BTW, Splinter, when we got stopped it was because our tickets were flagged; remember I learned to spot the flag and went up to the gate security guy, handed him our tickets, and told him he needed to take us aside for a random security check?
They flagged the tickets because we were flying domestically, but the tickets had been bought overseas.
Anyway, racial profiling, and to a greater extent behavioral profiling, saves lives every day here. I've absolutely no qualms with being asked how I'm doing by a security guard every time I try to board a bus here (my main mode of transportation, which I take at least twice a day) - he's getting me to talk in order to ascertain both my accent (to make sure it's not an Arabic accent) as well as my response to being confronted (am I cool with it, do I get defensive or nervous, etc).
Neither do I have qualms about having my bag searched and having to walk through a metal detector gate thingy every time I enter or leave the (crappy old) mall/office complex I work in. I know most of the security guards, they know me, and I'm
very grateful that they
still search my bag (everyone's bags get searched) - I'd rather not have some Arab worker in the building form a friendship with the guard and be able to get through the door on that basis alone, without being checked. Such people, while they may not be terrorists, are the perfect target for recruitment by Hamas as "insiders".
I make sure to specifically thank any guard who checks my bag every time I go through a security check at a mall, grocery store, pharmacy, cafe, restaurant, movie theater, etc. They risk their lives, doing things that gets them yelled at by impatient people, day in, day out, so I can sit in a restaurant in downtown Jerusalem, in the middle of this crazy situation, with
FAR less fear than I would experience walking the streets of NY, DC, or London at night.
