Probably the country with the strongest security checks for airline passengers—and the strongest reason for such checks—is Israel. Israel profiles. I have been to Israel more than once and it is clear that they profile.
Fortunately, my wife and I obviously don’t fit their profile, whatever that may be.
Others who have been to Israel are amazed when I tell them that we have gone through Israeli security four times and they have never opened our luggage.
That is all the more surprising, since we take a lot of luggage. We have stopped in Israel while on trips completely around the world, including countries both above and below the equator, so we had to have clothing for hot weather and cold weather, since the seasons are the opposite in the northern and southern hemispheres.
Moreover, I carry a lot of photographic equipment in a large, separate piece of luggage.
In short, our luggage could carry enough explosives to blow up any building in the country. But, whatever their security system and whatever their profile, they didn’t seem to want to waste any time on us.
The last time we flew into Israel was from Cairo, where the Israeli security officials at the Cairo airport detained the lady in line in front of us for 45 minutes, opened her luggage, spread the contents across the counter, and asked her all sorts of questions. When they had finally finished with her and my wife and I stepped up to the counter, the official in charge waved us on impatiently, saying, “Hurry up, you’ll miss the plane.”
This was no special treatment for us. They had no idea who we were. We were just not the kind of people they spent time on, for whatever reason.