I was in Israel last month on a State of Illinois Homeland Security Trade Mission for my company. As a security professional I'll throw in my two cents.
The mission met with high level government officials and business executives. We toured several universities engaged in "security" related research such as The Technion (Israels version of MIT) and Tev Aviv University. We had the opportunity to see behind the scenes security infrastructure at such places as Ben Gurion international airport in Tel Aviv, the worlds "most safest airport". We had a briefing by the airport director who candidly told us that our airport security was a failure. He mentioned many examples but the most telling was profiling. Here of course it's a PC thing and it can't be done. He said it may be the ruin of us because we don't profile. I tend to agree. What does everyone else think?
If there is a safer and more secure country I don't know where it is. It certainly did not feel like a police state, but the security presence was palatable. You had to open all bags at the entrance to every building, public or private for inspection. I noticed in resturaunts people would look under the tables as they sat down. A member of the mission who is Israeli but now lives in Chicago told me they were looking for anything out of the ordinary, like a package or bag that may be an explosive. Oddly enough, I saw virtually no police while in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Haifa. When I did see a police car, they always had their light bar flashing, whether there was an emergency or not. I was told that this is standard practice.
When you consider that military service is compulsatory, you basically have a country that is one giant army. If you put a rifle in an old womens hands she would know how to use it. I saw 18 year old girls laying out at the beach with their M16s stuck in the sand next to them. They can't go anywhere with out their rifle. These beautiful 18 year old girls with automatic weapons at the beach...only in Israel
I think Israel can handle just about anything short of every single arab nation attacking at once. Things are bad right now. Let's hope they don't get worse.