racial profiling

This morning I jumped on the bus and headed toward the Central Bus Station in order to find a "caspomat" to take out money. I sat down and looked up to see a beautiful, young woman sitting opposite me, checking her makeup in a little compact. She was stunning, really, but I always found it terribly tacky to see a girl perform her beauty rituals in front of people. In any case, I got off the bus and manuevered my way through the crowds, across the street, and toward the entrance of the station. Suddenly, a large man loomed up in front in me..."Shaaaaaalom," his voice boomed with the intent to stop a person...Security. I realized I was directly behind the young woman and a split second before running into her, I dodged left. You see, the beauty of this girl could belong to no other ethnicity in the world but an Arab, and the security guard knew this. As I passed the two, I heard him say in Hebrew, "Where are you from? You have I.D.?" Before reaching the security check I turned back to see her prove herself, patiently enough, but with the hurried frusteration of any teenager about to miss her bus. I set my bags on the little table and walked through the metal detector. The Ethiopian guard took his time opening every pocket of my backpack, stopping to ask, "Machshev? Computer?" when he saw my laptop, and continuing on to my purse, while two young religious boys bickered behind me in English because one had chosen the "slow line." Hm. He was being slow and thorough today. I remembered that Boaz had told me a few days ago to be more aware these next few months. They bomb us, we kill some terrorists in Gaza, they bomb us, etc. Keep your eyes open, he said, it's their turn... some time this week something will happen. Yah, yah. I know.
See, here, they don't have color-coded terrorist threat alerts on the news. People just know, and you can feel it everywhere. Security gets kicked up a few notches all over the city. You suddenly find yourself being patted down on your way into the city for a beer before passing through a makeshift gate that wasn't there earlier that day.
It's a little weird. But life goes on. And so does mine. Just thought I'd share something different, but I don't want to freak anyone out. That's how it is here. And SHIT I'm late to class!!