The Shabak demanded that three female journalists from Al Jazeera TV remove their bras before allowing them to enter an annual toast hosted by Bibi Netanyahu for foreign journalists. When they refused they were ejected from the event. Turkish journalists also claimed they were humiliated during their security check. After complaining to the government press office about their treatment, the Turkish contingent decided to attend but the Al Jazeera reporters did not.
The Israeli press flak who organized the event apologized for the treatment, but the matter was solely in the Shabak’s hands and not his own. That’s what happens in a state in which major decisions are made by the secret police and removed from the hands of political leaders.
The Shabak typically and cavalierly dismissed the complaints with a sniff of the nose saying that these are its standard security procedures for events of this kind; and that those who don’t wish to undergo the check are at liberty not to attend. I’m now trying to check whether all female journalists were forced to remove their bras before entering this event. I’d be willing to bet a large sum of shekels that this is a lie and that Arab journalists were the only ones strip searched in this fashion. Oh and I wonder whether the Shabak agents stuck their hands down the pants of male Arab reporters. You never know what you’ll find down there. Perhaps something explosive?
[UPDATE: A female foreign journalist who attended the toast said that not only wasn’t she asked to remove her bra, none of the other female reporters who she was with were asked either. Which makes the Shabak claim a lie. Further, this new Ynet story recounts the story directy from the Al Jazeera journalist:
They told me to take off my blouse. The girl [Shabak agent] groped every part of my body you can imagine for an entire fifteen minutes. She fingered my bra under my slip. Then she told me to take the bra off. I told her I was pregnant. The bra I refused to remove.
When the Israeli press officer saw I was in a slip he came over to see what was going on. I explained to him. He replied: “Don’t be a drama queen.”
Our photographer called me before the event began, terribly angry. They’d asked him to come two hours before the event began. They allowed everyone else to enter but him. They tore apart all his equipment and then made him take off his pants.
She also notes that when she arrived she was shunted to a line and waited 30 minutes before anyone spoke to her. All other Arab journalists were sent to this line:
In actuality, they had a line of Arab reporters and a line for everyone else. It burned me up.
I found laughable another rejoinder the press officer made to her. To justify her treatment, he noted they did the same to the Turkish journalists and that even in the U.S. they make him take his pants off (!). I’d like to know where in the U.S. he suffered this treatment. I guess lies come easy when you’re in his job.]
* *
You’ll recall that U.S. academic researcher Heather Bradshaw was treated the same way during a security check at which a numbskull Shabak agent looked up her name on Google and confused her with another Heather Bradshaw who was born in an Arab village and professed an interest in third world relief projects. Prof. Bradshaw was forced by the Shabak to remove her bra and had to endure a male agent entering the room while she was disrobed to hector her for causing her flight to be delayed and inconveniencing all the other passengers.
The Shabak seems to be confusing the country they work for with North Korea or Iran. They seem also to be confusing the purpose of their job with harassing Arabs rather than providing security to their country. You’d think too that the Shabak would think about the fact that Al Jazeera is the only Arab news service broadcasting within Israel and that this will no doubt make a very juicy story for them to cover. But, hell, they don’t care.
The Al Jazeera journalists who were barred from the program didn’t miss much. Ynet reports that Bibi’s pearl of wisdom for the assembled journalistic multitude was:
Our first biggest problem is Iran. Our second biggest is Iran. And our third is Iran.
Not a word about making peace with Palestinians or easing the deep divide between rich and poor in Israel. There must be no domestic problems in Israel with which Bibi has to deal for him to have the luxury of declaring his sole political agenda to deter Iran.
When I was flying out of Ben Gurion I was asked to remove my bra and what I thought was even crazier than that was when I was forced to take my hair out of my pony tail so that the Israeli humiliation team at the airport could feel up my head and through my hair. They even required that my hairband be confiscated, it was one of those drug store rubber hair bands.
As awful as it was spending 5.5 hours detained, strip searched and repeatedly interrogated by 13 different people I walked away feeling sorry for Israel and Israelis, you’ve got to be seriously sick to treat every Palestinian walking through Ben-Gurion like terrorists. And yes they detain all the Palestinians coming and going, even mothers with newborn babies (saw this upon my arrival) for unknown extended periods without food, without water, without facilities.
Not sick… paranoid. Paranoia created & nurtured by Palestinian terrorists for years. There’s a reason it’s called terror – that’s exactly what it creates. I’ve mentioned the terror Israelis feel before; when they go on buses, when they walk in crowded places, etc., there’s always that fear, even though it’s been years since the last suicide bombing. It’s an irrational fear that will take a very long time to go away.
Oy, we’re not going to get into this again are we? Security, when it’s good adjusts to different circumstances. When you suspect every Arab in every situation of being a terrorist then you won’t be able to find the one who is at the moment you need to (if that even ever happens).
This was an Israeli Palestinian journalist. Can you tell me the last time an Israeli Palestinian journalist mounted an attack on an Israeli PM? What are the chances that a pregnant Al Jazeera journalist is going to smuggle a bomb into her brassiere? Perhaps they should’ve inspected her genitalia as well (maybe they did). Maybe they’ve devised a new suicide explosive you can shove up there? I apologize for my vulgarity but this story just brings it out of me.
Look, I agree with you that it isn’t normal. Far from it.
When security personnel are approached by a pregnant Al Jazeera journalist, they don’t take chances, and they don’t try to calculate the chances that she would smuggle a bomb. They check to see if she is.
Hey, at least they don’t discriminate between Arabs – they all get equally intrusive checks. 😛
Jokes aside, I’m not trying to justify it. I’m explaining why it is the way it is. When you are paranoid and suspect of every foreigner (Arabs more than others), you are going to do whatever it takes to be 100% sure the person isn’t carrying that bomb. Look what 9/11 did to America. Imagine suicide bombings on a regular basis for a decade… what would that do to America? Probably something similar or even worse.
-“Look, I agree with you that it isn’t normal. Far from it.”
-“I’m explaining why it is the way it is”
But this is Israeli norm! (Its SOP, Standard Operating Procedure). This is what this country is ALL about (from its birth). And no, you are not explaining anything. You just go along with it.
People can’t see it because its so simple. We want to cling to some IMAGE of Israel that is not really there and probably never was there. (BTW, Americans do the same!). Like a fish that can’t see the water he is swimming in…All you need to do is to step ‘out of the box’ for a bit and it jumps at you.
But there is this sticky glue between everyone. That nice, warm collective togetherness that holds us trapped right where we need to be to continue swimming along.
What exactly do you think I am doing here?
Patrick Smith, a pilot, has compiled a little list of plane hijackings only from the late 1980, noting how “we did not overreact. We did not stage ill-fated invasions of distant countries. People did not cease traveling and the airline industry did not fall into chaos. We were lazy in enacting better security, perhaps, but as a country our psychological reaction, much to our credit, was calm, measured and not yet self-defeating.”
So there was a time when your question, “what would that do to America?”, was answered, “not much”. It seems that since then America’s mind-set has changed in some fundamental ways, with 9/11 the event to finally bring it to the surface.
http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2010/11/10/airport_security/index.html
NOnsense. THis is racial profiling pure & simple. Did you not read the article to see how Dan Meridor reacted to the same nonsense when she was accosted while attempting to enter the PM’s office to interview him? He berated the security personnel & told them if they didn’t stop this nonsense he’d take the journalists to his home to do the interview. They let her in. That’s what the Israeli press officer should’ve done as well. But he was a disgusting twit & blamed her for her mistreatment.
Oh, I didn’t know that was meant as a joke. I thought it was just a tasteless attempt at wit at the expense of a mistreated Palestinian journalist.
This is the very definition of the illness I’m attempting to describe. Israeli security obsessives have an illness that doesn’t allow them to see what’s before their eyes, whether it’s a person or an idea. Instead they’re mired in the past & every new situation is a repetition of some past tragedy. This is a form of repetition compulsion. Really sick. Look, I commiserate about the condition, but if you don’t get over it you’re going to destroy yrselves in the process.
Shai, ‘If Americans Knew’ created a short documentary about the routine humiliation that Palestinians and foreign peace activists (particularly women) are put through when trying to enter the country. They interviewed five people for the video: Maysoom Zayid, a Palestinian-American with cerebral palsy who runs a West Bank charity for children with her condition; the writer Laila El-Haddad, whom you may know through her blog Gaza Mom; the American Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, who is involved in peace work; and Shereen Ewash, a Palestinian who was born in Amman to refugee parents who fled in 1948; and Hala, a Palestinian-American attorney originally from Nazareth.
The stories of Hala, Shereen, and Hedy are particularly interesting. Shereen reports being stripped and humiliated years before Black September and decades before the Second Intifada, the suicide bombings, or anything else. Ten-year-old Hala’s ordeal took place the year after the Munich massacre. She was separated from her parents in Ben-Gurion Airport (on the day they were all emigrating to America, no less), put in a room by herself, told to strip naked, and made to sit there for hours – all without knowing where her family was and what was happening to her. Perhaps you could draw a link between her maltreatment and the deaths of the athletes at Munich, but I really doubt it, especially as Hala and her family were from Nazareth. There was no logical reason to connect them with terrorist movements based in Jordan. Besides, Shereen’s testimony reveals that Hala’s treatment would have been no different even if she had tried to travel at an earlier time.
As for Hedy Epstein, she is a Shoah survivor in her eighties. She was taken to a police station from the airport – on the day she was due to return to the US from Israel – and subjected to an internal search. Are we to believe that Israeli paranoia has progressed to the point where they honestly believe that the airport is threatened by a woman who survived Birkenau and has spent the best part of her long life engaged in peace work? That this woman was perhaps concealing explosives in her rectum or her vagina? I think the explanation offered by the women in the documentary makes far more sense: it is a way of discouraging Palestinians and peace activists from returning to Israel.
Maysoom’s story is probably the worst. After her strip search, security officials confiscated her sanitary pads – including the one she was wearing. She was left to bleed all over herself for several hours, until she boarded the flight. Her medication was also confiscated, which she needed for the long journey. This is a woman with multiple serious health conditions. She reports that halfway through the flight home to the US she honestly believed that she was going to die.
The people who did that were not suffering from paranoia. They were the ones with the power in that situation. They knew it and they used it, just as these security officials did with the Al-Jazeera team. I doubt any of them actually believed that the journalists posed a threat.
Small correction: Hedy Epstein did not survive Birkenau. She escaped to England on the Kindertransport. I am confusing her with another Shoah survivor who had a near-identical experience, but the name of that woman has escaped me.
It does not matter what the security officials believed or thought – they were instructed to do what they were doing, and as far as I know what they did was entirely legal. Inappropriate, irrational, humiliating, yes. But legal.
It’s not the people who are suffering from paranoia. It’s the country. The people have more or less been cured of their paranoia BECAUSE of these strict security procedures.
Well of course it’s legal if you’re Shabak and you are omnipotent. You define the law in yr own person. Nothing else matters. What, do you think an Israeli Supreme Court justice is going to rule this treatment null & void? Nah. It wouldn’t be legal in any other true democracy in the world that observed the true rule of law (& not rule of the fist as Shabak does).
# Shai)
And what is a country – a democratic one at least – if it isn’t the sum of the individuals who form it ? The Israeli paranoia comes from somewhere.
The procedures at the airport Ben Gourion and elsewhere has NOTHING to do with security, but is in order to humiliate an entire nation, the Palestinians, and everyone who’s suspected of having sympathies for their cause.
What bubble are you living in ?
You should read the newly report from “Breaking the Silence”. You can download the entire report on their website, and there are some testimonies at ‘972’.
They explicitly claim that the military control in the TO has NOTHING to do with security but with harassing the Palestinians in order to erase their resistance.
Reading your “They were instructed to do what they were doing, what they did was entirely legal …. ” makes me SICK. Obeying orders – your history didn’t serve you anything then ?
Deïr Yassin,
I deliberately mentioned the legality of the procedures. Nobody forces those people to be security personnel, and if they aren’t willing to do what is required of them during their job they can quit. These are not crimes against humanity unlike what you refer to.
How would these procedures erase Palestinian resistance? If anything it will only reinforce it & have it gain more support. Do you honestly believe someone came up with the idea to strip Arab women of their bras for the purpose of humiliation? Make no mistake, these (harsh, humiliating & mostly unnecessary) procedures are meant to effectively eliminate any (even 0.01%) chance of terror threats. It is possible to manipulate regular security checks and hide bombs, knives, etc. in one’s underwear, rectum, and other available cavities… it’s happened before. And like I said, Israel isn’t the only one worried about it.
Certainly they did. You don’t give the Shabak enough credit. Do you think they bind the arms of suspects (like Ameer Makhoul) and tie them to chairs & drag them across the room & torture them because they’re “ticking bombs” about to commit an act of terror? No, they wish to degrade & humiliate. What treasure trove of terror intelligence can Makhoul give them that justifies torturing him? No, they wanted to humiliate him. Look at the picture of the Al Jazeera journalist in my blog post. This woman is going to commit an act of terror? Puh-leeze. It just doesn’t hold up. Of course they humiliate Palestinians & Arabs in general on purpose. This wasn’t a security issue. This was blatant humiliation.
Since you’re worried about hiding bombs in rectums I’d suggest you develop an Israeli apparatus that can be inserted up into men’s & womens’ private parts because that’s definitely the way to go for terrorists. In fact, in the AJ journalists case why didn’t they also ask to search the fetus. It could’ve been hiding something explosive!
# Shai)
I wasn’t comparing neither claiming that is a “crime against humanity”. I just wanted to point out that what’s legal according to law is not automatically morally legal. And disobeying orders in present day Israel doesn’t cost your life as at other times in history.
Yes, I’m 100% sure that most of the stripping, body-searching etc has nothing to do with security and everything to do with humiliation. I’ve never been and I’ll never go through Ben Gourion, but I ve been through Allenby, and it’s just disgusting.
If you look at the documentary that Vicky mentionned and the links I posted. Do you think a 85-years old Jewish women represents any threath to the State of Israel, or do you think they wanted to give her ‘a lesson’. A disabled young girl in a wheelchair. A friend of mine, a French Jewish woman of a certain age, was retained more than 24 hours at Ben Gourion just before Christmas. 24 hours to find out whether she had a bomb or not ? No, they looked her up on the internet, and when they realized she was engaged in ‘pro-palestinian activities’ and that she was going to meet with Israeli peace activists, they kept her after the whole procedure of body searching.
And please explain to me why they bodystrip people leaving Israel ?
The “Breaking the Silence” site
http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp
http://www.shovrimshtika.org/post_e.asp?id=30
Eventually this is a question about privacy vs. security. I’m with you on this one but Israeli regulations fit into place after the paranoia that I had described lean heavily toward security. I don’t like having my bag and body searched every time I enter a mall, pub, shop either. Most Israelis are willing to sacrifice their own (and of course, others’) privacy for a heightened sense of security. I’m sure some of the security personnel are assholes and enjoy the humiliation but it would be very hard to convince Israelis (myself included) that there would be no sacrifice made to security if people weren’t body searched & in some cases stripped. Again, I do not like it and I feel sorry & ashamed for what these people have to go through but I do honestly believe that measures like this effectively miniaturize the chances of a bomb getting through. Would it have been worth it if the searches had been terminated and as a result thousands would be spared the humiliation but one terrorist would get through security and kill a few dozen people? This, along privacy violations, are the questions that should be asked. Again, the two are placed on the same scales.
# Shai)
You didn’t bother to see the viseo with the 5 women, you don’t have a clue about what you country is doing to Palestinians and international ‘activists’. Once again, they body search, strip and keep people for interrogations also when they are LEAVING Israel.
Never mind, keep on dreaming . . .
# Vicky)
Thank you for mentionning the documentary “The Easiest Target”.
It’s an approximately 15 min documentary, and I remember I cried – of anger I guess – when I saw it the first time. Particularly the story of Maysûn Zayîd, the disabled Palestinian-American who was left for a whole day in her wheelchair, having her periods, bleeding all over. Sorry guys ! That was some internal female talk.
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE5N2yV_wVE
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAocsMfZWV8
The Maysûn Zayîd-interview separately
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaCinq8swe4
The purpose: humiliating the females in such a way that they never come back.
Sorry, the last link again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaCinq8swc4
Shai, paranoia is a sickness created and nurtured by Israel’s own doing.
“Not sick… paranoid.”
Paranoia *is* a mental illness.
RE: “You never know what you’ll find down there. Perhaps something explosive?” – R.S.
SNARKY SEZ: I’m not going anywhere near this one. As Sergeant Schultz said, “I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing!” (or, more commonly as the [Hogan’s Heroes] series went on, simply “I know nothing–NOTHING!”)
P.S. I like the photo of the ‘padded bra’. Very tasteful!
How To Choose a Bra That Accentuates Your Breasts (VIDEO, 02:22) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvFD1lI2LdA
We’re trying to keep this discussion of a higher plane, my friend! There are so many off-color jokes I could’ve added to this post, but I restrained myself. Why not you?
Sometimes I’m so sleep deprived as to be temporarily non compos mentis. Windows should add something that tests the user’s judgement every couple of hours or so and cuts them off if they are seriously impaired. But then I would probably switch to a Mac.
Thanks for the laugh…I can just hear Schultz’s mock German accent saying that!
This is a joke, right ?
Apparently the same country “Arab emirates” that the Al’jazira network belongs to, does not allow Israeli people to enter.
Now she complain how hard is the security check to the Israeli prime minister speech ?
This has to be a joke.
In fact, even top ranking tennis player of Israel was denied entry for a major competition there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_Tennis_Championships
Enough said.
I’m afraid it’s YOU who’s the joke.
She’s an Israeli Palestinian you moron, one of yr fellow citizens. And she has no right to meet her own prime minister?
As for the rest, off topic. Stay on topic or else you’re violating the comment rules. Read the rules now. If you violate them again you will receive something more than a warning.