or disabled toddlers are involved. You don’t even have to take off your shoes when walking through the metal detector. And when was the last time El Al was successfully hijacked or bombed? Further, the beauty of this system is that it is applied equally to everyone — the profiling is based on behavior, not ethnicity or religion.
I know that bureaucracies cannot change overnight. But how hard would it be to replace many TSA workers with people trained by the CIA, FBI, or NSA who are trained in behavioral profiling and reading body-language? That way, kids like Ryan would not face undue hardship — and we’d all be able to keep our shoes on.
