US Checkpoints

By Mladen Andrijasevic

I am just back to Israel from a week long trip to Minneapolis and a day stopover in New York City.

What immediately struck me were the huge airport security lines endlessly zigzagging towards the electronic devices that scan your bags, laptop and your person after you had taken the shoes off. They are trying to find out what is in your bag and pockets whereas Israeli security concentrate on what is in your mind.

My laptop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art had to got through a reboot to prove that it was what it was, and I was give a yellow slip of paper to be shown the guards and told that I should not make sudden turns else it may swipe a Rembrandt.

I was thinking how these US checkpoints have become accepted as a part of our war with the jihadists. No Amnesty International and NGO protests against the JFK checkpoint or the Twin Cities one. No UN Security Council meetings denouncing the checkpoints at US airports. No State Department requests to show “goodwill gestures” toward the public and ease some of them.

No one makes the connection that Israeli checkpoints serve precisely the same purpose. Why is it that when it comes to Israel all logic seems to evaporate?