ve never felt much fear or anxiety about traveling to Israel. I always knew I was protected by my American passport and, above all, by my status as a Jewish person. And I knew that Israeli Arab citizens do not share this sense of safety while traveling to or from their home country. But an experience I recently had at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport taught me a new lesson on the relations between the Jewish majority and Arab minority in Israel.
In the past decade or so of going back and forth with relative frequency, I’ve become accustomed to the routine slate of questions that security agents at Ben Gurion Airport tend to ask. There’s the mundane, “What is the purpose of your visit?” or “Where are you staying?” and the slightly more invasive, “Which Jewish holidays do you celebrate?” or “What is the name of your childhood synagogue?”