Guards at Netanyahu’s office said to ask Arab student to remove her bra

An Arab-Israeli student who arrived for a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office was allegedly subjected to a humiliating search by the security team that included the removal of her bra and pants.

In a lengthy Facebook post Wednesday (Hebrew link), Diran Shalabneh, who works as the head of the Department for the Advancement of Arab Students at the National Union of Israeli Students, described the incident, saying she arrived at the offices of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem for a pre-scheduled meeting with an official at the Authority for the Economic Development of the Arab, Druze and Circassian Sectors.

Shalabneh wrote sarcastically that as an Arab woman, she is well versed in Israeli security procedures — at government offices, checkpoints, the airport and so on — and so believed that she would hand in her Israeli ID, answer some questions, undergo a thorough search and that would be that.

Shalabneh said that the initial security check, where guards examined her ID, called in other guards, and checked her ID some more, took some time, and made her feel “like a unique tiger species at the safari” that had attracted all the staff.

Diran Shalabneh (Facebook)

She answered some questions including if she was expected at the offices (“I answered in the affirmative”) and whether she was a student (“again, I answered in the affirmative”) and then put her belongings through the X-ray machine before being told by a female guard that she would have to undergo a body search.

Shalabneh said she was led to a curtained area where two female guards began the search, first by hand and then with a metal detector.

“Naively, I thought the nightmare was over,” she wrote. “But it seems the best part was coming up. I was then asked to remove my bra.”

“I’ll stop right there because every time I think about it, I don’t know why I complied, [because] the violation of my privacy started long before then,” she said.

The bra, Shalabneh described, was placed in a box and transferred outside the curtained area for examination.

“The way things unfolded and the pace at which they unfolded took a toll on my judgement, I admit,” added Shalabneh, saying that she should have stopped the “humiliation” right then and there.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back, it seems, was the guards’ request that she remove her pants.

Shalabneh said she told the guards that they had crossed every line possible and that she wanted to leave.

On her way out, she ran into the official with whom she was set to meet, who had arrived to check up on her after she didn’t show up on time and who arranged for her entry into the offices, after another half-hour wait and further examination.

“Because of his insistence I stayed, even though I could feel the tears well up inside,” she wrote. “A moment before I was allowed in, the female guard stopped me, and something told me she must feel terrible for some of the stuff she’s asked to do and even a ‘comforting expression’ [on her part] would have sufficed, but she was somewhere else completely [and said] ‘come here please, do you have a knife?'”

Shalabneh said she and her host wrote a letter to the security branch of the Prime Minister’s Office, which wrote back saying that the description of the events were “from her point of view only” and that it had found no wrongdoing.

The security branch, Shalabneh said, added that the guards “protected the honor” of the woman undergoing the search, “because what’s more important for Arabs than honor?,” she asked wryly.

The PMO responded in a statement to Haaretz that the security branch “operates according to appropriate procedures for the security of the prime minister. The treatment was respectful and the guest was allowed in.”

Shalabneh concluded by dedicating the post to Maysam Abu Alqian, who on Tuesday was beaten up by police officers during a violent arrest in Tel Aviv. The incident was caught on tape, and several eyewitnesses described an unprovoked attack on the part of the police.

Pictures and video footage of plainclothes officers beating Alqian outside the Yuda supermarket on Ibn Gvirol Street immediately went viral online, sparking outrage and claims of police brutality.

Police maintain that Alqian resisted arrest and attacked officers when they asked him for identification. However, eyewitnesses charged that officers beat Alqian after he declined to show his ID and asked the plainclothes officers who they were.

Earlier this week, in another accusation of humiliating security searches, Israel’s Foreign Press Association protested the treatment of a photographer by Netanyahu’s security during a press conference with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Atef Safadi, chief photojournalist with the European Pressphoto Agency, said Netanyahu’s security detail demanded he take off his pants when he arrived to cover the meeting as a pool photographer. Safadi refused and left the press conference.

He already has media credentials from the Government Press Office.

Safadi told The Times of Israel that it wasn’t the first time he was maltreated by Netanyahu’s security.

Atef Safadi (Facebook)

The FPA said in a statement that it was “disturbed and disappointed” by Safadi’s treatment by Netanyahu’s security, and that the photo agencies were boycotting photos from the event.

“The FPA again calls on security agencies to respect the right of journalists at such events, who already hold Israeli government press accreditation, to do their work without demanding that they endure intimate and humiliating security inspections,” the FPA said.

There will be no foreign media photos of the meeting between the French and Israeli Prime Ministers, photojournalist refuses to disrobe !

— Foreign Press Assoc. (@FPAIsPal) May 23, 2016

A Government Press Office spokesman said it was the second or third incident of its kind, and that it “tried to avoid this incident” at the time but that Safadi left before they had a chance to. The GPO said it would investigate the circumstances of the incident.

In January 2011, the FPA threatened to boycott press conferences held by Netanyahu after an al-Jazeera news crew was subjected to a lengthy security check not demanded of other journalists.

Najwan Simri Diab was asked to strip and remove her bra, and Shirin Abu Aqla was reportedly held for an hour and then rejected, Haaretz reported at the time.

“I am not against a search and a security check, but I am against invasive humiliation,” Simri Diab told the paper at the time. She said it wasn’t the first time she was subjected to such treatment.