"Why we cannot build a system like El Al to be proactive. Why do we have only to react? The shoe bomber - reaction? Take off your shoes. The Nigerian - the body scanner is a result of the Nigerian guy"
About this Quote
Isaac Yeffet’s complaint isn’t really about shoes or scanners; it’s about a governing mentality. By invoking El Al, he reaches for the gold-standard mythos of Israeli aviation security: intelligence-led, human-driven, unapologetically intrusive, and proud of preventing threats before they become headlines. The repeated “Why” functions like a cross-examination, not a policy memo. It frames U.S.-style airport security as a bureaucratic theater that only learns after blood, panic, and a congressional hearing.
The subtext is a critique of performative safety. “The shoe bomber - reaction? Take off your shoes.” He reduces a complex incident to a ritual everyone now endures, exposing how quickly a one-off plot turns into permanent mass inconvenience. Same with “The Nigerian” (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s 2009 underwear bomb attempt): a single failure becomes a market opportunity for body scanners and a new choreography of compliance. Yeffet implies the system is optimized for visible reassurance, not actual risk reduction.
His rhetorical move is comparison as indictment: El Al symbolizes targeted suspicion; TSA symbolizes universal suspicion. That contrast carries uncomfortable implications about profiling, civil liberties, and political appetite. Proactive security, in his framing, requires permission to discriminate, to ask sharper questions of fewer people, and to absorb legal and moral backlash. The quote works because it weaponizes everyday annoyance (bare feet on dirty floors) into an argument about institutional cowardice: a state that would rather standardize inconvenience than own the consequences of making judgment calls.
The subtext is a critique of performative safety. “The shoe bomber - reaction? Take off your shoes.” He reduces a complex incident to a ritual everyone now endures, exposing how quickly a one-off plot turns into permanent mass inconvenience. Same with “The Nigerian” (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s 2009 underwear bomb attempt): a single failure becomes a market opportunity for body scanners and a new choreography of compliance. Yeffet implies the system is optimized for visible reassurance, not actual risk reduction.
His rhetorical move is comparison as indictment: El Al symbolizes targeted suspicion; TSA symbolizes universal suspicion. That contrast carries uncomfortable implications about profiling, civil liberties, and political appetite. Proactive security, in his framing, requires permission to discriminate, to ask sharper questions of fewer people, and to absorb legal and moral backlash. The quote works because it weaponizes everyday annoyance (bare feet on dirty floors) into an argument about institutional cowardice: a state that would rather standardize inconvenience than own the consequences of making judgment calls.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
|---|
More Quotes by Isaac
Add to List
