How It Works, pt. CDLVII

Providing a wonderful example of how right-wing Israeli propaganda works in this country, David Frum cherry picks one seemingly innocuous passage from Jamil Hamad's essay about checkpoints, and uses it to minimize the daily brutalities and the intentionally humiliating structure of the Israeli occupation:

Time magazine's Jamil Hamad angrily denounces the latest indignity inflicted upon the Palestinians. In order to enter Israel, they have to ... put their possessions through a scanner.

"Some days they make me take off my jacket, other days, my shoes or my belt. It's very frustrating, especially when you get behind a woman with lots of earrings and bracelets who doesn't know how the machine works — and there are hundreds of people pushing and shoving behind you."

Sounds like an ordinary morning at Dulles Airport.

Right, and when kids had to trap rodents to feed their starving families in South African Bantustans, it was just like Cub Scout Camp. People frantically hiding in latrines during the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto? Hide and go seek!

I've been through Dulles Airport many times, and maybe I've just been lucky, but I've never been held at the security check for six hours while the shift boss ate lunch and took a nap, leaving his underlings to make cruel ethnic, religious, and sexual remarks to me and my family as they took turns trying to lift my wife's dress with the barrels of their rifles. If this has been Frum's experience at Dulles, he really should consider writing a letter.