This is so UNACCEPTABLE, and scary.

Thanks everyone for posting. This thread has been quite educational.

I never realized that Reid had attempted to fly other days, and then was actually able to get on a flight.

I understand Isreal is suppose to be the best at screening flights- they have good reason to be.

I would never sit still for that. I would get in trouble for being snarky. Clearly they are asking for data they have no right to having.

A friend of mine used to work for a computer security company that is headquartered in Israel. They changed his job so that he would have to go there pretty often. After going through this a couple of times he told them to remove the requirement or he would quit. He ended up going to another company headquartered here in the Bay Area that was very happy to have him.

My worry is that this is an example of the "security at any costs" mind set. My reaction to it is to encourage the cost to be high - don't do any business that would require me to go to Israel. They are not enough of an economic power where I would need to do work there more than they need me to do it. :)

Similarly, my desire to visit Israel is outweighed by my negative feelings about TLV "security", regardless of any attempts to justify the supposed need for what I perceive to be harassment.

There are thousands of other places that will not interrogate me after I spend money in their country. China and Singapore stamped my passport with no questions asked and they are two fairly authoritarian nations.

The TLV agents didn't interrogate the OP based on authoritarian reasons. They did it because of an abundance of caution, due to the fact that their country (unlike China and Singapore) is surrounded and outnumbered 100 to 1 by people who support the concept (and practice) of killing Israeli children.

It does appear the agent spent overmuch time on the OP, and while we don't want to give them the benefit of the doubt, they do have the right under their laws to do that. There is perhaps a violation of privacy but not of civil rights.

That may be so, but I do not see the need to interrogate someone, read their email, etc if they and their belongings are screened for real weapons. It's just too intrusive to me, even though it would be nice to see Israel someday.

No argument there on the OP's experience. Israel is a sovereign nation; I don't personally want to experience the treatment that is given to people leaving TLV.

Exactly. If I want to visit London I'll fly to CDG and take the Chunnel. Yes, it's bad enough that I would rather give those cheese eating surrender monkeys my money....

The motivations behind the interrogation being authoritarian or not doesn't much matter; what matters is the objective(s). The objective of securing the flights can be achieved through other means than interrogations of this sort.

An "abundance of caution" at airports due to the situation in the neighborhood does not draw much sympathy from me. While Israel does not get along well with many of its neighbors and many of its neighbors don't get along well with Israel, Israel is surrounded by neighboring states where the three largest cities in each and every one of those countries can be wiped out by Israel in a matter of 60 minutes. None of the neighboring states which surround Israel have the capability to wipe out Israel's three largest cities even in 60 hours. This is to show that talking about the neighboring states takes us into OMNI-land. Let's stick to security for flights to/from Israel. In Israel, airport security is primarily about non-state actors, not state actors, so population figures of "100 to 1" don't really move me.

Yes, there are people who kill Israeli children (or at least want to), but then again there are people who kill Arab children (or at least want to) too. [Last I checked, the number of Arab children killed by Israelis in the past two decades far exceeded the number of Israeli children killed by Arabs -- and the excuse of "collateral damage" is no more acceptable to me than the nonsense of "they're most all part of the IDF today or will be".] Will they blow up people on planes if given an opportunity? I have little doubt of that. However, to stop that tragedy from happening, questioning of the sort to which the OP was subjected is not needed at airports.

Privacy is a bed rock of civil liberty, a bulwark against authoritarianism. Strip away privacy and a window to "thought-crime" prosecution (including "conspiracy" charges) and persecution opens wider and wider. That said, my critique of the questioning has far less to do with privacy/civil liberties than it has to do with practical and moral efficacy. The same ends can be achieved without the questioning and without morally questionable practices.

'Nuff said.

I think it's worthwhile to note that the typical interview at Tel Aviv is not terribly lengthy and not everyone undergoes an indepth scrutiny of their baggage.

In January, I was interviewed for less than five minutes, my bags were scanned, and the only item that received additional inspection was my laptop (they did not swab it, they just looked at it.) The entire process, including interview, baggage scanning, check-in, immigration, and security took 30-40 minutes. That's far better than Charles de Gaulle in Business Class.

The interview was thus only a little bit longer than those at European and South American airports. They never asked for hotel receipts, etc., which can be the case in London, Amsterdam, and other airports.

Although my religion certainly greased the wheels, I was still a male travelling alone, not visiting relatives, carrying a camera, laptop, headphones, a bunch of books, and so on. I wasn't wearing a kipah or carrying a torah during the interview. And my Hebrew is lousy, so we spoke in English.

The bottom line: it's not always quite as invasive or privacy-breaching as it sounds.

It didn't just grease the wheels it was a free pass.

When my former college roommate was dating an Israeli girl (that I knew as well) they went to Israel a few times. My roommate is this big buffed Hispanic guy, and the reason that the US special forces loves Hispanics is that when you're in the middle east they look like locals. So he would get really hassled until she came over to "rescue" him. She speaks the language, has the passport, so she "cleared" him.

I really doubt that you would ever feel the love of their security.

I'm an opponent of racist profiling and yet repeatedly visit Israel.

"'Nuff said"?

Declarative parading as argumentum, I think.

I think that ipsi dixit would be apropos.

ipsi dixit apropos "ipsi dixit"