Originally Posted by
JakiChan
You are Jewish. Your wife speaks Hebrew. That probably helped a lot.
A college friend of mine is Israeli. She dated my roomate (and thereby kinda became my roomate...I would be like "You *do* have your own apartment, don't you?"). They dated for quite a while and went on a couple of trips to Israel. My roommate was Hispanic. (He's still Hispanic - he's just no longer my roommate.) When they would enter and exit he would get the 10th degree until she "rescued" him. It's hard, on the surface, to tell the difference between some Hispanics and some darker Arabs. He worked on his "East LA" accent. "Yo, homes, I'm American esse." He said it didn't help.
I like that -- "Yo, homes!"
Seriously, though, I think the primary difference between Israeli and U.S. security is that the former focuses on eliminating those who might be threats, whereas the latter is focused (in theory) on eliminating those implements that might by used by those who are threats. I've not been through Israeli security, but I notice that security in the PRC works the same way -- as an obvious American tourist (with his obviously Chinese wife), we are given the quickest and most cursory inspection, as well as a lot of latitude when I "forget" that I have a couple of mini-bottles of vodka in my carryon (I'm always allowed to drink them, and usually offer one to the inspectors, though they always decline).
I understand the concern about ethnic profiling, particularly in the context of non-trained "professionals" like our own TSA, but I can see why Israeli security people would be less concerned with a couple of middle-aged, Hebrew-speaking American Jews than a young man who might fit the profile of someone of concern.