After reading JJ's pictorial essay [1] on his unrealized trip to Israel, I was reminded about a confrontation/incident I had with Israel (El Al) security forces of all places in Newark International Airport (EWR).

Before telling you about the incident, let me say that I am glad JJ didn't make the trip.

I am saying it not because Israel has become a pariah country in the Middle-East or because it is an apartheid nation, their close cooperation with South Africa during their apartheid regime not withstanding, Arab citizens of Israel are treated as second class citizens. (I realize under current regime in Iran Jewish and Christian Armenian citizens are also treated as second class citizen and I feel it is such a waste of talent.)

And not because JJ has become a bit of politician after reading a posting from a Pahlavi cabal stooge that JJ is a reformed person after repenting for his earlier association with mullahs and now JJ is his best friend or not because he posts the Massed operatives and its sympathizer's various writings.

No, none of the above. The reason I salute JJ for not making the trip was because it was a junket (paid for by Israel).

Having said all that let me tell you about the incident at EWR. It was mid 1990, long before 9/11, and I was traveing to the Netherlands. It was a business trip and I was supposed to give a technical presentation on one of the newer products that we were making in the US. I had prepared about forty transparencies (at that time transparencies were the way for business presentation) for my presentation.

Although Dutch are socially kind of liberal, technically they are not. Since the company I used to work for was a Dutch Company, I had to be extra careful as to authenticity and also how well I presented my talk. Even though my flight was about 8 PM, as usual afraid of traffic jam in NY/NJ area, I got to EWR about 4 PM.

So I had to kill some time. I bought myself a cup of coffee from Starbucks (which I hate by the way) and found a quiet place to sit and review my presentation. Our department secretary had prepared a booklet of all my transparencies which made it easy for me to review them.

So I was sitting there minding my business and sipping the hated coffee, suddenly I realized I was surrounded by three or four plain cloth people asking me what I was doing there. I just started to say what I was doing, thinking they are security personal from EWR, but looking at their ID tag I realized that they were from Israel's El Al Airlines.

I quickly changed my tone and asked who the heck (I actually used the F.. word) are you? Why are you asking what I am doing here? to which they responded "we know your kinds".

I screamed for EWR security, no one showed up but they saw I am beginning to scream and making a scene they returned to wherever they were coming from and left me alone.

To this day, although I was flying with KLM, I don't know what caused them to come to me and say "we know your kinds".