“You make me want to vomit.” That was how Israel’s Ambassador to Panama Reda Mansour signed off of a harsh Aug. 3 post describing the security check he and his family endured at Ben-Gurion International Airport. In the post, which was shared hundreds of times, Mansour recounted the humiliating attitude of the guard at the entrance to Israel’s main international airport after the car’s driver said in response to her question that they had come from the Druze village of Isfiya. Mansour described how in her tone and body language, the guard treated him like a “boot camp company commander.” The bizarre reaction of Airport Authority spokesperson Ofer Lefler fanned the flames. “The guard’s job is to check every vehicle entering the airport,” he said, adding, “The security inspection at Ben-Gurion Airport is carried out equally regardless of race, religion, and sex … I suggest the honorable ambassador tell his daughter that the security guard is doing everything she can to protect her and the State of Israel.”
Is that the case? Are the Ben-Gurion security checks truly equitable and impartial? It is safe to assume that almost every Arab citizen of Israel would ridicule such a claim and could provide at least one personal experience of being humiliated during border security checks. The bitter experience of Israeli Arabs clearly shows that Israel’s profiling methods used for the security inspections on people entering and exiting Israel automatically tag all Israeli Arab citizens as a high threat due to their ethnicity.
