As the Transportation Security Administration faces a barrage of criticism, some indignant Americans are calling for the “Israelification” of US airports — as though the security procedures used in a tiny Middle Eastern ethnocracy with one international airport could easily be scaled up for America.
Ironically, Israelification is not what we need — it’s what we already have.
Consider the real outrages of the last decade that, simply because they were done in the name of national security, the majority of Americans found tolerable:
- a global war on terrorism that led to massive increases in defense spending, the creation of multiple new intelligence and security agencies, and Washington’s enslavement to fear-based politics — that was OK;
- with disregard for international law, the invasion of Iraq on a false pretext — that was OK;
- the kidnapping, secret imprisonment and torture of individuals most of whom had nothing to do with 9/11 — that was OK;
- the authorization of warrantless wiretaps — that was OK;
- the implementation of a remote-controlled assassination program — that was OK;
- in short, the normalization of war crimes all of which were deemed justifiable because of 9/11 — that was OK;
- but “don’t touch my junk” — there are limits to what Americans will tolerate.
TSA administrators are no doubt frustrated by the fact that had the new pat-down procedures been implemented in late 2001, they would probably have been welcomed by a population that widely supported the idea of doing “whatever it takes” to stop “the terrorists.”
The problem, then and now, is that air transportation security is imagined to be about catching terrorists. On this count, the TSA seems to have a poor record.
At Slate, Juliet Lapidos notes:
In May, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that SPOT’s [“Screening of Passengers by Observational Techniques”] annual cost is more than $200 million and that as of March 2010 some 3,000 behavior detection officers [BDOs] were deployed at 161 airports but had not apprehended a single terrorist. (Hundreds of illegal aliens and drug smugglers, however, were arrested due to the program between 2004 and 2008.) What’s more, the GAO noted that at least 16 individuals later accused of involvement in terrorist plots flew 23 different times through U.S. airports since 2004, but TSA behavior-detection officers didn’t sniff out any of them.
Does this imply that the TSA’s BDOs have yet to pinpoint the way a terrorist walks, talks, or dresses? The TSA’s “failure” in this instance might simply mean that the individuals who escaped their attention were not at those times actually doing anything suspicious.
The point is, there are justifiable and unjustifiable grounds to turn a person into an object of suspicion. A system that simply on the basis of religion, ethnicity or nationality, regards a person with suspicion, is unjust and will be ineffective. Indeed, a system which even regards its targets as “the terrorists” conjures up the false notion that it is dealing with a class of people rather than a class of behavior.
Which brings me back to my initial claim that the Israelification of America is already deeply entrenched. Israel’s fear of the Arab world has been transplanted into American consciousness to such a degree that we are moving toward the absurd conclusion that if this country operated even more like Israel than it already does, then we would be able to feel as safe as the Israelis do.
Living inside a fortress and defining ones existence in terms of threats posed by eternal enemies, is a good way of justifying spending more and more on increasingly elaborate fortifications. But those who invest deeply in this mindset and who profit from its perpetuation, have the least interest in exploring what we need to understand most: why our enemies think the way they do. Delve into that question, and the notion of eternal enmity quickly evaporates — thus the perpetuation of the myth that we are under threat not because of what we do but because of who we are.
Meanwhile, next time a TSA officer offends your dignity, spare a thought for the Palestinians who while passing through IDF checkpoints suffer vastly worse when attempting no more than to travel from one town to the next.
The issue is not just airports. There is an assumption amongst Israel’s radical Zionist leaders that just because they have an American passport they can come to rule America much as they seek to rule the Middle East. It is sheer chutzpah to assume that “God’s chosen” would dominate the “dumb goyim” as some do. In a recent act of disgusting arrogance, some are reporting that the Zionist money bags are squeezing the “new” Congress into liberating Pollard, a filthy traitor and coke-head. The issue is not Pollard as much as it is they overcoming their fear of being swallowed up by the illusion that they control America. But the Arabs are increasingly able to hold them back and Americans increasingly outraged at how post 9/11 we were manipulated by the neocons into their Middle East “WORLD WAR IV” against Islam.
Nevertheless, the chutzpah is bravado and it is needed for in the Zionist psychosis (a poisoning of the Zionist mind by an endless all or none notion) there is only Holocaust or massacre of all who stand in the way of ever expanding Israel. US-Israeli relations are a stressed dry desert forest and the Pollard issue is the spark that will initiate the American Krystanacht. After that, the umbilical cord off which Israel live would crimp and it would die of inanition. Better to integrate with the Arab brethren than try to destroy them all like locust. Israel is weak, corrupt and insane. Those who really care would do well to restrain it for the sake of our Jewish brothers that have so enriched the West as part of us, not of Zionism.
This Thanksgiving is a golden opportunity for Israel to humbly thank America for all that Israel is rather than laugh at that “Schwartza Obama who we now hold tightly by the balls.” Reality is a lot more complicated that the either/or of Zionist psychosis.
Happy Thanksgiving to our entire family of American Jewish, Christian Muslim and all other brothers.
We do indeed STILL have a lot to be thankful for.
THIS IS SICK CHUTZPAH!!!!
Pollard Release Builds In Congress
MiddleEastNewsline – November 21, 2010
WASHINGTON [MENL] — Congress has been garnering support for the release of
U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard.
House Democrats have been signing a letter that called on President
Obama to release Pollard, who has served 25 years of a life sentence for
relaying classified data to Israel. The letter said Pollard should be
released out of humanitarian concern.
“My own hope is that if the president were to do this it would
contribute to the political climate within the democracy of Israel to
enhance the peace process,” Rep. Barney Frank, a leading Democrat, said.
Frank, a Massachussetts Democrat who initiated the letter, said 39
Democrats have already signed the petition for Pollard’s release. He said
the letter was drafted in coordination with American Jewish organizations.
“My own hope is that if the president were to do this it would
contribute to the political climate within the democracy of Israel to
enhance the peace process,” Frank said.
At a Nov. 18 news conference, Frank said House Republicans refused to
sign the letter for Pollard’s release. He cited fears by GOP members of an
electoral backlash based on national security concerns.
“The current nature of the Republican party is that this is not the
thing to do,” Frank said.
The letter said the Pollard’s life sentence was far more severe than
what others convicted of similar offenses have received. Over the last 15
years, some of those convicted of relaying classified data, including
Egyptian and Saudi nationals, received as little as two years in prison.
“We believe that there has been a great disparity from the standpoint of
justice between the amount of time Mr. Pollard has served and the time that
has been served — or not served at all — by many others who were found
guilty of similar activity on behalf of nations that, like Israel, are not
adversarial to us,” the letter said.
The letter, said to have been supported by some in the former
administration of President Ronald Reagan, said the 25 years Pollard has
already served comprised sufficient punishment and deterrence. The Democrats
said the letter did not mean to question Pollard’s prosecution or sentence.
“Such an exercise of the clemency power would not in any way imply doubt
about his guilt, nor cast any aspersions on the process by which he was
convicted,” the letter said.
—
SEE ALSO:
Doc: Original Letter to Pres. Obama signed by 39 Congressmen calling for
Release of Pollard (PDF) at http://www.jonathanpollard.org
JUSTICE FOR JONATHAN POLLARD
Website: http://www.JonathanPollard.org
Follow J4JP on Twitter:http://twitter.com/J4JPollard
——————————————–
IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: http://www.imra.org.il
What has this Congress come to? Pollard is a traitor to his country. He should have been hanged, instead, was given a Life Sentence, supposedly so he could think about his crime. If he is to be let go, then all the prisoners in every prison should be also. This is another B.S. trip of the Israeli’s running that mad house there in Israel to get as much as they can before they commit their own version of the Holocaust upon their own people. It’s no wonder that the Jewish population in this country don’t want to live there. Perhaps it’s a nice visit, but that’s all. I suppose it could be compared to the Muslims trek to Mecca, or the Harri Krishna pilgrimage to India. Perhaps that the real reason the Jews around the world go to visit! They have made their bed, now they have to sleep in it alone, without the U.S.A.
“Israelification is not what we need — it’s what we already have.”
DE Tedooru- Pollard Release Builds In Congress
Well,well Senator Frank an American but member of ‘The’ Tribe in coordination with tribal American Jewish organizations in his letter to the U.S. President hopes the humanitarian release of a convected spy and traitor will contribute to the political ‘democracy’ of Israel.
I am not sure what‘CHUTZPAH’is but such a request is not only sick but delusional.
How can any member of the congress even consider this when one of the most widely recognized political prisoners in the world,has spent more than 33 years in some of the cruelest prisons in the United States, and who was unjustly railroaded by FBI manipulation of testimony and condemned to a double life sentence for the alleged shooting death of two FBI agents in 1975?
I am referring to Native American artist, writer, and activist Leonard Peltier.
Passing critical information to a foreign country is an act of a spying and incurs the death penalty. The evidence of such an act in Pollard’s case has never been seriously questioned and his sentence justly even amended to exclude the death penalty.
Peltier has been in prison for an even longer term and in the question of evidence for his alleged crime -a federal prosecutor admitted that the only evidence against Leonard Peltier was the fact that he was present at a shoot out with FBI agents and “we can’t prove who shot the agents.” The court realized that and Peltier could have been found innocent if the real evidence hadn’t been unduly withheld by the FBI.A new trial was ordered but denied on the basis of technical errors and the protest at the White House by hundreds of FBI agents undercut Clinton’s promise of clemency.
http://defenestrator.org/leonard_peltier – in case a review of this travesty of justice needs one’s review.
Indeed –the Israelification of America is can be easily seen as already deeply entrenched when the release of a traitor is viewed as contributing to another countries democracy while a native of American will most likely die in prison as a mark of democracy in the U.S.- that the bond of Israel and America is stronger than its bond to the indigenous people of the land it consumed to make the New Israel.Happy Thanksgiving….
RE: the “Israelification” of US airports – Woodward
MY COMMENT: For what it’s worth, see below. – (I certainly can’t vouch for the first source, but Haaretz is highly regarded.)
FROM THE INTERNET, 01/18/10:
ALSO SEE: “Israeli firm blasted for letting would-be plane bomber slip through” ~ By Yossi Melman, Haaretz (Israel), 01/10/10
• Screening system developed by ICTS International should have flagged Nigerian passenger as security threat.