At the Israeli prime minister's press conference for the foreign media last week, a journalist from Al Jazeera was ordered by Israeli security to remove her bra before being allowed in. She refused and left. The bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal was also asked to strip.
The Israeli authorities cite security reasons for incidents such as this. I was also once asked to remove my bra when going through security to catch an internal flight in Israel. I cravenly complied, not wanting to miss my flight. Apparently the under-wiring messes up their metal detectors.
The first time I came to Israel, I flew with El Al from Stansted. My flight departed at midnight, the only plane on the departure board, and the airport was creepily empty apart from pairs of armed police patrolling.
The El Al security guys microscopically examined everything in my case, as I inevitably felt more and more paranoid and guilty. They confiscated my camera and alarm clock, promising they would post the offending items to my home. Despite my deep scepticism, they did indeed turn up a couple of weeks later.
The security officers also took against my shoes, which were removed from me just after check-in and returned at the boarding gate. Airports being such strange places, no one batted an eyelid at me wandering around in my socks for 90 minutes.
And, trying to take another internal flight in Israel, I was once so delayed by the endless security questions and the apparent need to look at every single photograph I had taken while on holiday in Jordan that I missed the flight I was aiming for. Cutting my losses, I decided to catch a bus to Jerusalem instead. I sat next to an exhausted teenage soldier who promptly fell asleep. We spent the entire five-hour journey with her head resting on my shoulder and her huge army-issue gun lying in my lap.
Oddly, there wasn't a single security check on the bus, despite the fact that, in the past, this form of transportation has been a much more common target of suicide-bombers than planes.
