[coldtea]

>and they are very good at detecting when the details don't add up or when the person is acting too uncomfortable.

Considering several horror stories and uneeded questioning (of students etc) entering the country, not that "good" really.

[ScottBurson]

They reduced a woman I know to tears once. I've known her and her husband for decades; they're a perfectly ordinary, fairly devout Jewish couple who would never hurt anyone. I can't imagine why they felt the need to be so cruel.

[superuser2]

No plane out of Ben Gurion has been hijacked in decades. For a high-traffic airport of a major city in one of the most hated countries in the world, that's pretty damn amazing.

[danharaj]

It really isn't that impressive when you count the number of commercial flights that happen every year and how many planes are hijacked every year. The odds are already mind-bogglingly low per airport. Of course no one knows what the rate of hijackings out of Ben Gurion would be without their security.

[derefr]

Presumably they only care about false negatives, not false positives.

...which doesn't imply that a "just question 100% of the people" strategy would work—they need to question few enough people that the planes still leave on time and the airlines stay in business. But within that limit, it's in their best interest to be as trigger-happy with the detainments as possible.