Panic erupted at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Thursday after a U.S. family attempted to take an unexploded bomb through security and onto a plane as a souvenir.
Video shared on social media showed members of the public fleeing the main airport terminal shortly after the alarm was raised. Authorities eventually gave the unexploded ordinance the all-clear and passengers were allowed back into the airport.
The family had been on holiday in Israel and visited the Golan Heights as part of their trip. Golan is a 1,800 square kilometre area that sits in the northeast corner of Israel. The area was seized from Syria in 1967 during the Six-Day War and remnants of the conflict still exist to this day.
During their visit to Golan, a member of the family found an intact and unexploded shell from the conflict and apparently decided to try and take it home to the United States as a souvenir.
On arrival at the Tel Aviv airport, the family showed the shell to officers at the security checkpoint which in turn led to a full-scale emergency response.
Surprisingly, after the initial chaos subdued, the family were given the all-clear and allowed to board their return flight to the U.S. without any further action being taken.
Ben Gurion airport is considered to have some of the most sophisticated security systems in place in the world to protect passengers and aircraft from terrorist attack.
In recent years, the physical screening of bags and passengers has become less intense but Israel has been criticised for its other security methods which include profiling passengers based on a variety of factors which can include their religion.
Why would you post that first tweet as part of your article?????? You couldn’t simply report on the incident without including a hate post from social media? Shame on you. I will never read your blog again.
Hi there, the offending tweet has been immediately removed. It was included for the video only and had been copied from another source which didn’t properly highlight the hateful content.
Thank you for doing that.