I forwarded the Five O'Clock Shadow posting to my daughter, who
recently traveled to Israel, and she had a less alarmist perspective.
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Arwen O'Reilly" <ak_oreilly@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 8, 2004 12:37:58 PM PST
To: "Tim O'Reilly" <tim@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: [IP] Five o'clock shadow? You're a marked man!
This does make for an extremely funny/depressing read.
But I have to say I'm not too terriby worried. We're
just in a period of adjustment--even if security stays
the same, I'm sure that things will streamline in the
next year or so. El Al has been using such strict
security measures for years, and they have it down to
a science. They probably hand check the baggage of
every non-Israeli passenger, plus hand-check the
baggage of many an Israeli passenger, just for good
measure. The lines are long. Yes, it is annoying to
have your toothpaste checked. As a non-Israeli,
non-Jewish, non-Hebrew speaking passenger, I got the
full treatment. But the person checking your bag is
generally sympathetic after a while, and while they
can't exactly have too good of a sense of humor, they
will give you a sort of dead-pan look that can pass as
a smile after a while.
It took me a total of two hours to pass through
security and get checked in, and I even had to go
through JFK security in addition to El Al security (El
Al doesn't consider JFK to be rigorous enough). But
that was it. So if this kind of security does come to
be standard, I'm pretty confident that it won't be a
problem. Eventually:)
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