They tried to infiltrate Israel through Ben Gurion Airport - but one small mistake brought them down.

February 10, 2022   

Even airport veterans don't remember a strange chain of events like the one that occurred at Ben Gurion Airport over the past few months. For smokers only: This is how you can save over 8,500 shekels a year Foreign workers, as one might guess, persist in their attempts to enter Israel illegally, and the Population and Immigration Authority is forced to deal with many such cases. Indeed, the Population and Immigration Authority has recently received quite a few reports of foreign workers trying to infiltrate Israel without permission. How? Some arrive in Israel dressed as Ben-Gurion Airport employees, others wear airline uniforms. Sometimes they carry additional equipment appropriate to their 'role.' And most importantly, they are equipped with a certificate with the letter M on it, which serves as a transit permit for airport employees. Each such transit certificate has the name of the holder of the certificate written on it, in Hebrew and English. According to a report by Shimon Yaish, editor and reporter for the tourism and aviation section of 'Israel Hayom,' it turns out that the certificates with which foreign workers arrived, most of them from Georgia, contained one woman's name in Hebrew: Oshrat, an employee of the 'Israir' company at Ben-Gurion Airport. Her name also appeared on the men's IDs, a fact that helped expose the scam. Not only that, but it seems that whoever is forging the IDs for the infiltrators is not fluent in Hebrew, to say the least, and therefore gets into embarrassing trouble with the English transcription: On one of the employees' IDs, the name Dani Daniel is written, and on another's ID, Moshe Narat; and these are just a few examples of many forgeries. The forgers forgot to change the Hebrew name "Osherat," as mentioned. When Israel Hayom contacted her for comment, Osherat was very surprised. She admitted that she was not aware of the matter, and immediately informed the security officials at Israir. The original transit permit allows Ben Gurion Airport employees to access most areas of the airport. It is used to open doors and reveals the most sensitive and intriguing areas of the airport. However, a fake permit, of course, will not help its owner open even a single door at Ben Gurion Airport - because the original card, equipped with a smart reader, is considered extremely sophisticated and difficult to counterfeit. "The role of border controllers is, among other things, to identify cases like these, in which travelers come to settle in Israel and not to tour it, as they claim," explained Population and Immigration Authority Director General Tomer Moskowitz. "In the aforementioned case, we repeatedly encountered fake certificates with permanent identity, which made it easier for us to understand that this was an attempt to forge an identity - and for that the border controllers deserve praise.". Dramatic statistic: You could be losing hundreds of thousands of NIS that belong to you