Israel's Shin Bet security service has been demanding access to personal email accounts of visiting tourists with Arab names, according to the testimony of three U.S. citizens who were interrogated at Ben Gurion Airport and subsequently refused entry into Israel in May.
thank you
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Sometimes it's better to keep the Balance. The World ist noch only white and black. Security ist absolut important. But what' s the Price for that? To give up ptivacy totally? If the ask me, the will get my police-duty-emailadress ;-) thats for shure. For everyboday! Relax Folks, Relax. If you want to break the wall with yout head, you're automaticly get in the neigbourcell of your own prison. Relax!
One thing to point out is, most pro-Israeli comments on here are referring to the people in the article as "Arab terrorists". Please keep this in mind, if they hold an American passport, they are Americans, your so called "closest ally". The same people you are singling out are the same people that pay taxes in the US, which you are gladly willing to accept as aid. My advice to you is, don't bite the hand that feeds you.
It reminds me of the ex-communist Eastern Europe, where all mail coming in or going out of the country was read ... and censored! Never thought those nightmarish times 'd return. HUH! Israel must be ticking the NWO time already, the Big Brother is supervising.like in Orwell's "1984". How creepy. Btw. it also is embarrassing to a person to have one's privacy intruded for;personal boundaries are holy and must be respected -HELLO there in Israel! - . People write about private, intimate matters, which are not meant to everybody's eyes Judaism forbids embarrassing a person, ... read Halacha Shin Beit .... so I am extremely disappointed that the Jewish State of Israel is breaking against the Jewish Ethical Law and naturally I am nettled about this violation of people's privacy. It simply isn't morally right. There must be other ways to tackle terrorism than this criminal way; you don't prevent one crime with another crime.
I am an Asian American who went to Israel to present in an academic conference. My experience of airport security were rude and exhausting. I will hope to avoid visiting Israel.
I was there for Easter Holiday and was kept waiting three hours,before they gave me a Visa to visit my own country.This occupation will soon go........
i will gladly show them my email account. Whatever makes Israel safer, I will yield! No problem, Shin Bet! You have done much to help my friends and it is the least I can do for you if you ask.
i will gladly show them my email account. Whatever makes Israel safer, I will yield! No problem, Shin Bet! You have done much to help my friends and it is the least I can do for you if you ask.
Good for Israel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Your comment is not true. I have been to Egypt, Jordan Syria, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia and I am an Israel Citizen and Jewish.
Your Israeli one or the other passport I am sure you hold. You have dual citizenship, you forgot to mention.
If I have hotmail, Gmail, workmail, etc. or many other more depending on who I converse with how would they know which one to open? It seems like shooting with a shotgun. It does not seem very efficient. Before traveling to Israel you create a temporarily account and the problem is solved.
from the use of horrendous weapons on some to the deprivation of human dignity on most
a lot of freaky emails they will see yes sir!
Kol hakavod, keep up the great work - and if they just just don't get it --TOUGH !
That arm you with the latest and greatest modern weapons. The ones that give you Billions and Billions of dollars every year for decades. The ones that Veto UNSC resolutions that Israel does not like. Do you REALLY want to piss America off?
people who is saying Arab is Terrorist i would like to say i have never heard such a country do what ever Israel Does. so its clear that you are the terrorists. if you want to deny an entry deny it from the first hour, No need for 8 hours of suffer and humiliation, when the answer is no. It is always goes this way with Israeli's even in the check points its there Daily Basis.
The Israeli authorities are mad because direct travelers to open the email. Email is a private email. The Israelis do anything to stir up email. Israel because of ego in the United States. Shortness of tourists coming to Israel.
They can do as they please.
Yes, they stole it fair and square...
In America there is a Freedoom of Speech as long as you don't critisize the State of Israel and the Zionism. Anyone dares to criticise Israel, they will lose their jobs and they will be named anti-semite. We can criticise Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Islam, Vatican, France, Christianity, Mormonism, Barack Obama and else, but not the ZIONISM or the State of Israel. The Airport Officials are going to check, if there is a criticism against Israel or the Zionism, Is this called FREE OF SPEECH country?
Just to Tel you that I visited Iran not so long ago and nothing happens at security. Just regular routine checks as in any other country in the world. Take out you noteboook and that's it. I have been many times in Israel and lived there for 10 years. I travel for my job so I speak out of experience.
I am in the US as I type and have been all over the world. I don't like what is happening to the main stream media in propaganda than any other. But, it is real. I criticize Israel. So do many if not most Israelis. I will not and cannot by law lose my job if I criticize any religion in my own beliefs. Shalam.
then please explain how Iran got a jewish community. No really, I'm curious.
... have you heard about it? There is a peace contract between Israel and Jordan - thus it should be possible for Israelis to go there. But since it is very dangerous for them, not many Israelis go there anymore!
with fingers up to my friend anus.
from the atrocities from new weaponry [Israel has been testing them on civilians, in Lebanon and the territories] to the incarceration of its own citizens for protesting degrading policies presented as security needs
If Shin Bet feel its in the best interest of Israeli security to ask for emails then why should they be forbidden from doing so just because its not the way its done in other countries? ELAL do racial profiling because it helps stop terrorists, it might not be the way other airlines do it but it doesn't mean ELAL with its unique security needs can't do it.
Just a few days ago I read about an Israeli who was refused entrance to US after a border officer read through her emails.
Give us a cite, which airport did this happen in, when, and where did you read this? I call your bluff.
Not many!
That Israeli security is determined to increase the hatred of the Jewish state for no reason at all. This behavior makes me sick.
Don't go to Israel. I would never give them my private email account. And this is supossed to be a democrecy.
I have my own horror story to tell from a few years ago, after having been abused in this fashion at Ben Gurion Airport. After my return to the States, I wrote many letters to various organizations in Israel, and received absolutely no reply. Only the Israeli consulate in Boston proclaimed a rather flat excuse. I proceeded to surrender my Israeli passport - my Israeli citizenship therefore, since I do not wish to be a citizen in a country that terrorizes citizens and tourists in the name of "security".
Welcome home.
it's not even about hiding stuff. it's the sheer amount of time lost waiting, the proverbial rudeness of the intelligence stuff, the intrusion in one's privacy and the fact that everybody is aware one is singled out because of one's non-jewish / arabic or other background and submitted to questioning accordingly
That's the typical argumentof all fascists around the world and Israel is no short of those types..
I think you miss the point- in this case not EVERY US citizen was asked to do open their emails (or go through extra security) with custom agents at the airport- just those with Arab last names. Using a parallel example from the one you provided- If there is a French citizen with a "Jewish sounding" last name, they are not put through extra security to come into the US through the visa waiver program. They are accepted as a French citizen. (And, it's not standard policy as part of your visa application for a tourist visa to the US for the consulate staff to go through your personal emails before granting you the visa or not)
As noted below, the US already claims the right to examine the contents of any laptop and does so on occasion. Perhaps you should consider the facts before writing.
They are doing so for a long time! As I remember - even before the Sept.11
Me and many many other Germans would never travel to the US, because there you have to open much more than only your email account, they check your bank account and bi ometrical data and everything. If you are from the US, you should better say nothing about personal rights and data security because American law is the worst and most misanthropic in the world!
Evan, you are totally riight, but nobody is interested in facts here. It's like always only about to blame Israel for something. And this makes many people happy...
.Israelis are not allowed into the US without a US tourist visa -the application entails rigorous scrutiny if the applicant's' personal life
I mean if this is the way you treat citizens of your closest ally, what hope the rest of us. One of the more disgusting stories of the abuse of power in a "democracy" I've ever read.
I am living in Israel, but please do boycott this country which has forgotten what are human rights, rule of law, respect of the dignity of others...
This post, calling for a boycot, is now illegal under Israeli law. It is now a civil offence to call for an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of people or institutions in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) for political reasons. Anyone making such calls could face a lawsuit and other financial penalties. This is what Israel has become.
and where should we go instead? I could say the same about Germany/ Europe where I live. At least Jews should boycott Germany, because nothing changed here since 1945 and the last years it became more and more fashionable to use anti-Jewish phrases. And this renaissance of hate it not only against jews, it's also against africans, gays, gypsies. In German newspapers you can read reports how people are treated at US airports - this is not better at all! But nobody complains if US-authorities put other countries under pressure to deliver personal data of ther their citizens!
Before everyone has a fainting spell about this, they should realize that this is relatively common -- the United States, for example, also takes the position that anything on a laptop which crosses the border can be examined.
We carry credit cards across borders - next they'll be swiping them and withdrawing cash (to prevent money laundering, of course).
Yes but they do not abuse it, and profile.
There is an Arib terrorist under ever bag in the airport in Israel: If you people werent so war crazy, you would have less to fear. And if a Jew is treated badly; it comes down to anti-semitsm. But what you fail to see is how yur behavior effects Jews in other places. In America; We have started treating you clowns rather poorly. Jewish shops here in my home town are closing down and going out of business because we refuse to trade with them.
Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. If people in your home town in America are refusing to trade with Jews simply because they are Jews then that is anti-Semitic. It is therefore the actions of the 'we' you describe that are causing harm to the Jews in your community and cannot be blamed on paranoid Zionists or fundamentalists in Israel. Rather than demonize Jewish communities around the world, we should be encouraging them to stay where they are because if they are discriminated against then they will simply go to Israel and probably begin to be indoctrinated with a sense of false entitlement to the land because they have been wronged. Where I live in Europe I want to go up to Jews and say 'thank you' to them for not using their ''law of return 'right''. They will though if people begin discriminating against them again, and frankly, who then could blame them? If the Jews in your town are also Zionists however, perhaps more effective would be to start a campaign urging them to stop their unconditional support for Israel because of the human rights abuses it perpetrates. And you could say that only then will you consider buying from their shops again.
When turkey started given israelis a hard time when visting Turkey, compalints where going all over the news. Countries in solidarity with Arabs / palestinians should act the same, and interogate Israelis on their borders and ask them to open not only gmail but hotmail and yahoo mail as well hehehe
There is no "right" to visit another country; your passport is a request that you be afforded permission to enter another country and that if permitted to do so that you be extended various courtesies as embodied by Int'l conventions. Here, amazingly, Shin Bet identifed various individuals who apparently had a separate agenda for wanting to enter Israel -- Ha"Aretz and its leftist editors can't help by add their sickening leftist twist to the story (e.g. "whose family was expelled from Haifa"). I offer no apologies: this is my country and I am damn proud that we do not let subversives enter our country. I don't know about you but I answer ever single question security asks me and I do so proudly. Anybody can rummage through my clothes, examine my passports and view all my email. I have NOTHING to hide and NOTHING to fear.
can you post your email account and password on here then?
Funny that only Arabs seem to be always the ones with " a separate agenda for wanting to enter Israel " :-D No matter what these individuals would say/do to prove their sincerity, they are hardly believed. Applying prejudgments wont do the world much good.
And this is why Israel will never be on the Visa Waiver Program.
First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Really amazing!! No more comments!!
the same in US courts i think
since the argument of raised suspcisions based on answers given during the interview would be impossible to dismiss.
And that's not at all difficult to prove in Israel!
Oh yes, those talmudic jews, with their gay pride parades and pro-choice laws. Come on. Try and have an intelligent conversation about the delicate balance between the rights and responsibilities that entitle people to liberties within a democratic state. You really don't have to resort to bizarre lowest common denominator comments.
Aren't those the Jews that live their lives immersed in their studies of scriptures and demand that the Jewish state supports their large families because their studies leave them no time to earn an honest living.
In 2009 I was asked to open my Hotmail. The lady at Ben Gurion was not very nice lol.
Anyone with some kind of axe to grind should not be employed at border crossings./
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