"It is indisputable: no other country is subject to such serious threats”
Il Giornale, April 26th, 2013
This piece is an answer to criticism to the recent measure adopted at Ben Gurion Airport of asking to really suspected people to show their email.
Certainly, privacy is a good thing, but let’s jog our memory: Israel is a country which experiences terror on a daily basis. Busses, restaurants, supermarkets have all indiscriminately been hit. Today’s acceptable quiet is a miracle. From 2001 onwards Israeli secret services have learnt how to prevent most attacks precisely because it is not affected by those desirable amnesias which prevent to see the naked reality of danger. And its population, one of the most obstinately democratic people in the world, realized.
Israel still dares, despite worldwide critics, to keep its eighteen year old soldiers at checkpoints. Glumly, they check the cars driving families to the feast day family dinners on Friday nights and salute; it still has the energy to go on checking the bags and the trunks at malls entrances; a guard at the entrance of virtually all restaurants, hospitals, etc. will always search you. It is resilient to critics, its goal being to defeat terrorism. And don't dare telling me it’s paranoia after all I saw during the Second Intifada. It is actually just sense of reality: empathic and efficacious systems have been developed at hospitals, which later have been adopted in the whole world, so that every attack is faced with revolutionary innovations. It works. That’s why Massachusetts General Hospital thanked Israelis for their support with hundreds of wounded after the Boston attack.
Yes, terrorists will be sorry for the measures taken at Ben Gurion airport regarding the search of personal emails; they will be nonetheless applied all over the world.