U.S. Family Tries to Bring Unexploded Artillery Shell Home From Israel, Causes Chaos At Airport

A family from the United States recently returned from a trip to Israel. While there, they unwittingly picked up what they thought would be a lovely souvenir, but was in fact an unexploded artillery shell. The artifact was left behind after the 1967 6-Day War between Israel and Syria. Then they tried to get it through security at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.

This story goes under the category of some Americans can be really dumb. Or maybe just sheltered, since thankfully Americans have been mostly shielded from the ravages of war, at least in our homeland.

This thing got pretty scary for a lot of people who happened to be at the airport with them. You see, as they came through the airport that thankfully has one of the highest levels of security in the world, one member of the family pulled the artillery shell out of their backpack and asked security if it could be put in their suitcase.

Upon realizing what they had, the security official cleared her immediate vicinity. But then chaos ensued:

An eye-witness who was also traveling that day had this to say: “I was at the airport waiting for an hour in line until I got to the check-in counter, and suddenly at a radius of five metres (16ft) people started running away and left luggage. The fear was that someone is spraying bullets, I understood that I too have to escape, so I ran towards the check-in, I stumbled on a conveyor belt… and flew a distance of six metres.” He was injured and taken to the hospital.

Incredibly, the unworldly Americans were allowed to go home that day. Security interrogated them and then cleared them to fly. We must assume that, once they found out they were Americans, they understood that some of us can be pretty dumb.

Why do you think security let the Americans go home after what they caused?

Stacey Warner