Mandatory Strip Searches for Arabs

Not sure how many of you have heard about Jillian Bandes, a student at UNC Chapel Hill who wrote a very insightful opinion column in their daily student paper suggesting that all Arabs be strip searched when they reach the airport. She's been "fired" from her free newspaper writing job, but celebrated and thrown into the national spotlight at the same time. She's appeared on radio talk shows and talked to newspapers and Web sites.. basking in the glory of her offensive, ignorant rant.

Here's what they published on Sept. 13, 2005:

"I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.
I don't care if they're being inconvenienced. I don't care if it seems as though their rights are being violated.
I care about my life. I care about the lives of my family and friends.
And I care about the lives of the Arabs and Arab Americans I'm privileged to know and study with.
They're some of the brightest, kindest people I've ever met.
Tragically, they're also members of an ethnicity that is responsible for almost every act of terror committed against the West in the recent past."

She finished up with these qoutes and thoughts:

"You can debate a lot of things about post-9/11 foreign policy, but one thing you can't debate is that taking out terrorists- or blatant human-rights violators- is a good thing.
You also can't debate that of the 19 hijackers on those planes, all 19 were Arab.
And you can't debate that while most Arabs are not terrorists, sadly, most terrorists are indeed Arab.
Given this combination, I want some kind of security.
Done in a professional, conscientious manner, racial profiling is more likely to get the bad guys than accosting my 12-year-old pipsqueak of a brother on his way to summer camp.
When asked if she had a boyfriend, Ann Coulter once said that any time she had a need for physical intimacy, she would simply walk through an airport's security checkpoint.
I want Arabs to get sexed up like nothing else.
And Arab students at UNC don't seem to think that's such a bad idea.

"Racial profiling really doesn't bother me," said Sherief Khaki, a first-generation Egyptian-American and representative of the UNC-CH Arabic Club. "So a couple of hours are wasted. Big deal."
Said Muhammad Salameh, a junior biology major: "I can accept it, even if I don't like it. I don't want to die."
Professor Nasser Isleem, a man for whom I have complete and utter respect after merely two weeks of sitting in his Arabic 101 class, said, "Let them search."
"It depends on how I'm stopped, but if it is done in a professional manner..." Then he nodded. "There were Muslims in those buildings, too."
Some people say that racial profiling will make terrorism a self-fulfilling prophecy, or that it's somehow unfair to designate certain individuals as being more likely to commit an act of terror than another.
They're wrong.

If 19 blond-haired, blue-eyed, Caucasian Jews had plowed into the World Trade Center with two jumbo jets, I would demand to be interrogated every time I browsed Cheapflights.com.
After each interrogation, I would offer the official a cup of joe, then heartedly thank him for his efforts. And I would not be any more inclined to blow up innocent civilians as a result of it.
Neither would Sherief Khaki. Or Muhammad Salameh. Or Nasser Isleem.
Nearly every Arab American I've spoken with has done nothing but condemn the evil that was done just four years ago, and at least tacitly recognize that some profiling is necessary.
I have enough confidence in my country's imperfect but steadfast law enforcement systems to carry out such profiling the way it should be done: in a professional and thorough manner, without going down the slippery slope of pointless and disrespectful encroachment on the livelihood or decorum of everyday Arabs and Arab Americans.
Stop, as Coulter advises, treating racial profiling like the Victorians treated sex- by not discussing the topic unless you're recoiling in horror at the practice.
Embrace the race."
- The Daily Tar Heel

I'm not real sure what her closer means...

The writer says that the paper's editor didn't have a problem with her article when she wrote it and that the editor commended her for having the balls to say what she said. She says that he found it to be humorous and that the public outcry from students was the real reason why he dismissed her. But the editor Chris Coletta says he fired her for misleading the Arabs she spoke with in interviews and using their quotes out of context. Of course, if he realizes that now, maybe he could have not ran the story in the first place? I don't know... running a daily college paper is hectic I'm sure.

Either way, I think this chick has a good career ahead of her. Someone in the conservative media will surely sponsor the rest of her education.. We may see her spouting insensitive, misleading and unresearched opinions on Fox news someday!

I can't seriously comment on this article because it's dripping with so much ignorance that I can barely grasp it. But I'll say that she did have the freedom to say whatever she wanted. I'm more worried about her lack of concern for the feelings of her "bright and kind" Arab classmates though. If most Chapel-Hill students were Arabs, let's say 60% and then maybe dumb Jewish chicks with blond hair and blue eyes made up like 10% of the campus (assuming we can find enough blond-haired, blue-eyed Jews), would she be so quick to exercise her freedom of speech? I think a bigger problem is the environment that this paper is fostering by allowing hate speech into their paper.

I also wonder if she's ever been strip searched? I haven't been (at least not by legal authorities...), but I hear it's not so sexy or easy to undergo (...unlike the strip searches I've experienced). What if this Arab has to travel every week? What if they have to delay her flights while every Arab in or near the airport gets strip searched? Carolina should be ashamed of this young lady. It's as if she's majoring in hatred. In fact I think she's an international studies major.

Here's a link to the article and a slew comments from people who've read it. http://www.dailytarheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/09/13/4326450119685