What happens when a good old fashioned, white-bred American visits Israel and is immediately subjected to the idiotic scrutiny of its airport security? He takes it in sympathetically and deferentially — even if he would think such suggestions ridiculous in any other security context.
Luckily the Washington Post relayed such a story:
Now it seems that being a Nats fan — and wearing one of those green Nationals hats — not only can be embarrassing but can even get you in a heap of trouble.Take what happened when Tyler Allard, legislative assistant to Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), wore the cap as he returned from a trip last month to Jordan and Israel. An Israeli airport security guard pointed to the hat with the curly W team logo and demanded with a tone of disgust, “Why do you wear that?”
“Good question,” his father, former longtime Senate aide Nick Allard, replied. “They are hopeless. They desperately need relief. You never know when they will hit, and because their defense is so bad, they suffer more than they can dish out. It’s not rational and I can’t explain why, but we are loyal and we love them.” The more he talked, the more upset the security folks became, Nick Allard reports. Their luggage was checked and rechecked, and they were quizzed by security.
When they were finally cleared to board, Allard wrote in an e-mail, the head of the security detail said: “We do not appreciate your Hamas headgear.” Green apparently is a Palestinian “color,” Allard speculated, and the vaguely Arabic Nats logo might have been mistaken for an extremist emblem.
“What the Nats have done this season is almost unforgivable,” Allard notes, “but they are a long way from being mistaken for an organization capable of terrorizing the eastern division much less the Middle East. It’s tough being a Nats fan. Home or away.”
Um, Hamas does not terrorize “the Middle East.” Since he works for Congress, I am sure terrorizing accuracy and logic are second nature to him.
The security people probably thought he was an international solidarity activist.
Think of how dumb the green baseball hat concern is. Baseball hats being associated with Hamas? Come on. Maybe the ignoramus thinks the ‘W’ resembles Arabic script or calligraphy, but you have to be pretty dense to think it is an “extremist emblem” as the author puts it offensively (I think quizzing people about their hats out of security concerns is extremist and silly).
Do I sound angry?
Though Allard takes it as an understandable and innocent mistake, Palestinian and Arab-Americans who pass through that airport get treated twenty times worse on the basis of a family name or even their destination (i.e. Nazareth, where my family is). And the American passport is no shield against Israeli assholeness. They go to great lengths to investigate each visitor, and it goes well beyond the physical safety, but into ideological monitoring. They look for signs of opposition to their state policies and will deny one entry for it.
And Allard’s take-it-kindly attitude legitimizes Israel’s programmatic bullying of visitors. For every happy Allard, there is a strip-searched and interrogated Ahmed.
I am sure next time he goes, Allard will wear the blue Nationals hat and make nice with Israel’s authoritarian-colonial security apparatus.
[tarboush tip: Deadspin via Osamah]
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Interesting… I wore an Oakland A's hat the first time I entered Israel. Had no idea I was representing Hamas or the "Islamic resistance" =P
But I do think that anyone with a "Muslim sounding name" or that happens to be a few shades to dark gets the special treatment upon arriving in Israel.
I once came in to Israel via Taba with a Vietnamese guy that had a "Muslim-ish" name and they subjected him to 12 hours of the most ridiculous bullshit. Calling his mom a whore for dating an Egyptian man was only punctured by retarded questions like "what tribe do you belong to?" and "why is your name like this?"
Posted by Arayus | September 16, 2009, 2:42 pmI'm not Muslim and my name is Spanish, but I am a few shades darker, so I know exacly what you're talking about. Last year, on my trip back home from the "Unracist and Un-Apartheid State of Israel," I was strip searched for about an hour by two young men at Ben Gurion in a special veiled area in the back. Apparently, the metal detector found metal in the area of my jeans right bellow my bellow button, in the groin area. I wonder, do they have zippers in Israel or to they wear stretchy pants? Anyways, they asked me to lower my pants all the way dowb and to raise my shirt up to my armpits. I was like "Urrrrrr . . .?"
Pulling up my pants, I asked the kid (whose name was Ariel) if they did this to everybody at the airport. His response: "Yes sir, we do this to everybody: Jew, Muslim and Christian."
"Bullsh**! Why aren't you searching that guy? You do know that I'm not an Arab," I told him. He then said: "Why do you have Arabic books in your bag?"
What a ridiculous ordeal!
Posted by Los | September 16, 2009, 3:22 pmA group of us were comparing "Israeli customs" stories last night. I was the only female and have yet to go to the region, but the stories coming from the guys were horrifying. It's ridiculous how they question you upon LEAVING the country. I'm not sure how women are treated generally at the border – the two accounts I've heard seemed pretty traumatizing. One of like 9 hours of interrogation (and she was going with an internationally acclaimed magazine) and another of a complete strip search.
Posted by SanaKF | September 16, 2009, 5:47 pmWomen are treated as ridiculously as men. It’s just different tactics, rather than group humiliation they generally pull you to the side to physically intimidate you and treat you like a prisoner. Nothing nearly as traumatic as a strip search has happened to me, but I’ve been detained for 7+ hours at Ben Gurion, had personal items damaged, been threatened with deportation, been told any Israeli soldier in the country could ask me to take my hijab off at any check point to search me, had personal items damaged and told that I needed to carry both my expired and current passport when in the country. One of the many things I can’t get over is the fact that they expect you to willingly hand over your passport to an 18-year-old solider and let him/her walk off with it to parts unknown to “verify” whatever it is they can’t figure out from your photo and the visa they give you at the airport.
Posted by Miriam | September 16, 2009, 8:33 pmSpeaking of visas, I didn't get one when I went in. I told them not to stamp my passport, because I would be going to other Arab countries in the near future. So the guy was cool about it and stamped a strip of paper and when I walked in, the girl security guard at the airport took it.
I had no record of coming in to Israel, so when I went into the West Bank and later came back out, on 2 of the three occasions, they made me get out of the car and told me to "tell" them where my Stamp was. "Where is your stamp?" they kept repeating like robots. I tried to tell them, but they were like "Where is the stamp?"
It kinda felt good as an American to tell them "Look, it's your system, deal with it!" in good, unbroken English. The were being so anal about it. They ask you to get out, to come with them and in the little shack, filled with 4 soldiers (sometimes 3) they ask you "What were you doing here." To think that our money is funding their harrasment.
Posted by Los | September 16, 2009, 9:44 pmRandon question: Has anyone every been "waited for" as you step off plane?
When we landed in Ben Gurion and I got off the plane in December, a girl security was right there at the door waiting for me to ask me: "What is the purpose of your visit to Israel?" She took my passport, checked it and then very rudely, gave it back to you and walked off as she said: "Welcome to Israel"
In the '70's I know of people who, once the plane landed and the cabin door was open, 2 soldiers would come in and ask for them by name, come to their seat and make them stand up and to go with them.
Things have changed, but still . . .
Posted by Los | September 16, 2009, 9:49 pmThat happened to me in the 1985. I was 13 and traveling alone on a US passport to visit my family in Ramallah. I was greeted on the tarmac by an officer who questioned me and then inside where I was separated and questioned again. When leaving back to the US I was strip searched-same the following year my younger brother and I were strip searched (I was 14 he was 9.
Posted by Osamah | September 17, 2009, 8:25 pmStrip searching seems to be the norm towards women, especially those women without American or European passports.
One of the couples waiting in line for interrogation with us was from Kazakhstan and they constantly took the Kazakhi women away to be strip searched (over an 8 hour period). It was pretty effective in psychologically damaging the woman, and really pissing off her husband.
Posted by Arayus | September 16, 2009, 10:12 pmStrip searching seems to be the norm towards women, especially those women without American or European passports.
One of the couples waiting in line for interrogation with us was from Kazakhstan and they constantly took the Kazakhi women away to be strip searched (over an 8 hour period). It was pretty effective in psychologically damaging the woman, and really pissing off her husband.
btw wasn't their a documentary on this where even a holocaust survivor was subjected through this nonsense?
Posted by Arayus | September 16, 2009, 10:13 pmI'm loving your anecdotal evidence, Arayus. Why not just claim you personally witnessed IDF soldiers sodomizing chimpanzees or something?
Posted by programmer craig | September 16, 2009, 11:57 pmlmao!!!
Posted by eagle007blogger | September 17, 2009, 9:57 amhopefully your arse landed on Benji's nose!
Posted by s.d. | September 22, 2009, 5:57 amHere are the documentaries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CG2NPkIKRM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIBDUChaizQ
Posted by arbguy | September 17, 2009, 1:14 amI can't believe they strip searched a holocaust survivor……
Thanks for the links.
Posted by Arayus | September 17, 2009, 7:43 amWhy in the world are non-Jewish, non-Muslim, non-Arab people who hate Israel (like Los and Arayus) traveling to Israel so much? I'd say in your cases Israeli customs is hassling the right people… they'd prolly rather you didn't visit, and it was quite perceptive on their part to be able to pick up on your shitty attitudes during a routine customs check. I'm seriously wondering how they could have known Arayus's Vietnamese friend's mother was dating an Arab guy, though? Is that some kind of Mossad secret agent shit? Or was Arayus's Vietnamese friend being a smartass?
Posted by programmer craig | September 16, 2009, 11:54 pmUm, they don't want to go to Israel, they want to visit our homeland, Palestine, but sadly it was usurped. And the price for that is that people who know what's up face harassment by the colonizers.
Clearly, hating a government's policies does not mean one should not visit the place. Does such an elementary distinction really not occur to you?
After years of your mindlessly trolling these pages, it is a safe bet you have no ability to relate to such an experience as solidarity with the displaced and oppressed.
Posted by KABOBfestWill | September 17, 2009, 5:12 amPC, you're the kind of person who's perfectly fine with the idea of harrassing innocent people who came to spend Christmas in Palestine (the birthplace Christianity). If this harrasment was done to me in any other country, I would never go back which is why Israel does it, so that people won't have a desire to ever come back.
You really think it's about security? American and European airports perform the same checks, without the detentions and the strip searches, because this harrasment would never fly. But for some reason, it happens in Israel. Why? Because they are so PARANOID, that anything and everything scares the bejezuz out of them, including a small teddy bear, which they pass through the X-Ray machine and still, they think it has something in it, so they rip off it's head, take out the cotton and throw it back in the bag. No sense whatsoever!
I hope you never have to go through something like this, because you know what, I wouldn't even wish it on someone like you who can't and won't ever know what it feels like until it happens to you.
Posted by Los | September 17, 2009, 5:45 amGive it a rest, Los. They hassle you because you are an undesirable. It's their effing JOB to hassle undesirables at the border. They don't want you there and they are telling you that in the clearest way that they can. If you insist on travelling through the Israeli security anyway then you'll just have to deal with it. My guess is you are as outrageously obnoxious as you can possibly be and that's why they hassle you, because they don't make it a habit of harassing western Christians visiting Israel for no apparent reason, do they? They want the tourism and they want the good PR. You like to walk around with that chip on your shoulder tehn don't cry about the consequences. I bet US border security would give you a hard time too if you were sporting that kind of 'tude.
Posted by programmer craig | September 17, 2009, 9:59 pmIt's confirmed: PC is a RACIST! Just 'cause I'm brown you think it gives them the right to do what they do? I guess Undesirable means to be brown-skined, like an Arab in your dictionary.
How can you be obnoxious when you step off a plane to a person who's waiting for you and you never even met? You want to know why? Because you're traveling to Palestine with a friend who just happens to be Arab and so what? They harrass me too?
Just goes to show you that Israel is a racist state, who harrases people just they look Arab or Muslim, Non-Israeli in other words. I bet your sorry white ass has been to Israel and they gave you absolutely no trouble, because you're White, like them. The Arabs and the Ethiopians for that matter, can tell you all about racism.
Posted by Los | September 18, 2009, 12:50 amPC, you're the kind of person who's perfectly fine with the idea of harrassing innocent people who came to spend Christmas in Palestine (the birthplace Christianity).
PS: You are right. I'm perfectly fine with that. It's their country, and it's their border. Are you the "kind of person" who thinks he gets to dictate how sovereign nations secure their border?
Posted by programmer craig | September 17, 2009, 10:03 pmIt doesn't matter, because you know what? I'm glad to go through the harrasment. When they speak to me in broken ass English and I speak unaccented English to them, it just shows the servants that hey, the American Boss is here. I just smiled and laughed off their searc. It's especially great when they try to practice their "Arabic" with you and then they realize your native language is Spanish. It shows them how wrong they can be in their racial assessments.
PC, here's a tip, if ever you get asked to step off to the side or you get detained: Flirt with the guards and soldiers and they'll let you go much faster. Talk a little dirty talk and throw out some compliments on their looks, their clothes, their jewelry ANYTHING. The girls are such sukers for the compliments and they eat that shit up like cupcakes, smiling and blushing as you tell them that you love their Star of David necklace and their curly hair.
Just goes to show you that in addition to being racist, Israel is also a sex-crazed nation whose guards and soldiers are sex deprived.
Posted by Los | September 18, 2009, 3:34 amLos,
You're right on target about Israel being a sex-crazed nation.
Posted by s.d. | September 22, 2009, 6:10 amProgrammer Craig, you really ought to travel there and experience it for yourself. It is routinely humiliating, even when no strip searches are done. You are guilty whether you or not you are guilty; there is no innocence. One can argue that such treatment is part of a security strategy–and there may be some evidence that it is, I can't tell you that–but I can confirm that there's a lot serious psychological bullshit that goes on and those security types lord that power over you until you feel like a piece of shit or wish you were dead. It has nothing to do with attitude.
Posted by Phil | September 17, 2009, 12:12 amThen don't go there, Phil. What's the problem?
Posted by programmer craig | September 17, 2009, 10:00 pm"And Allard’s take-it-kindly attitude legitimizes Israel’s programmatic bullying of visitors. For every happy Allard, there is a strip-searched and interrogated Ahmed."
great finish.
Posted by Sarah | September 17, 2009, 12:34 amUm, Hamas does not terrorize “the Middle East.”
Yes they do. Israel is part of the Middle East, isn't it?
Posted by eagle007blogger | September 17, 2009, 10:09 amYou are 100% correct EG, but Israel is what, like .01 percent of the Middle East?
To say that Hamas does not Terrorize the Middle East is actually correct. They don't terrorize the whole region, just an unwanted, resented, illegal and foreign presence therein.
It's true if you think about it
Posted by Johnny Palestine | September 17, 2009, 7:07 pmWell, Johnny, since the Arab-Israeli conflict is the driving force behind international terrorism and HAMAS is fronting for Palestinians these days then HAMAS gets to take the heat for the whole thing, eh?
It's true if you think about it.
Posted by programmer craig | September 17, 2009, 10:10 pmTrue Programmer, the Arab-Israeli conflict is the driving force behind international terrorism . . . thanks to Israel. The Israelis created Terrorism and the Palestinians copied you guys and kept it going, perfecting what you could never ever perfect.
Look, don't try to act like Israel isn't or has never been a terrorist state. Israel elected terrorists to be their leaders: Begin, Shamir, Sharon were all high quality Terrorist material! And the Israelis get all scared when Hamas gets democratically elected.
Just because Hamas has the balls to come out and say "We want do destroy the state of Israel" and Israel is too much of a coward to say "We want to destroy the Palestinians" except on paper or through military oppression, is what is all comes down to.
You're either a civilian terrorist (like the Palestinians) or your an official terrorist wearing suits and carrying out terror in an office, through a telephone.
It's like stealing, right? You either steal with a gun (like a common thief) or you steal with a pen (like the President of Mexico). Either way, stealing IS stealing.
Same goes for Terrorism, buddy! If you can figure this out, well, maybe you have some brains in that hallow head of yours after all.
Posted by Johnny Palestine | September 18, 2009, 12:49 pmWell, Johnny, since the Arab-Israeli conflict is the driving force behind international terrorism and HAMAS is fronting for Palestinians these days then HAMAS gets to take the heat for the whole thing, eh?
It's true if you think about it.
Posted by programmer craig | September 17, 2009, 10:10 pmHamas 'harming Gaza opponents'
A rights group has accused Palestinian organisation Hamas of killing or maiming alleged collaborators and political opponents in Gaza.
Posted by eagle007blogger | September 20, 2009, 2:53 amHamas 'harming Gaza opponents'
A rights group has accused Palestinian organisation Hamas of killing or maiming alleged collaborators and political opponents in Gaza.
"Hamas forces in Gaza have engaged in abductions, unlawful killings, torture and death threats against those they accuse of 'collaborating' with Israel," says the report.
It says the same violence has been inflicted on "opponents and critics" of the Hamas administration.
Many witnesses and victims are said to be too frightened to come forward.
But one victim told investigators how he had been taken from his home by masked men and shot in both legs.
Some of those killed are said to have been shot dead while receiving hospital treatment.
Amnesty has called for an end to the violence and is urging the Hamas leadership to set up an independent commission to look into its allegations.
Posted by eagle007blogger | September 20, 2009, 2:58 amList of Hamas suicide attacks
09/06/2009
Three Hamas women arrested for plotting suicide attack against Fatah
By The Associated Press
Posted by eagle007blogger | September 20, 2009, 2:49 amBravo to those brave women who won't take "Fuck off" for an answer when they inquire into justice being served for their murdered parents, siblings and children by them Fatah goons.
As far as i am concerned, Fatah is just a stooge of the Israeli imperialist agenda, and legitimate targets. Also considering that West Bank police are not impartial in their duties; where party comes b4 state. Where the police has been used as hitmen by the party.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090394.html
Posted by OooKhalid | September 21, 2009, 1:17 amUm, Hamas does not terrorize “the Middle East.”
Yes, Hamas does in fact terrorize the Middle East…
List of Hamas suicide attacks
Three Hamas women arrested for plotting suicide attack against Fatah
09/06/2009
By The Associated Press
Hamas 'harming Gaza opponents'
A rights group has accused Palestinian organisation Hamas of killing or maiming alleged collaborators and political opponents in Gaza.
Hamas rockets a war crime: Human Rights Watch
"Hamas forces violated the laws of war both by firing rockets deliberately and indiscriminately at Israeli cities and by launching them from populated areas and endangering Gazan civilians," HRW programme director Iain Levine said.
Gaza/Israel: Hamas Rocket Attacks on Civilians Unlawful
Launches from Populated Areas Endanger Israelis and Palestinians
Posted by eagle007blogger | September 22, 2009, 6:32 am