Ynet reports (Hebrew) that the Shin Bet detained a 26 year-old Irish woman at Dublin airport when she arrived three hours prior to flight time (in order to go through the security check). She’d hoped to fly to Israel for a romantic reunion with her Israeli boyfriend, Alon, who she’d met in South America. It was to be her first visit to Israel.
When the Shin Bet security interrogators asked her why she was flying to Israel and she told them, they actually called her boyfriend in Israel to confirm this. They asked personal questions about the nature of their relationship. But that wasn’t enough.
At first, she was told she could board the flight, but without any personal electronic devices. Then, she was told she couldn’t bring any luggage at all. When offered this option, after the decidedly chilly reception she’d experienced from the Israeli security apparatus, she said: thanks, but no thanks. The distinct impression she got from her inquisitors was that the only reason she was treated this way is that she isn’t Jewish.
Keep in mind that her boyfriend is a former IDF officer who served his country and understood the need for security precautions.
During her trip to South America, she’d met many Israelis who told her about the bad rap that Israel got in the world media. They assured her that the real Israel was something else entirely.
The Shabak claims that it told the woman she could board the flight without her baggage and could send it separately via London. She denies they made this offer. They also claim that they couldn’t allow her luggage aboard because it required scanning by a special device which local airport security didn’t make available to them. I’d venture to say that if any Irish journalist picks up on this story and queries officials at Dublin airport they’ll find this is a crock. But the way the Shin Bet works, it only has to deflect criticism for a day or so for the embarrassing incident to be forgotten (or so they expect). That’s why they often don’t even make a pretence of having a credible story.
Alon’s girl still wants to reunite with him–anywhere but Israel. So think about this, if Alon and his girlfriend someday marry, where do you think they’ll live? Anywhere but Israel. But that won’t bother the racist thugs who control entry to the Jewish homeland. They prefer their guests and betrothed to be Jewish. Non-Jews need not apply. The needs of the national security state trump love and romance.
There are two lessons to be learned from this story. First, don’t fly to Israel on an Israeli airline. Second, if I were Irish authorities I’d demand the head of whoever was responsible for this mess. In South Africa, when a flyer was abused racially, the authorities threatened to ban the airline from flying to South Africa. That got Israel’s attention.
Since I published this story, Maan reporter George Hale told me he received the exact same treatment. He was told on two separate occasions that he could only fly without luggage (that’s besides the regular strip searches). The Shin Bet official told him he could retrieve it “the next time you’re in Zurich.”. That didn’t sit too well with George since it was everything he needed to practice his profession.
When he arrived at Ben Gurion he filed a complaint with the Press Office and the Shin Bet relented and returned his effects (which included all his electronic reporting gear). The Irish lass’ story is, unfortunately, not unique.
In USA, there is a large part of political spectrum that calls you Marxist if you support progressive taxes (or expriation of tax breaks) and a Communist if you support so-called “socialized medicine”. By commenting favorably on Israeli single-payer system. Romney revealed himself to be a Bolshevik stooge. And of course Netanyahu by doing very little to dismantle this Communist travesty in Israel (why, he even agreed to a pay increase for doctors) is objectively a Communist.
Of course, people who proudly call themselves Marxists do not find anything Marxist in the government of Israel, but can we trust them?
[comment deleted-any further off topic comments such as this will result in losing your privileges]
Getting back to the original blog post, it never fails to amuse me how Israelis with a conscience are shocked by these kind of stories. Make no mistake, what happened to this Irish woman is standard practice by El Al at any airport, and standard practice at Ben Gurion no matter what airport you fly. It has nothing to do with Bulgaria – it has been like this for many years. People suspected of any kind of connection with or sympathy towards Arab people are routinely subjected to excessive questioning and strip-searches, and have electronic equipment confiscated. I finally gave up on BG after my computer was taken for a few days (I am currently having it “cleaned” by a friend in that business) and now travel across the Bridge to fly from Amman. And to the standard Israeli argument that this there is no racism involved, I point to the fact that Jewish Israelis glide through security at BG, never to be victimized by this kind of treatment. Saying this is all about “security”, as most Israelis honestly appear to believe, is the same thing as saying that discriminatory roads and movement restrictions around settlements have nothing to do with racism. Amazing how normally intelligent people can be brainwashed so easily.
On Palestinian demographics:
According to the CIA World Factbook (2012 July estimates): the West Bank (including East Jerusalem): 2.622.544
According to the same (July 2011 extimates): the Gaza Strip: 1.710.257
Total in the Palestinian territories: 4.332.801
We’ll have to deduce the Palestinian worker who was killed by numerous IDF bullets at a check-point this morning….
Israeli Palestinian demographics is more complicated as the CIA World Fact Book doesn’t make any ethnic-religious distinctions, but according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics 2006 the Arab population is 1.413.500 (including 209.000 Arabs in East Jerusalem. The Arab population is East Jerusalem is thus counted twice, as inhabitants of the Palestinian terrotories by CIA World Fact Book and the Palestinian statistics and once again in the Israeli statistics.
March 2012, the Israel Bureau of Statistics count 1.597.300 Arabs but gives not specific number for East Jerusalem. The Arab population of East Jerusalem is declining due to ethnic cleansing and I’ve read that it’s around, or even less than 200.000 by now. So we can more or less conclude that the Palestinian Israeli population within Israel is around 1.400.000.
Thanks for correcting my Israeli-Palestinian population count.
There may have been extenuating security reasons in regards to this episode that did not get published — or maybe not, and this whole affair might be a truly embarrassing and unnecessary security snafu. I am sorry for the girl.
I hope I don’t risk being called a “hasbarist,” a “troll” or worse if I don’t toe a hostile anti-Israel tone here, but I would like to point out the fact that according to the Tourism Ministry, 1.7 million visitors arrived in the “national security state” (Israel) between January and June 2012.
Although unfortunate episodic cases like this do occur, and perhaps it is good to laser in and highlight them in blogs like this, it seems that the vast majority of tourists of all nationalities and religions must be having a relatively good experience, or the tourism numbers would probably not be at record levels.
No. The emergence of such stories suggests just the opposite, that there is a systematic element in these screenings that goes beyond the ranges expected even in the case of Israel, etc. Exactly the opposite conclusion. This story does not appear to me to be a “one off” sort of thing because there are other confirming stories as well.
Cory, entering Israel is generally not a problem for the First World citizens, provided that they have the brains to get to the Ben Gurion Airport by a non-Israeli airline and not to tell anyone they have previously visited a country which is considered hostile to Israel (Iran, Syria, etc.; not sure about countries like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan).
People are being refused entry to Israel every day. Here’s the story of an Indian Muslim:
link to electronicintifada.net
A French high-school teacher had an article last Friday on the most read French web-site about his interrogation and detention at BG before being expelled. More than 600 comments at the time being: great publicity for the BDS movement.
And let’s be honest about this: one of the first things that people are being asked is whether they are Jewish or not. When American-Palestinian Sandra Tamari was held back at BG this spring, she called the US ambassasy, and their first question too was “Are you Jewish ?”. When she said no, they said that they couldn’t help her. Her story is on Mondoweiss.
Two young highly educated Arab-American women went through an interrogation in June where among other things they were asked if they felt more Arab than American (I wonder if American Jews are asked the same question…). They were expelled too.
Countries have a right to allow or disallow an entry to any non-citizen for any reason. The United States has a very extensive list, which was greatly expanded after 9/11, as it recognizes it is in the middle of a war. I am actually surprised that Israel does allow entry to many visitors hostile to the country, and I will not name any names.
The woman in the article you posted had visited Israel before – her religion and race had not changed since that visit, or did it? Thus, at least the title of the article is false.
Apparently, it was something else that caused her to be banned from entry – like having a hidden agenda, as implied from the comments of Israeli border control officers.
No, she had never visited Israel before. I’d clearly stated this in the post, which you clearly hadn’t read.
Pure hasbara.
@ Richard
I think Sanych’s comment was an answer to a comment of mine. I didn’t post an article about a woman visiting Israel, but I mentionned one posted on Mondoweiss about American-Palestinian Sandra Tamari, and Sanych is probably right that Sandra Tamari is guilty of something: being Palestinian, and her hidden agenda was probably her wish to visit the land from where her people was exiled.
@ Sanych
You’re right. Every country has a right to control its borders, but Israel is not a country like every other country (a part from the fact that it was created on the exile of 80% of the indigenous population). It’s also controlling all entries into the West Bank. By the way the next “Welcome to Palestine”-campaign is heading for the Allenby Bridge between Jordan and Occupied Palestine to show the world that the State of Israel controls that border too
PS. There is no such thing as “race”, it’s a social construct that has been debunked decades ago by geneticists. Racists – who don’t care about science – still exist though…..
So I would say Sandra Tamari belongs to the human race.
Ah, I see. I remember that post.
Obviously, I was replying to DY’s message with a different article. Not everything is revolving around your posts, RS.
Pure narcissism.
Further stupid, gratuitous insults will result in your moderation.
@DY
1. Every country is based on the territory that was taken by force at some point in the history. Israel is different because its people are descendants of the ones who were displaced originally. When Cherokee Indians establish their own state it today’s state of Georgia it will not be unique any more.
2. The woman in the article claimed racial and religious discrimination by Israeli officials in her article – the one that you have posted and to which I replied.
3. I bet that with the name like Deïr Yassin they will welcome you to Israel with a red carpet, as you, obviously, don’t have any hidden agenda.
4. Many Germans still have keys to their homes in the territories that are now Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics, Russia. They were banned from visiting those places for awhile, but now many do. Hopefully, the situation in the Middle East will calm down enough, so that Sandra Tamaris will be able to visit the Jewish state and safely return home.
@ Sanych
Don’t waste your hasbara on me ! I’ve heard the Cherokee, German-in-Poland and Israelis-are-the-descendants-of-the-originally-displaced-blah-blah 100 of times before. Maybe you should study some history….
Oh, and the Indian in the article is a male. You didn’t read it till the end ???
@DY
> the Indian in the article is a male
You are right! And I kept wandering why the author did not claim sex discrimination or sexual abuse while in Israeli detention. Now I have my answer.
> You didn’t read it till the end ???
Yes, I missed that final “He” with a Twitter reference. Shame on me! You are right again!! Free Palestine!!!
“And I kept wandering….”
Yeah, you see, the Jews weren’t “displaced originally”. They mostly just kept wandering…. I wonder why.
And “Free Palestine” takes at least 4 exclamation marks, but thanks for the encouragement anyway.
> I wonder why.
It is because we are wonderful.
And here is your missing exclamation marks – “!” Feel free to use it.
On a different note – looks like evil “moderation” by RS is down. It is almost like the liberation of Paleostine has started with the liberation of this site.
Exactly. It’s not a “one off” story but a story indicative of state policy and practice. An increase in tourism will just increase the number of such events and the number of such reports.
Sanych — it is gratifying to see the conquest of territory argument here. It is precisely the thing that Israel agreed was not acceptable in 1951! So, only Israeli “exceptionalism” allows the conquest to stand today and that argument comes out of thin air altogether! As for the original inhabitants that were, as you say, “displaced”, let’s suppose hypothetically that this was just as the exilists would have it: Big bad imperial state decides to oust Jews from their land and they march them all off. (Why would any power do this unless it wanted the land for other purposes (hint, hint)? Romans never intended to settle there!) But, even so — what happened in the ensuing 2000 years? For two millenniums these people wander everywhere on earth except to the Holy Land, which (according to myth) they missed so sorely. And, after Romans, there were several very accommodating landlords and still no great revival sent Jews scurrying back to Eretz Israel. I’d say that, even if this mythological story were the truth, the wanderers had foregone their original claim through sheer absenteeism. This argument should have considerable merit in Israel because it was embedded in Israeli law precisely for the purpose of claiming land from absent Arab owners!
So we have to leave the conquest of the land at conquest justified by the might of arms and nothing else. Again – Israel signed that this precisely was unacceptable in 1951. Did Israel lie in the signing? Could it be?
Davey,
I am not sure who were the “accomodating landlords” you are referring to and what Israel signed in 1951.
Over the years Israel has demonstrated its readiness to exchange territory for peace (Sinai, Barack offer to Arafat, Gaza). It is Arabs who cannot accept a Jewish state in what they claim to be the heart of Arab land.
Finally, it is impossible for me to have a debate here, since my messages are not published.
[comment deleted–That’ll get you banned every time]
1. Israel signed the UN Accord in 1951 recognizing the illegitimacy of territorial expansion by conquest.
2. Various Muslim Caliphates and the Ottomans were accommodating to ethnic groups, including Jews. All they wanted was to collect taxes.
3. Israel was never prepared to exchange the West Bank for “peace” and did everything possible — including an invasion of Lebanon — to see that it would not get stuck with such a trade. This is well documented and attested to by Barack among others. The unilateral “withdrawal” from Gaza doesn’t count because Israel still controls the region completely and it was not a negotiated withdrawal.
Wrong on all counts. I don’t care to debate these fundamentals here in any case. I just want to be sure that your statements are properly offset for the benefit of others.