Israel Matzav

I'm Fatima, fly me!

Robert Spencer posts this picture and asks what measures Delta Airlines (her employer at Reagan National Airport in Washington) has taken to ensure that a hijab-clad clerk is not going to give a Mujahadein a break. Answer, of course, none.

Of course, there is no doubt whatsoever that the hijabbed Delta clerk is as honest and patriotic as the day is long. But suppose, just suppose, that a hijabbed Muslim woman Misunderstood the Religion of Peace in the same way as do jihad terrorists such as Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be Christmas tree lighting bomber of Portland, Oregon. And suppose further that she applied for a job with Delta. What screening techniques would Delta employ to make sure that she wouldn't give her brother mujahedin a needed break that would enable them to carry out a jihad terror attack on a Delta airplane? What line of questioning would Delta follow in interviewing that applicant in order to rule out such a possibility?

Why, Delta would do nothing of the sort. Nor would any other airline. If any airline did question a hijabbed applicant that way, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) would be filing a discrimination suit within minutes.

And we as Americans are more or less willingly acquiescing to this state of affairs. One day another plane might blow out of the sky and another group of jihadis will claim their houris for murdering another few hundred free people, but at least we will not have "profiled" or succumbed to "Islamophobia." And that's what is clearly more important than a few hundred more American lives.

Of course, the US is not alone in that situation - far from it. The last time I flew through London Heathrow, it seemed like at least half the security detail was 'Asian' as they so delicately put it. Recall this story that I first posted in 2006.

Three years ago, I flew Tel Aviv - London - Boston and back with one of my children. Tel Aviv - London - Tel Aviv was El Al. On the way back, I had to go downstairs in London, identify my bags, open them, and ensure that nothing had been added during the course of my first flight. They even made me open the box with my brand new computer (on which I am typing this post) because Homeland Security had put tape around the box indicating that they inspected it. When I asked the security personnel why I had to open the computer, she reminded me that "the people who blew up Mike's Place worked at Heathrow." She was right. But the Brits still haven't figured that out: Two weeks ago, it was reported that one of the terrorists who was arrested in connection with the plot to blow up planes flying between London and the US was a Heathrow employee with an all-area access pass.

That's not even my only Heathrow story. Back in the early part of the last decade (post 9/11), I got all the way to the gate of my American flight to Boston before someone thought to ask me whether I had packed my own bags. Of course, by then they had been checked already, so it didn't matter anyway.

For the record El Al has its own security. At every airport in the World to which they fly.

Do you feel secure flying Fatima?

Labels: airport security, Delta Airlines, London Heathrow Airport, Reagan National Airport

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:09 PM