Charles V. Peña

"The United States cannot be an honest broker in any mediation process between the Israelis and Palestinians. This is most apparent given the amount of unqualified financial aid the United States provides Israel. Israel is the tail that wags the American dog. And that’s why the United States will never be able to broker a peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

Just prior to leaving to meet with President Barack Obama this week, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet, "As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv," and there would be no halting or restrictions of construction in East Jerusalem. The international community considers East Jerusalem occupied territory. Building on occupied land is illegal under international law, but Israel regards East Jerusalem – which it annexed in 1967 – as its territory. Vice President Joe Biden criticized the Israeli decision to build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem: "I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem." Although it’s highly unusual for the United States to criticize Israel, it’s also not likely that anything more will happen. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the Obama administration would push back "unequivocally" when it disagreed with Israeli policies, but in the next breath she added that America’s support for Israel was "rock solid, unwavering, enduring, and forever."

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Charles V. Peña

"The truth is that unless you live in Israel, Iraq, or Afghanistan, a terrorist attack is a rare event. More importantly, terrorism is not an existential threat. Yet policymakers and the media lead us to believe that a terrorist attack – any terrorist attack – would be an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it event."

Chicago’s O’Hare Airport – the nation’s second largest airport and one of the busiest, if not the busiest – is one of several U.S. airports (including Boston’s Logan Airport) that is putting the newest body scanner technology into use. One hundred and fifty new scanners are scheduled to be deployed along with the 40 already being used at 19 airports. In large part, the body scanners are in response to the aborted Christmas underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who smuggled explosives onto Delta Flight 253 from Nigeria via Amsterdam to Detroit. Thankfully, Abdulmutallab didn’t injure anyone except himself – managing to light his pants on fire. If this is the extent of the terrorist threat to America, we should be so lucky.

Not unexpectedly, the hue and cry went up for more and improved security. And body scanners were touted as being able to have prevented Abdulmutallab’s attempted attack by virtue of seeing through his clothing to detect what he was carrying in his underwear.

According to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause." Admittedly, we gave up our Fourth Amendment rights for airline travel a long time ago by submitting ourselves to metal detectors and carry-on bags to X-ray searches – all done without any probable cause (and something we wouldn’t tolerate as part of our everyday lives).

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