Israel Believes El Al Shooting Was Terror Attack

Israeli officials believe that the shooting incident at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport was a terror attack, even though the FBI is downplaying that possibility.

Ticket agent Victoria Hen, 25, and diamond merchant Ya'akov Aminov, 47, both Israeli nationals who were residents of Los Angeles, were killed in the attack, which occurred on the busy Fourth of July holiday.

The FBI named the assailant as Egyptian Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, 41, who had a green card and was living and working legally as a limousine driver in the Los Angeles area.

Armed with two handguns and a six-inch hunting knife, Hadayet opened fire at the ticket counter before he was shot and killed by El Al security guards.

El Al is Israel's national air carrier, which is also known for its stringent security measures, and is one of the few airlines to use armed guards at its ticket counters and on its flights.

The FBI was downplaying any connection to terrorism. FBI spokesman Matt Mclaughlin said Hadayet had no connection to terror organizations. McLaughlin also said it might be a hate crime.

"We've never said it's not terrorism," McLaughlin said. "We can't rule that out, but there's nothing to indicate terrorism at this point."

Contradicting the FBI assessment, Israeli officials have said that they will consider the attack to be terrorism until proven otherwise.

"We are going to assume that it's a terror attack until proven otherwise," said Israel's Transportation minister Ephraim Sneh in a radio interview on Friday.

Earlier, Sneh said in an interview with CNN that although there was no "clear-cut evidence" that Hadayet had connections with a terrorist organization, "it's the most logical assumption that when someone opens fire on an El Al counter in an international airport, most likely this is a terror attack...

"We have warnings that these terrorist organizations [will] try to hit Israeli and Jewish targets all over world so we have no reason to assume that this is something different than a terrorist attack," Sneh said.

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported on Friday that Israel's Shin Bet secret service was labeling the incident as a terror attack because of the location, timing and way it took place, even though the Shin Bet had no specific intelligence warnings of an impending attack.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres concurred saying that it was clear that it had been a terrorist attack, timed to coincide with American Independence day.

Peres and Israeli and U.S. officials praised the quick action of the security guards, which they said had saved many lives.

Den Beste's take from USS Clueless:

With respect to today's shooting at the Los Angeles airport, there is something very strange going on. I do not for a moment believe that they don't know who the guy was. The idea that they released his age (52) and said they weren't sure who he was is horseshit. I think they know damned well who he was.

There are several possibilities, and in the absence of facts I'm going to give in to unbridled speculation. First possibility: the story so far is bogus; the guy who they're blaming wasn't really a killer, and the El Al security guard got trigger happy and is actually the one who fired all the rounds which killed everyone because he panicked. I don't believe that this is it, but it would explain the reticence.

Another possibility is that someone is covering their ass. Suppose that the guy who did it was on a watch-list already; suppose that when his identity truly comes out that it will turn out that someone fucked up badly and that he was supposed to have been prevented from doing this. In that case, the delay is caused by them working on "evidence" to prove that it wasn't really a mistake.

A third possibility is that, despite their denials, it actually was terrorist and, as above, he's a known threat. In this case what's going on is that they're denying it was a terrorist attack and refusing to release his name because they don't want to panic his friends and make them run, because they intend to pick them up. After they've performed some sort of mass arrest of others known to associate with the killer, then they'll announce who he was.

A fourth possibility is that they're just plain afraid that if it comes out that he's Arab that there might be riots and lynchings, or mass panic. If so, I'm pissed; I don't think Americans would react that way.

Or if you really want to try for a long shot, what if he has a red passport? And what they're doing is to work through some diplomatic issues before revealing his identity? If that is the case; then there's going to be hell to pay.

What I don't believe is that this is a routine rage incident and that they're having a hard time identifying him, and that it's just coincidence that it happened on July 4 and was targeted at El Al. I think they knew who he was from the very beginning. Otherwise how could they announce his age? The longer they wait to reveal his identity, the more certain I become that the true story behind this is going to be really bizarre.

And in the mean time, my bullshit detector is going off more and more strongly. I do not like being lied to.

Update: Another possibility: they know exactly who he was, and he was indeed Arab, but they don't want to admit that until they're certain that they know what his motive may have been, because they don't want to start speculation that he was a terrorist without a factual basis for that. If they reveal his name, his ethnicity will become blatantly obvious, which is why they're concealing it. The delay is caused by the investigation to try to figure out why he did it.

Update: Leonid writes to say that they've released his identity, and he was Egyptian. (He was also 41, which is interesting. Maybe they actually weren't sure who he was after all.)

Yet more:

La Shooter Is Egyptian National

Friday July 5, 2002 7:50 AM

LOS ANGELES (AP) - An immigrant Egyptian national armed with guns and a knife opened fire Thursday at the Los Angeles International Airport ticket counter of Israeli airline El Al, killing two people before an airline security guard shot him dead.

The gunman was identified as Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, 41, a resident of Irvine, Calif., who came to the United States from Egypt 10 years ago, the FBI announced after an all-day investigation.

The man also goes by the last name Ali, the FBI said. Authorities were searching a townhome in Irvine, in Orange County southeast of Los Angeles, late Thursday.

The gunman walked into the terminal with a .45-caliber handgun, 9 mm handgun and a six-inch knife, but carrying no identification, said Ron Iden, assistant director of the Los Angeles FBI office.

Four others were injured, authorities said. Thousands were evacuated from the international terminal, although the Federal Aviation Administration said domestic arrivals and departures continued to operate normally.

Late Thursday evening, a bomb squad went to a parking garage at the international terminal to inspect a car believed to belong to the gunman, said Los Angeles police spokesman Jason Lee. The garage was evacuated, but the search was only precautionary.

The shootout happened with security on high alert around the country for a possible terrorist attack on July Fourth. It sent passengers ducking behind counters and hiding in airport offices.

Israel's foreign ministry blamed terrorists, but didn't offer any evidence to support the claim.

The suspect had approached another person at the counter and opened fire shortly before noon, said Alex Baez, a police spokesman. An El Al security guard fatally shot the gunman, police said.

Dr. David Parkus, a trauma surgeon from Texas, said he was at the Singapore Airlines counter when he heard a rapid succession of gunshots and saw the gunman wrestling with an airline security guard. A second guard then shot the gunman, Parkus said.

One guard was hit on the forehead with the butt of the gun and cut on his arm; a second guard was cut on the lower back, stabbed in the left thigh, and had a superficial gunshot wound to his right thigh, said Parkus.

Parkus, director of the trauma surgery unit at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont, Texas, said he helped hold the gunmen as he died, then performed CPR on two people.

One of the victims was Yaakov Aminov, 46, relatives at his Los Angeles home confirmed. He was dropping friends off at the airport, and died of gunshot wounds, hospital officials said.

His brother-in-law, Mark Ezerzer, said Aminov has eight children and that his wife is pregnant.

``He loved people and his home was always open,'' Ezerzer said. ``He was a very honest and a good person.''

Aminov, a jewelry shop owner, had taken his friend, Michael Shabtay, to the airport. After being caught in the spray of gunfire, Aminov collapsed in Shabtay's arms, Ezerzer said.

Also fatally shot was a 20-year-old woman. The airline said she was an employee of a company that provides ground services to El Al at Los Angeles airport.

El Al had one flight scheduled out of Los Angeles on Thursday, Flight 106 to Toronto and Tel Aviv, said David Douek, a spokesman for the Israeli consulate here. It was scheduled to depart at 4:10 p.m. In Israel early Friday, El Al said about 10 passengers were checking in for the flight when the attack began and about 80 others already had passed through the area.

Yitzhak Amitai, deputy managing director of the airline, said there had been no warnings of such an attack.

The governor praised the airline's response, saying security agents acted quickly and prevented a greater loss of life.

``Like all Californians, I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn of today's shooting,'' Gov. Gray Davis said in a statement. ``That it happened on the day on which we honor what America stands for - liberty, security and diversity - makes this particularly more tragic.''

A witness, Hakin Hasidh, 43, of Dusseldorf, Germany, said he was standing in the line next to the El Al counter. After hearing two shots, he turned and saw the gunman fire at passengers in line.

``The first couple of shots, everybody just stood there, frozen like I was,'' Hasidh said. ``It's really hard to tell whether he was aiming at the counter, at people behind the counter or at people in line.''

Vanessa Spinelli was dropping off her aunt for a flight when she heard the gunshots from nearby the El Al counter.

``At first I thought it was firecrackers, said Spinelli, 26, of Los Angeles. ``Then everybody started screaming.''

Thirty-five flights were delayed, affecting 10,500 passengers, said airport spokesman Paul Heney. Five hours after the shooting, most of the international terminal had reopened. Some 900,000 people had been expected to pass through the airport over the holiday weekend - from Thursday through Sunday.

Greg Warren, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, said the agency will review security procedures to see if something more needs to be done.

El Al, based in Israel, is known as one of the most security-conscious airlines in the world. Its formidable security includes armed guards at check-in, sky marshals and extensive searches of luggage. Passengers are told to arrive three hours ahead of flights to make time for the security checks.

``The terrorists deliberately chose the Fourth of July to carry out their crime on the soil of the United States,'' Israeli foreign ministry spokeswoman Yaffa Ben-Ari said in a statement.

Last year, an Algerian who trained in terrorist camps financed by Osama bin Laden was convicted of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International at the height of the millennium holiday travel period. Ahmed Ressam had been arrested in Washington state on Dec. 14, 1999, while entering the country from Canada in a car with a trunk full of explosives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-1857675,00.html

New Ben-Gurion security would have prevented LA shooting

By Zohar Blumenkrantz, Ha'aretz Correspondent

The gunman who carried out the shooting attack at Los Angeles airport on Thursday took full advantage of the current security procedures at the airport, which allow anyone to accompany passengers right up to the security check counter. A chronology of attacks against El Al.

Had the attack taken place in Israel, the gunman would not have been allowed to enter the sterile area inside the departures terminal, because of the new security system implemented at Ben-Gurion Airport just days ago. Attack on boarding passengers: El Al's most practiced scenario.

The new system means that the traditional pre-check-in security questioning is replaced by a computerized scanning system, which checks the luggage of all passengers leaving Ben-Gurion. The specially built apparatus is designed to detect any suspicious or dangerous objects in a passenger's luggage, minimizing the potentially dangerous element of human discretion.

The technology is already at work in 10 airports around the world where El Al operates, and the installation of the system at Ben-Gurion is part of a series of steps decided on by Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh to bolster security after September 11.

The problem with this new system is that for the time being, the technology is only being used for outgoing El Al flights, but it will gradually be implemented for all departures, as well as for domestic flights.

Yam Yehoshua adds: There have been five security incidents at airports and aboard flights in the past months. On December 22, 2001, a citizen of Sri Lanka, carrying a forged British passport in the name of Richard Wright, boarded an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami. He attempted to detonate his shoes, which contained explosives, but was discovered by a flight attendant and arrested.

On January 5, a 15-year-old youth crashed a light plane into a Florida skyscraper, apparently in sympathy with the cause of Osama Bin Laden. The pilot was killed in the incident, but no one else was injured.

On January 19, an Israeli citizen inadvertently smuggled a gun aboard on an El Al flight, after the security check failed to find the weapon in his suitcase. On January 26, a kibbutz volunteer smuggled a flare onto an El Al flight to Johannesburg. The passenger told the flight attendant about his clandestine package, and was removed from the plane. On January 30, thousands of people were evacuated from the international airport in San Francisco, after security officials found traces of explosives on a man's shoes. The passenger was not subsequently located.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=183717&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0

We need to take lessons from the Israelis in setting up our airline security.

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