Israel Border Police officers shot at an American student’s laptop as she entered Israel via Taba, Egypt, Lily Sussman, 21, wrote on her blog that border police subjected her to two hours of questioning and searches prior to shooting her Apple Macbook three times two weeks ago.”They had pressed every sock and scarf with a security device, ripped open soap and had me strip extra layers. They asked me tons of questions? Where are you going?” Sussman wrote, describing the experience.
“Who do you know? Do you have a partner? Is he Arab, Egyptian, Palestinian? Why do you live in Egypt? Why not Israel? What do you know about the ‘conflict’ here? What do you think? They quizzed me on Judaism, which I know nothing about,” she continued.
Sussman said that she then heard an announcement on the loudspeaker. “It was something along the lines of, ‘Do not to be alarmed by gunshots because the Israeli security needs to blow up suspicious passenger luggage,'” she wrote on her blog.
Moments later a man came to her and introduced himself as the manager on duty. “I’m sorry but we had to blow up your laptop,” Sussman said he told her.
“The security officers did not ask about my laptop prior to shooting it,” Sussman told Daily News Egypt. “They used the word ‘blew up’ when they told me they destroyed my laptop. I don’t know why they shot it.”
Sussman said the guards also looked through the photos saved on her camera, flipped through her journal and asked her about a map a friend had drawn for her that pointed out a main street, central bus station and the hostel where she was planning on stayig in Jerusalem.
She added that she had also been carrying an Arabic phrasebook, stamps from Syria, Qatar and the UAE and a Palestinians in Palestine guidebook.
The Israel Airports Authority said in response to the story: “A check that the lady’s luggage underwent raised an indication that required security figures to act according to procedures. A police, who carried out the stated operation, was called to the scene. We suggest that the Israel Police be approached for any additional information.”
Sussman managed to salvage the hard and guards gave her an address where she would be reimbursed for her mangled laptop, she told Daily news Egypt. “I’m going through the process of compensation,” she said. “It supposedly will take about one month to receive the money.”
{Haaretz/Yair Alpert-Matzav.com Israel}
Seems that with those pamphlets they had good reason to suspect her (and how much isent she blogging about?
too bad she doesn’t show you the arabic stickers that were all over her laptop, too bad matzav doesn’t let you in on the tasteful pictures she had on her camera.
sounds like the eleventh makoh.
Gee, hard to imagine why they were suspicious…
They don’t blow up laptops for no good reason. She should understand this.
Maybe if it had been running Windows…
Regular Israeli procedure why not blow up a lap top if could
It *was* running Windows. A Mac wouldn’t have died.
“They dont blow up laptops for no good reason. She should understand this.”
They should demonstrate why they had a reason to shoot the laptop.
“too bad she doesnt show you the arabic stickers that were all over her laptop, too bad matzav doesnt let you in on the tasteful pictures she had on her camera.”
The pictures were probably milquetoast, considering they let her go. And the Arabic stickers – if they said “Love” or “peace,” what difference would it make?
this incident was bound to happen given the mindset of the girl in question.
I love how she says in interviews that her family is “partly Jewish” after she says the Israelis were cold to her- as if they should have behaved in a friendly manner. First of all, she is not “partly jewish”- she is 100% Jewish, although maybe she identifies with her Christian stepmother (daddy’s 3rd wife- a penniless white trash woman with 3 mouths to feed but who was in a prime situation to idolize her new husband) which is weird because lily’s primary residence was in her Jewish mother’s house. Daddy issues much? wrapped up with a confused personal identity? You decide. common sense: don’t travel to Israle with pictures of swastikas, a map of a bus station and addresses in the west bank and have no idea what the jewish holidays are while claiming to be partly jewish. remember anne marie murphy- the white girl used as a bomb courier by her arab bf? apparently lily couldn’t see the parallels. Due to her father’s bent as an overzealous civil rights lawyer, she assumed that she had some Consitutional rights at the Israeli-Arab border. somewhere in her blog she writes about her disrespect of the Israeli border guard, indicating she was provincial and hadn’t travelled out of Israel much (as if the burden of proof was on the guard to assume lily’s behavior all had a rational explanation instead of the burden being on lily to make it through the screening process). Note to travellers- some deference is due the people with guns at the borders- they think about security 100% of the time- you think about it the .o5% of the time you actually cross a border!
If you google daddy sussman, you will find ample documentation of his very bad rep- the courts yanked his law licnse for a year for taking clients’ funds out of escrow (this is viewed as stealing by the courts and the profession) and he takes a lot of bogus cases like “oh I’m hispanic, I lost my job because of my race even though I did a crap job” and “oh, I was unfairly arrested by police after I took it upon myself to go down a blocked street to get to my son’s school faster”. daddy sussman also hosted a summit for his little girl called “murder and piracy on the high seas” after the turkish flotilla incident so they could both publicly condemn Israel. It’s the wrong conclusion as the consequence of flawed thinking and it was on display here at the border. check out lily’s blog and videos for more ramblings about how israel is quasi fascist and aggressive (never mind the fact that the arab country the girl spent half a year in has basically imploded under the weight of internal fascism there, which poor lily was too stilted to notice).
she says this incident doesn’t make sense to her? lily, you don’t make sense at all.