The judges of the High Court for Justice repeatedly asked the State’s representatives in a hearing Wednesday why Arabs are checked more thoroughly at Ben Gurion Airport than non-Arabs. The State representatives failed to answer the question in a way that satisfied the judges.
Ben Gurion Airport
The State’s attorneys told the court that 0.5% of the country’s population undergo more stringent checks than others at the airport. Court President Dorit Beinisch was shocked. She asked: “Is the population divided into two categories? Are there two kinds of citizens in the security check?”
Attorney Awni Bana, who represented the ultra-leftist Association for Civil Rights in Israel along with Advocate Dan Yakir, said after the session: “The court took seriously the central claim we made in the motion, that the subject is not how the more intensive security check in conducted, but the very labeling of an entire populace as dangerous.”
Yakir added that “the invisibility of the security check that the Arab passengers undergo may be less humiliating, but this does not console them. Their very labeling is what is humiliating.”
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