By Jody Lee
radio host, author, political and lifestyle blogger, media consultant
Published: December 29, 2009

(“El Al” – Hebrew for “to the skies”)

I watched an interview this morning with the former head of El Al air lines.  The topic was, of course, why what happened on Christmas day would never have happened on an Israeli airliner.

What happened was unthinkable – yet another terrorist boards an America-bound plane with explosives on his person. 

If not for a quick-thinking passenger, the terrorists would have succeeded in his goal.  So much for airline security.

Naturally our first order of business should be coming up with a suspect list that is actually COMPLETE and SHARED WITH ALL AGENCIES CONCERNED, and that officials actually READ.  For goodness sake, this terrorist-wanna-be’s dad TOLD US what his son had planned and he STILL got away with it.  No excuse.

The El Al official’s plain-talk made a lot of sense.  Here is some of what I came away with –

Profile the heck out of passengers.  Quit worrying about offending someone and worry instead about protecting someone – everyone.

Don’t limit profiling to Muslims.  He spoke of employees trained to carefully watch people for suspicious behavior.  Not the usual suspicious behavior you and I might notice, but subtle signs that professionals are trained to pick up.  And when they come across such a person, do not hesitate to take them aside, thoroughly check their papers, their baggage, etc.  WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DO THAT, I say, so quit tippy-toeing around DO IT!

He poo-pooed the idea of full body scans of passengers, and especially the ridiculous idea of not allowing passengers to leave their seats or open a book for an hour before the flight ends.  He laughed at the idea, as well he should.  What a bunch of idiots our airline officials are.

At this address you will find a rundown of some of their basic security procedures, the cost of which – while tremendous – is surely no more than what we currently throw away on much less effective measures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al

The idea that fear of offending someone keeps our officials from more effectively securing our airplanes and protecting passengers from terrorists is abhorrent to me. 

Surely it is to you as well.

By the way, did you catch our President’s reference to the terrorist as “isolated”?  Does he really think that this guy was the only terrorist out there planning to try to bring death to Americans and fear and mayhem to our country?  If he does, then our President is the one who is isolated.  Now THAT’S scary.