I'm still yet to figure out what they achieved by seizing my backpack (that had all of my personal documentation) and damaging my brand new MBP 2016 and Pixel tablet (by very clearly dropping them a dozen times) had to do with security. Especially when they lied about putting it on the plane and I arrived at Ben Gurion with literally nothing other than a passport in one pocket and a dead phone in the other.
El Al's actions say the opposite about what you say about Israelis: El Al clearly believes that they are better at what they do than the IDF or Ben Gurion airport security, so they take it upon themselves (as private citizens) to pick up the slack. For what it's worth, the woman who interviewed me at Ben Gurion didn't have a lot of nice things to say about El Al either.
Why has El Al security seized your backpack? I can see why they'd want to search a backpack, but can't for the life of me understand why they'd seize it. I know airlines can sometimes check-in your carry-on items when they run out of cabin space. Is this what happened to you?
Seized my 23" LG travel monitor for 3 weeks, claiming it was a potential bomb.
Fortunately I was in Israel for 4 months, so a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things, but still, seemed a bit over the top...until I stepped out of the airport and saw teenagers wielding machine guns (serving in military), the Israelis aren't messing around ;-)
If you're Israeli I'd imagine the security measures aren't nearly as stringent.
Because they just wanted to screw with me. They specifically didn't let me take on a paper file which had my invitation letter, citizenship copy and various other things that would have made my life easier at Ben Gurion.
They promised they'd put it on the plane and they didn't. I got it two or three days later as El Al doesn't fly during Shabbat.
I'm still yet to figure out what they achieved by seizing my backpack (that had all of my personal documentation) and damaging my brand new MBP 2016 and Pixel tablet (by very clearly dropping them a dozen times) had to do with security. Especially when they lied about putting it on the plane and I arrived at Ben Gurion with literally nothing other than a passport in one pocket and a dead phone in the other.
El Al's actions say the opposite about what you say about Israelis: El Al clearly believes that they are better at what they do than the IDF or Ben Gurion airport security, so they take it upon themselves (as private citizens) to pick up the slack. For what it's worth, the woman who interviewed me at Ben Gurion didn't have a lot of nice things to say about El Al either.