Is it justifiable for the Ben Gurion airport security to ask you for your e-mail and Facebook credentials?

It's important to remember that social media and email accounts are monitored anyway on a constant basis by all kinds of security organizations. When it comes to visiting Israel, I believe the main reason for this particular security check is that in many past cases, innocent people were used as couriers for all kinds of purposes simply because they looked European or had a foreign passport. The absolute vast majority of people entering Israel have no problems whatsoever and nobody cares what their political opinions might be.

I visit Israel almost every year and I've never been asked to provide any of these. I'll treat this question as trollish at best unless you can come up with some proof.

Yes, you're right, it's highly undemocratic for Israel to reject entry to people who might be a security threat. True democracy would require Israel to allow anyone to enter, because all people are not only equivalent but also equal, and there's no difference between an Israeli and someone who wants to kill and terrorize Israelis. So Israel is not a democracy by this standard, and no other country is, either.But Israel is at war, and interrogating foreigners who wish to enter the country seems perfectly reasonable to me and to the overwhelming majority of Israelis (as well as to nearly everyone else, when it comes to their countries' borders).The burdens you described (and to be clear, I'm not aware of any random or innocent person who's barred from entering Israeli solely for refusal to share a Facebook account or email address) are focused narrowly on a vanishingly small subset of people that are identified as being a potential threat. Example: I expect that a 20 year old English guy with dreadlocks and a keffiyeh, who can not identify a single Israeli that he plans to meet while in Israel or a single hotel or place that he plans to visit, is the likely profile of a candidate to receive this form of interrogation. If he's reluctant to let security officers see his facebook, that's a big red flag. What do you think he might be trying to hide?A 64 year old Polish woman wearing a scarf and a long dress and sneakers, who's arrived on an airplane with her church group, and who tells the security offers that she's planning to visit the via dolorosa, the churches in Jerusalem, &c. is going to be waved along. They won't waste their time interrogating someone who poses no threat to anybody.Elaborating a bit, based on : Some terrorists are smart, like those who plan suicide bombings. But other terrorists are stupid, like those who actually carry out suicide bombings. It's very unlikely that looking at someone's facebook account is going to reveal a post called "Top ten list of all the mujahidin I'm grooming to become suicide bombers." Duh. But what if it reveals a private message that says, "Dear mom and dad, I love you and miss you, and I'll see you in heaven"? That's scary. That person should be taken aside for further questioning. Israeli security officials - both the ones you can see and the ones you can't see - are trained behavioral profilers. They're assessing your actions, reactions and interactions at every moment to determine whether you are relatively likely or relatively unlikely to be a threat. They know it's possible to have a "dummy" facebook account. A primary or auxiliary point of this sort of investigation is to observe the traveler's reactions to being asked. If someone who already fits a demographic profile is then asked for email or facebook access and suddenly gets combative, or denies having a facebook account, or says he forgot his password, then this may be grounds to investigate further. And all the while, the security officials will be watching that person's face and movements, looking for clues that may indicate something innocuous or something pernicious. made this comment: No it's not just "undemocratic" , it's illegal and gross violation of privacy and human rights. Nothing, nothing at all, not even being at war can justify security personnel asking for facebook or email credentials. He's completely wrong, and actually foolishly and childishly wrong.He's wrong about the law: it is not, in fact, illegal in any way to ask for someone's personal information or social network profile as a precondition to enter a country. Israel has no law preventing this, and I'm aware of no law higher than Israel's that could prevent it. To claim that such a thing is illegal simply because one doesn't like that thing is immature and will not fool anybody.He's wrong about who may enter Israel: Israelis are entitled to enter and leave Israel at will, just as Indians are entitled with India, Americans are entitled with America, and so on. Besides Israelis, nobody else is entitled to entry when landing at Ben Gurion airport. Even citizens of countries (like Ukraine, for example) that have no-visa agreements with Israel can not be considered entitled to entry. Entry to Israel is a privilege for non-Israelis, just as entry to India is a privilege for non-Indians and entry to America for non-Americans.He's wrong about privacy: nobody's privacy is violated by being asked to give email and social network credentials. In this situation, anybody has the opportunity to refuse. People who refuse will retain their privacy, and they will simply be on the next plane out of Israel, without having left the airport. He's wrong about human rights, but I'm sure that part was a joke. Nobody has a "human right" not to have his email account examined as a precondition for entering a foreign country. And expressing one's desires and demands in the language of "human rights" reveals that they have no substance. He's wrong about Israel's justification: in war, people shoot each other; they kill each other with bombs and missiles; they destroy each other's buildings with tanks; they blockade, bombard, boycott. If the Israeli security services can prevent any bloodshed by using airport security screening to keep foreign combatants from entering a zone of conflict, then that is all the justification they need.

For those asking for proof... Here is NBC News: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/47690140/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/israel-asks-arab-visitors-open-emails-search/#.UzsVyK1dU3M When Sandra Tamari arrived at Israel's international airport, she received an unusual request: A security agent pushed a computer screen in front of her, connected to Gmail and told her to "log in." The agent, suspecting Tamari was involved in pro-Palestinian activism, wanted to inspect her private email account for incriminating evidence. The 42-year-old American of Palestinian descent refused and was swiftly expelled from the country. Tamari's experience is not unique. In a cyber-age twist on Israel's vaunted history of airport security, the country has begun to force incoming travelers deemed suspicious to open personal email accounts for inspection, visitors say...  Tamari, who is from St. Louis, said she arrived in Israel on May 21 to participate in an interfaith conference. ... Emanuel Gross, a law professor at Haifa University, said such a practice would seem to be illegal in Israel. "In Israel, you need a search warrant to go into somebody's computer," he said. "I'm skeptical that the security guards asked a judge first for a warrant and I'm skeptical that a judge would give it." Here is an article in Algemeiner, which is an American Jewish newspaper with a Right-Wing and Pro-Israel editorial stance: http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/04/25/ben-gurion-airport-guards-may-ask-%E2%80%98suspicious%E2%80%99-tourists-to-open-email-accounts/ ...the Attorney-General of Israel's office was responding to a petition by Israeli Civil Rights groups on this matter: Shin Bet staff may ask the traveler to open his or her account in view of security personnel, who can then check emails for incriminating evidence that may be relevant to issues of public or national security, wrote lawyer Nadim Avod on behalf of the Attorney-General’s Office. In addition, the traveler can refuse access to his or her personal email to security personnel, but Shin Bet agents at Ben-Gurion airport can consequently deny the traveler entry to Israel. Avod cited the law of entry to Israel, written in 1952, which states that a foreigner does not have the explicit right to enter the country. Here is an article about an incident on the travel site, Gadling: http://www.gadling.com/2012/06/06/israel-border-protection-searches-tourist-emails/ Najwa Doughman, a 25-year-old architect and University of Virginia graduate living in New York City, arrived in http://gadling.com/tag/israelon May 26 with a friend, Sasha Al-Sarabi, another UVA grad working in finance in the same city. Doughman was visiting Israel for the third time, Al-Sarabi for the first. Two notable instances came out of the interrogation, however – the first that Doughman claims that she was forced to log into her Gmail account and allow security to run searches for words like "Israel," "Palestine," "West Bank" and "International Solidarity Movement." Here is an article by Liz Klimas writing at The Blaze, the news site owned and founded by Glen Beck, who held a pro-Israel Rally in Jerusalem in 2011 and is not regarded as a critic of Israel, but rather a great booster for Israel and American-Israeli relations: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/06/07/israeli-airport-security-inspects-some-travelers-email-too-far-or-within-govt-rights/ Given her activism, Tamari said she expected some security delays. But she was caught off guard by the order to open her email account. She said the agents discovered her address while rifling through her personal papers. “That’s when they turned their (computer) screens around to me and said, ‘Log in,” she said. When she refused, an interrogator said, “‘Well you must be a terrorist. You are hiding something.’” Tamari said she was searched, placed in a holding cell and flown back to the U.S. the following day. “The idea that somebody my age, a Quaker, on a peace delegation with folks from the U.S., would be denied entry — that never crossed my mind,” she said. Doughman, 25 years old and also a Palestinian American, said she underwent a similar experience when she arrived for a one-week vacation on May 26. Here the two individuals describe their experiences in a post on the Anti-Zionist Blog, Mondoweiss: http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/do-you-feel-more-arab-or-more-american-two-arab-american-womens-story-of-being-detained-and-interrogated-at-ben-gurion.html She sifted through my inbox, reading every single email with those keywords. She read sentences out loud to her colleague, sarcastically reenacting and mocking old Google Chat conversations between Sasha and me about our future trip to Jerusalem. I squirmed in my seat. The Israeli authorities have a notorious reputation for denying entry to Palestinians of all citizenships, and I had received all sorts of advice, solicited and unsolicited, on how to cope with the problem. The security officer opened an email from a friend living in Jerusalem who had advised me to remove myself from internet searches. “They are heavy on googling names at the airport recently,” he had written. “See if you can remove yourselves, not crucial but helpful.” The security guard found this especially hilarious. With a laugh, she called her blonde colleague over and reread the sentence mockingly. “You can tell your friend, not only do we google you, we read your emails, too!” I was beyond uncomfortable, uncertain of how else they would try to humiliate me. “Okay, I think you’ve read enough,” I said. “Is what you’re doing even legal? Can you please log out now?” The guard became even more defensive. “You could ask me to log out, but you know what that would mean, right? Tell me to log out,” she dared me. I was speechless. I felt completely helpless, furious, and exhausted; I was now entering my fourth hour of interrogation. After reading several more emails, they wrote down every contact name, email, and phone number they could find. Finally, the interrogator said, “Okay you can go.” But before I could even feel the slightest sense of relief she added, “Good luck getting into Israel.”

In short, no, it isn't justifiable. And it's one of the reasons I don't go to Israel. Because if I was asked to provide credentials, I would not be able to prevent myself telling the offending security zombie to go F$£" himself.

Let me preface by saying that in France, the law says if you're planing to stay at someone place, you need an official document from their city's town hall to "prove" they are staying with you. Or a hotel reservation. Not a lot of people know about it and I haven't heard too many stories about people being rejected for it, but some exist. See this French news article: http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2014/02/03/douce-france-pauvre-mexicaine-249605  Again, no one has a "right" to enter a country, it's up the state to decide whether they want to let you in. We all know how tight security is the US airports. Coupled with the French situation, I'm trying to establish that "hostile" customs in airports are fairly common. The Israelis are probably even more justified in being cranky and overly cautious. Their enemies use every possible opportunity to exploit Israel being nice. I had none of these problems myself but I'm not representative since I  was working for the French embassy and was considered in Israel to be a  diplomat (I worked in the Technion as a postdoc, but I didn't mind). Customs were always a breeze. However, I had several people come and go, colleagues or not. It is notorious that Ben Gurion customs are tough. So you prepare and you have all your documents available, you don't leave them in your suitcase. On my very first flight to Israel, I travelled with El Al, I had to prove I had a Ph D, but that's okay I had the diploma to prove it handy. I had all the documents handy. When people visited us, we told them to have everything ready, we gave them our exact occupations in Israel and contact info. Going through Ben Gurion also requires to be honest, clear and to cut the chit-chat to a minimum. When you get interrogated by the staff before checking in, you clearly and dispassionately say what you're doing in Israel, who you are, what you're at the airport for and why you're going on holiday. Just the facts. I had my bag opened once out of 5 trips outbound and it was because I had a wine bottle behind my laptop in my suitcase. I never had any problems on my way in despite the fact that I brought in far too many wine bottles into the country. To give a parallel story to the previous French one, here's a French-Moroccan woman that got sent home from Ben Gurion: http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2014/05/14/crois-vais-laisser-entrer-israel-faire-attentat-252111 The person didn't have "bad" intentions, except she was flagged as a risk due to pro-Palestinian activism and strange travel patterns. But she failed because in her own words "I refused to say who I was staying with ("mes contacts")", "as usual I tell [the customs] as least as possible, I tell them I'm a tourist", "I don't tell them I'm going to Palestine", "I forgot to tell them I went to Ramallah" (but they knew). She lied, so she got sent home. Bottomline: if you're honest, factual and have paperwork to support what you're doing and where you're going (hotel reservation, invitation to a meeting, etc...), you'll probably have zero problems. If you lie or hide stuff up front, well, the customs will delve and intrude and you might get sent home.

No more or less than aksing me, an Israeli who's during his service at the Navy trained with US Navy and visited their ships and bases in the US to go through am exhausting Visa issuing process. Every country can demand whatever security means it deams necesary to protect itself. don't think its' ok? stay away...

If true, it'd be a totally ineffective measure. It's not at all hard to maintain "dummy" Facebook or email accounts, while keeping a "real" one you keep out of your browser history and known only to close associates. So the moment it goes public that they do that (which it seems it has), they'd only catch people too stupid or unprepared to do that, while alerting them that they're being heavily scrutinized. Seems rather counterproductive.

If this is true - Israel actually adopted this practice from US. It is a standard practice for US to ask facebook and email accounts from people it flags as threats - the main difference is that US mostly flags people that are high risk of planning to stay as illegal, while Israel flags people that are high risk to be a security threat. Democratic does not mean suicidal, as much as some people would like us to be. :)Yu