An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday by agents at JFK Airport.
Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.
“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”
TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”
People like Lenore Zimmerman blow up planes all the time, don't they?
In an earlier post, I talked about the Defense Ministry's apology to New York Times photographer Lynsey Addario and why I thought it odd that she apparently classified it as more outrageous than the 48 hours of sexual abuse she endured at the hands of the Libyans.
In case some of you are wondering why Addario would have had such an extensive search at a crossing from Gaza into Israel, let me remind you.
Let's go to the videotape.
Ah, you say, but Addario isn't even an Arab. Neither was Anne Marie Murphy.
The plan was to plant explosives in the belly of the plane; the explosives were to be transported by a duped and innocent passenger entirely unaware of their existence. El Al security agents at the London stop uncovered the explosives and prevented the terror attack. After the discovery of the explosives, local authorities took over and arrested the passenger; later also arresting the man who sent her, a Jordanian Arab named Nizar Hindawi.
The passenger, a 32 year old Irish woman named Anne-Marie Murphy, who was six months pregnant, arrived at the check-in desk some forty minutes before it closed. She was approached and questioned by the deputy security officer as part of routine passenger security checks.
No suspicious signs were revealed during her questioning. The passenger, who gave the impression of being a simple woman, responded in the negative when asked if she had been given anything to bring to Israel. During the questioning she was calm, and revealed no sign of nervousness. In the check of her baggage, suspicious signs came to light: a Commodore scientific calculator with an electric cable was found; the bag raised suspicion due to its unexpectedly heavy weight. The security officer’s examination of the bag revealed explosives concealed in the bottom of the bag, under a double panel. He called the police, and the passenger was arrested.
Examination of the bomb by the local police revealed a detonator in the Commodore calculator coated with plastic Simtex explosives, connected to an electronic timing device which was set to activate the major explosives cache hidden inside the bag. An examination of the timer mechanism, once it was disconnected from the explosives, revealed that the jet was intended to explode about two and a quarter hours after its takeoff for Israel, at a height of 39,000 feet, when it would have been airborne between Italy and Greece.
Addario was part of the media? So was Ahlam Tamimi. For that matter, so was Nezar Hindawi - Murphy's boyfriend. Or at least, so he claimed.
Both the Washington Post (Hat Tip: Soccer Dad) and HuffPo (Hat Tip: Memeorandum) picked up an AP story about Israel's Defense Ministry apologizing to pregnant New York Times photographer Lynsey Addario, who was allegedly forced to walk through an x-ray machine three times, and then to strip down to her underwear, while going through security crossing from Gaza into Israel.
I'm not going to get into all the gory details - the Defense Ministry claims that the request to avoid the x-ray machine was not received properly. I just want to focus on one line in this report:
In the Oct. 25 letter sent by the newspaper said Addario, a Pulitzer Prize winner who is based in India and has worked in more than 60 countries, had never been treated with “such blatant cruelty.”
That's pretty blunt. Does the name Lynsey Addario ring a bell for any of you dear readers? It should.
One man grabbed her breasts – the start of a pattern of sexual harassment she endured over the ensuing 48 hours.
‘There was a lot of groping,’ she said. ‘Every man who came in contact with us basically felt every inch of my body short of what was under my clothes.’
As she was being driven away from Ajdabiya, she said another of her captors stroked her head and told her repeatedly that she was going to be killed.
‘He was caressing my head in this sick way, this tender way, saying, "You’re going to die tonight. You’re going to die tonight",‘ she added.
Thankfully, I have never had either experience, but I would think that 48 hours of a woman being threatened with death while having her private parts groped by strange men would leave a much stronger memory of cruelty than three trips through the x-ray machine, and having to strip down to her underwear (not exactly what I would call a 'strip search' as AP calls it) in front of a female worker.
Another Lara Logan: NY Times photographer sexually harassed in Libya
I'm sure that this is all just a coincidence and that the treatment that New York Times photographer Lynsey Addario endured in captivity in Libya has nothing - nothing at all - to do with the treatment Lara Logan endured at the hands of a mob in Cairo and certainly nothing - nothing at all - to do with Arab Muslim attitudes toward women.
One man grabbed her breasts – the start of a pattern of sexual harassment she endured over the ensuing 48 hours.
‘There was a lot of groping,’ she said. ‘Every man who came in contact with us basically felt every inch of my body short of what was under my clothes.’
As she was being driven away from Ajdabiya, she said another of her captors stroked her head and told her repeatedly that she was going to be killed.
‘He was caressing my head in this sick way, this tender way, saying, "You’re going to die tonight. You’re going to die tonight",‘ she added.
Miss Addario was with Anthony Shadid, the paper’s Beirut bureau chief, photographer Tyler Hicks and reporter and videographer Stephen Farrell when they were seized while leaving the scene of fighting between rebels and Libyan government forces because they decided it had become too dangerous.
Their driver inadvertently drove into a checkpoint manned by troops loyal to the Libyan dictator.
‘I was yelling to the driver, "Keep driving! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!",' said Mr Hicks. ‘I knew that the consequences of being stopped would be very bad.’
There's nothing to see here, so just move on. They just sound like 'ordinary' adolescent males, don't they?
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
I wonder if all the Leftist morons who took up the cause of New York Times photographer Lynsey Addario will have anything to say about Obama's TSA strip-searching 85-year old Lenore Zimmerman in New York. 
