Jacob Sullum contrasts American and Israeli airport security in And You Trust the TSA to Protect You?:
My family and I flew to Israel last week on El Al, but we bought our tickets through Delta, which flew us from Reagan National to JFK. Delta let us check our luggage in D.C. for the whole trip, which surprised me, because El Al usually has its own security screening. It turned out that the bags were supposed to be screened again in New York, which no one mentioned until we were about to board the plane for Tel Aviv. At that point an El Al security guy whisked me into the bowels of the airport to identify our bags and answer questions about them. He explained that we could not get on the flight with the bags until they had been cleared by the airline. When I mentioned that the luggage had already been screened by the TSA in D.C., he laughed and said, ‘And you trust the TSA to protect you?’ While American air travel security is just for show, he said, the Israeli version is for real.