Legal Commentary

Donna Shalala Stopped by Israeli Airport Security

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

The Israeli press describes it as, American VIP humiliated at airport:

Donna Shalala, who served as the US Secretary of Health and Human Services for eight years under Clinton and is currently the president of the University of Miami, was held for two-and-a-half hours at Ben Gurion Airport during which she underwent a humiliating security debriefing because of her Arab last name — all this despite the fact that her hosts notified the airport ahead of time that she is a VIP.

The fact that Shalala arrived in Israel as part of an official delegation of the heads of universities fighting against the academic boycott against the Jewish State also seemed not to help her.

Shalala, 69, was born in the US to Lebanese immigrant parents.

Steve Clemons has some thoughts about this at The Washington Note.

As he points out, what Shalala says she went through is what many panic-ridden conservatives in the US want to inflict on our travelers — ethnic and racial profiling.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on August 07, 2010 (boomark / email).