Never laughed so hard in my life!!!

"Religious Item Causes Airplane Scare
by Mike Krumboltz

A 17-year-old passenger inadvertently caused a scare aboard a US Airways flight from New York to Louisville on Thursday morning. The young flyer, an Orthodox Jew, was wearing an article of clothing that some on the plane feared might be an explosive device.

In reality, it was a simple religious item called phylacteries. Here's what happened. According to Reuters, another passenger mistook the phylacteries, also called a tefillin in Hebrew, for a bomb. Phylacteries consist of two leather boxes with straps attached. "Observant Jewish men are required to place one box on their head and tie the other one on their arm each weekday morning."

When the alarmed passenger saw the phylacteries, he alerted the crew, and the plane was immediately diverted to Philadelphia. Once on the ground, authorities questioned the boy, and quickly determined the incident had been a false alarm. No arrests were made.

In the wake of the news, online searches on both "phylactery" and "tefillin" both surged from nothing into breakout status. Other related queries also quickly popped up. "What is a phylactery" and "tefillin pictures" were on top of peoples' minds. Those who researched the religious item learned that the phylactery boxes contain prayers inside them. You can see an image here, courtesy of Wikipedia. 

This most recent scare clearly highlights the need for more cultural understanding. However, it isn't the first time an innocent gesture has sent flyers into a full-blown alert. Following the Christmas Day scare in which a passenger tried to detonate a bomb on a flight, there have been several false alarms.

A few weeks ago, a man snuck into a secure area to give his special lady a goodbye kiss, causing the entire Newark airport to temporarily shut down. Several days prior to that, an ill passenger who had locked himself in an airplane restroom for over an hour caused no small amount of alarm. Fortunately, he posed absolutely no threat."

In this case (unlike almost all similar situations) I'm fully sympathetic to the TSA. 

When a passenger prays loudly and fiddles with little gadgets on his body, that is
exactly the type of activity that would presage a real bomb attack, and in fact has
presaged real bomb attacks.  

"Real bomb" attacks you and nobody knows what has happened. The only bomb attacks you know are fake, forged or failed attacks.

The sad part of this is my sandals and underwear need to be fully searched before getting on board an airplane.

BTW, Glenn Beck was talking about his ride on El Al when he got invited to do a show from Israel.  The short version is that he was coming from one city, his "temporary" producer from another, and his equipment from a third.  He had an interesting conversation, had to call his agent, and ended up getting escorted by security on to the plane.  They then gave him a real steak knife to eat his food with.

El Al allows you the simple human mercy of getting up and standing/walking for most of the flight, and come dawn or evening, you'll see a minyan of orthodox men gathered to pray.  Nobody thinks anything of it.
     And when the coast of Israel comes in view, sometimes the speakers will boom out Havenu shalom aleichem!, and most of the passengers -both Jews and Biblically learned christians- sing it loud, and stomp their feet 'til the whole plane shakes.   But none of us blow up planes with innocent passengers aboard. 

     I usually spent a long time with El Al security for the "personal interview", due to my ahemm... peculiar luggage.  They will indeed check you with a fine-toothed comb, and I'm glad that they do.  The TSA  treats you like Soviet serfs;  El Al attends to security while treating you respectfully as a unique person.
     One time the security check took over two hours, complete with phone calls to Israel.  But once finished, they loaded my large extra bags (six!) free and the primary security gal -returning to Israel herself- invited to the home she shared with her brother for barbecue!  :tongue2:

"They then gave him a real steak knife to eat his food with."

Shortly after 9/11 my mother-in-law flew, and the older woman in front of her had her crochet hook or knitting needles (forget which)  taken away from her at security.  My MIL later saw the woman on the plane looking quite puzzled at the knife she was given with her dinner.....  

Mad Muslims try to blow up planes, the TSA goes after Jews while taking extra sensitivity training to learn about Islamic customs.

So, what would prevent someone planning to bomb a plane from posing as an orthodox jew and hiding a bomb in fake phylacteries?

They wont allow a festivus pole to be carried on a plane now, either.

Quote - So, what would prevent someone planning to bomb a plane from posing as an orthodox jew and hiding a bomb in fake phylacteries?

Dear Odf;
That's a good point, and one that I myself have occasionally worried about in the past, when I was employed as a security guard at various schools in my hometown of Bat-Yam, Israel.
However, in this case, I would think that the size of the Tefillin boxes would be a limiting factor.  One might pack them with enough explosives to blow off the perpetrator's head and arm, but I can't seem them doing much damage beyond that.  Also, unless the perpetrator learned the proper ritual way of laying them on, any other Jew in the immediate surrounding would be immediately suspicious.
dph

erm to point out the 2 errors there...

1: thats enough explosive to blow out a wall section or on the floor, in the right place, to go for the fuel tank. (a previous attempt at detonating the fuel tank was encased in a shaving foam can with a modified digital watch timer . see Philippine Airlines Flight 343 December 11, 1994 ( wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Airlines_Flight_434 )for details on that. the attempt was foiled due to the bomber not realising he was on the wrong model of 747 and was in the wrong seat)

2: you are then relying on other Jews being in the area to point that out.

You can fit a LOT more explosive into a shaving foam can than you  can into a pair of Tifillin boxes.
dph

read the article.
the main explosive was in a bottle of eyedrop fluid. he used the shaving can as the casing.

Quote - 1: thats enough explosive to blow out a wall section or on the floor, in the right place, to go for the fuel tank. (a previous attempt at detonating the fuel tank was encased in a shaving foam can with a modified digital watch timer . see Philippine Airlines Flight 343 December 11, 1994

The fuel tanks are in the wings and not below your seat, a little far away from you! Below your seat is the cargo that not necessarly must explode or burn.
Beware the news and propaganda. A small bomb will only kill one, two or three passengers, with bad luck it can make a hole in the wall, the plane will lose pressure, a fourth passenger can be pushed through the hole. After loosing the pressure the pilot will lower the altitude and fly at low altitude and land save and sane in the first airport, you will survive.
Nothing will burn, in today's planes the seat and nothing burns as it was in the past. I never knew a case like this, in the very few cases of real bomb attack the plane exploded in the air and in case if some plane explodes in the air the most probable is that it will be reported as an accident, every very very strange and dubvious as in other few cases that happened.
As I said before in another post real attacks are very few and rare, the attacks you use to know are a farse or a fake. A passenger with a bomb in his shoe or with paper knives will do nothing, it's for scare you so you will be happy to have a dictature and you will try to live happy knowing that your dictator is protecting you.

Beware the news and propaganda, read carefuly and analyze what you are reading and first at all think and use your own brains.

Kawecki, with all due respect, you have to remember that an airplane is basically a flying gas can. There are gas tanks everywhere, and one small explosion in the passenger area would indeed blow the entire plane out of the sky.

The thing I felt the saddest about this entire affair is that it's yet another proof that the terrorists have indeed won. We're now so paranoid that knitting needles are confiscated from little old ladies and a couple having sex is enough reason to shut down an entire airport. Stupid on all counts.

Quote - Kawecki, with all due respect, you have to remember that an airplane is basically a flying gas can. There are gas tanks everywhere, and one small explosion in the passenger area would indeed blow the entire plane out of the sky.

Planes are not "a flying gas can", combustible is not every where.
Planes are very secure, combustible is only in some places that are most secure. All the flow of combustible is controlled and in any case of problem the flow of combustible is cut inmediately.
If an engine set fire by some malfunction the flow of combustible is cut and in case of necessity the combustible is thrown away in the air and the respective tank emptied.
Planes cost hundreds of millions, are very secure and must survive to hazards hundreds of time more dangerous than a terrorist. The only fact that the temperature change from 30 C to -50C in few minutes causes a terrible strain to the plane plane structure and it survives!
Even most of war planes survive anti-air fire and land full of holes

Quote - Not to get into a debate over a fine point, but it's one thing to have shut off valves. It's quite another to remember that those valves are shutting off gasoline that runs in pipelines throughout the entire plane. Check the image below (maybe above, I'm not sure where it's going to be placed).

And two little cubes whose outside dimensions range from 1 inch  to two inches is what's supposed to set all this off.  Explosives must be much more powerful than what I remember from my Army (Israeli) days.  -Not that I was ever a demolitions expert.
dph

I agree, dp. My only point was that, if there were an explosion in the passenger section, to say that it wouldnt hit the gas tanks is being blind to the reality of what an airplane is.

Still, as I wrote above, it's getting silly and stupid and paranoid. When a 4 oz bottle of shampoo is a threat to national security, you know your country has some real mental problems.

A little scientific knowledge will help.

Gasoline or even gas doesn't explode by itself or by another explosion. To explode there must exist the proper combination of combustible and air. With no or few air nothing happens, too much air it only burns, it must be the right combination to explode.
With gasoline is worst, gasoline must be in vapor state to be able to explode. A tank with combustible never can explode because there is no air or to few inside the tank.
A tank can only explode if submited to high temperature, but it doesn't explode due the explosive nature of the combustible, it explodes due the increased pressure inside in the same way a a boiler with water that explodes.

The second fact is that explosives to be effective nust be enclosed by very hard material, even with nukes is in this way.
Even in the "innofensive" fireworks the powder is encloded by lot of hard pressed paper.
Explosives are not as in the movies, nobody implodes a building glueing a box with some wires and a nice digital timer in the column as in the movies. Buildings are imploded drilling holes in the hard concrete and filling the hole ( a lot of holes) with explosive and then closing the filled hole.
A plastic explosive that is not enclosed by steel, uranium or other hard metal does almost nothing.
In case of incendiary bomb if there is nothing to burn, it also happens almost nothing.
In resume, the story of the Nigerian is a joke.

I know this topic, itself, is skating a fine line between politics/religion and non-politics/religion discussion, however, posts with blatant political overtones have been, are, and will continue to be removed.  Further removed posts will receive a warning, as they will have disregarded this post.  Feel free to discuss the aerodynamic possibilities of such an occurance, etc., but politics and religion themselves will not be discussed here.

Jeni
Senior Moderator

dphoadley@JenX
With all due respect, I do not think that any of the posters here have either approached, or crossed the Religion/Political boundary.  Albeit, living in a culture that is far removed from Mainstream America, I could be vastly mistaken.  If so, I due tender my apologies.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

 David,
The posts that did have been removed throughout the life of this thread, so, you can't see them ;)

Dear JenX;
I just thought that the whole situation was funny, I didn't intend for it to become a 'Cause Celebre'.  The few times that I've flown from Tel-Aviv to New York and back, on any of the Intercontental Airlines, there has always been a Minyan at some point during the flight, -of which I've myself always been one a participant.  I'd never even dreamed that such an activity could be construed as threatening.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

The post that was removed was mine, it had to do almost nothing with politics and nothing at all with religion.
The post was only an analysis on how the things in the world are happening and not hing to do with the political personages or ideas.
Well, I also don't live in the US, so it could be that the definition of "politics" that I have is something different.

 David,

The topic, itself, is fine as an OT topic.  You haven't done anything ;)  My post was a warning for people not to take the topic off onto their own tangent about something unnecessarily divisive and potentially insulting ;)  
There are quite a few things that have changed in the past few years, as far as flight goes, and some of them are quite silly.  Someone noted above that knitting needles aren't allowed....actually, this past October, I was allowed to take my knitting needles (metal) on board the airplane, but I had to remove my (plastic) crochet hooks from my bag and leave them behind.  I don't see the logic, and was kinda pissed that I spent $6 on plastic "safety" hooks only to have to leave them, but I did, or I wouldn't have been able to join my husband in Florida, lol.  

Quote - The post that was removed was mine, it had to do almost nothing with politics and nothing at all with religion.
The post was only an analysis on how the things in the world are happening and not hing to do with the political personages or ideas.
Well, I also don't live in the US, so it could be that the definition of "politics" that I have is something different.

Perhaps politics is the wrong word, however, speculation on what any given government, whether the US or any other, does regarding terrorist plots is a step too far over the boundary of "non-divisive discussion", and we can't allow that here.  

I understand the want to discuss situations like this on all facets, I really do, but this isn't a debate community, this is an art community.  If you would like, I can look for some places where that line of discussion is welcomed with open arms later today after I've had more sleep, but we can't allow that here.

Well, I am not going further with the discussion, but one more correction, my post also was not about what goverments are doing regarding to terrorist plots, the post was about what terrorists can be doing.
Anyway I also agree that all of this has nothing to do with ART neither when the stove of the kitchen can explode or not.