The Transportation Security Administration has made its employees aware the Jews with a kippa and praying with tefillin are not necessarily terrorists.

This good news should help Jews relax when praying at the airport or on the airplane during the Passover holiday.

This is no laughing matter.

When a Jewish teen put on his tefillin and prayed on board a US Airways four years ago, the crew panicked and aborted the flight from LaGuardia Airport, landing in Philadelphia amid unfounded fears of a terrorist bomb.

The tefillin’s two small Scripture-filled boxes were a bit strange to the nervous crew. After all, they could be explosives inside. Or maybe a collapsible Uzi.

And those straps! There are two straps hanging down from the tefillin that are put on the head, and there is a strap on one arm, so who knows? Someone who never saw tefillin in his life could run away with his imagination and suspect that the straps could be wires from an explosive device.

The plane landed, and the boy, a lot more scared than the crew, was met by police, the FBI and bomb-sniffing dogs

And he didn’t even get a chance to pray.

A similar incident the following year caused the pilots of an Alaska Airlines flight to lock down the cockpit and alert authorities because of three Orthodox Jews with tefillin on the flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles.

When the same thing happened on a flight in New Zealand, the country’s Race Relations Commissioner said the armed response was unfortunate and showed “an exaggerated fear of terrorism.”

So this time, TSA is prepared and instructing staffers that tefillin are not bombs, the kippa is not designed to hide a bomb, and matzah is not a bomb.

“Our workforce is aware of the unique items carried by individuals and religious practices individuals may engage in while traveling,” said a TSA statement. This may include reading of religious text or participating in prayer rituals. Observant travelers may be wearing a head covering, prayer shawl, and phylacteries — in Hebrew, kippa, tallit, and tefillin.”

The TSA has also informed baggage inspectors to be careful with matzah packages.

Perhaps they have explained to them that matzah is not suspicious cardboard. Hopefully, workers understand that they are not to be munching on any cookies made with leavened bread when checking matzah packages

“Some travelers will be carrying boxes of matzah, which are consumed as part of the Passover ritual. Matzah can be machine or handmade and are typically very thin and fragile, and break easily,

“Passengers traveling with religious items, including handmade matzah, may request a hand inspection by the TSO of the items at the security checkpoint.” TSO is the abbreviation for Transport Security Officer.

Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella group for Orthodox congregations, expressed its “profound thanks” for the notice, stating that the agency has been deeply sensitive to our community’s needs and concerns on this and many issues.”

But if a worker does accidentally break a matzah in half, who gets the Afikomen

(JTA contributed to this report.)

Below is the TV report of the tefillin-bomb scare four years ago.

The terrorist who killed five Israelis and their tour bus driver and wounded 32 Israelis in Burgas in 2012 was an Algerian who worked for Hezbollah, Bulgaria said Monday.

It was one of the most unsurprising declarations of the year since all signs have pointed to Hezbollah since the attack at the Black Sea resort.

The suicide bomber trained in camps in southern Lebanon.

More than year ago, a Bulgarian minister said there was “well-grounded” evidence that Hezbollah was behind the attack, and forensic evidence and intelligence sources pointed to Hezbollah’s involvement

Jerusalem Arabs hurled several firebombs were thrown at a dance club next to Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus in French Hill , injuring one person.

Three Arab youths from the adjoining neighborhood of Isawiya were arrested.

Mahmoud Abbas lost his marbles, and the Palestinian Authority went berserk Thursday without the Peace Talks Straight Jacket as they came up with a bunch of new conditions for extending peace talks that essentially eliminates them.

That has been the aim of Mahmoud Abbas from Day One, but now that he is feeling its oats by thumbing its nose at the Oslo Accords, the Roadmap, John Kerry, President Barack Obama, Tzipi Livni and the Good Humor Man, he has removed all pretenses and acted like he has the world in his pocket.

He has the United Nations in his pocket, but has yet to learn that the world still includes non-Muslim countries and even a few nations that tolerate and sometimes actually support the existence of the State of Israel.

In response, Israel’s long-time cream puff negotiator Tzipi Livni finally showed her Israeli stuff and essentially told the Palestinian Authority not only to get lost, but she also offered to help it do so by suggesting a few sanctions on Ramallah.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry maintained his cool and reminded Israel and the Palestinian Authority that he has led the horses to the trough and now it is time for them to decide whether they want to drink his poison.

If Abbas drinks, he is a dead man because it means compromising, a cardinal Arab sin. If Israel drinks, it means suicide as a Jewish state.

Abbas got off his horse and jumped on a bronco, but he doesn’t know how to ride it.

Following are some of his new demands for extending talks, which really have been an illusion anyway except that make Kerry feel like he has accomplished something:

–Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must sign on the dotted line that a new Arab country, once known as the Palestinian Authority, will include all of the land that was restored to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967;

–Netanyahu must sign on the dotted line that the capital of this new insane asylum will be eastern Jerusalem, meaning its flag will fly over the Western Wall;

–Israel not only will release the terrorist that the Palestinian Authority  demanded it free last week, but it also will include a few others, 1,174 to be exact, including Marwan Barghouti, serving five life terms in prison for arranging the murders of Israelis;

– Israel will end the maritime blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza;

–The IDF will not enter Arab-controlled cities, not even to arrest terrorists;

Israel will give the Palestinian Authority control over ‘Area C,” which includes most of the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria.

The only demand missing is for Israel to admit that the Holy Temples never existed, God forbid, and that the Elders of Zion should be the official textbook in Zionist schools.

There are a few other demands, none of them surprising since they have been Abbas’ game plan all along. His strategy has been to get what he wants with the help of Kerry. If that doesn’t work, Plan B is to rely on the hopes that the United Nations will force Israel to go belly-up.

Plan C goes back to the favorite Arab solution – war.

Israel promptly announced that the Palestinian Authority can forget about the fourth batch of terrorists leaving their jail cells, a superfluous announcement since the PA already has refused to approve the list of names of terrorists who were to be released.

Even Tzipi Livni has enough of this nonsense.

and she must be complimented for being so graceful as to giving the Palestinian Authority a chance to repent by formally asking it to withdraw its request to join 15 U.N.-related agencies, more formally known as treaties and conventions.

Terrorists in northern Gaza shot at an IDF patrol near the Gaza security fence early Thursday afternoon as attacks on soldiers become almost daily.

No one was injured.

The army maintains a small base on the outskirts of kibbutz, located in the Western Negev.

Six Arab lawyers, including one woman, have been arrested in recent weeks for receiving money from Hamas and Islamic terrorist cells in return for handing over money and information to jailed terrorists in Israel and outside the country.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) lifted a gag order on the arrests Wednesday.

The suspects include two brothers who set up and managed legal offices in the Arab neighborhood of Issawi in Jerusalem in the name of “Al Quds.” They collected their “wages” from other lawyers living in various areas of the capital.

The suspects received $150-$200 for every visit to a terrorist in jail, where they handed over information.

The suspects, like all Arabs in Jerusalem, receive the same social and welfare benefits from the State of Israel that every other citizen receives, regardless of race, religion or nationalist.

The difference is that they are traitors who work for terrorist groups that have dug deeper into the heart of Jerusalem, where the Palestinian Authority wants to establish its capital in a future state.

If they are convicted and jailed, Israel can consider releasing them next year in exchange for continuing peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

A member of the central committee of Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party has said in a fiery speech that using “the rifle” always is an alternative for the Palestinian Authority if it does not get what it wants through diplomatic pressure, which it calls negotiations.

Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi, speaking last week at a ceremony in Abbas in support of Abbas, reiterated Fatah’s adherence to the use of weapons as “one of the methods of struggle.”

His speech was translated into English and reported by Palestinian Media Watch, which also provided a video of the speech with English subtitles, as seen below. The Palestinian Authority’s official television station telecast the speech live.

Shouting that “the rifle is here, and it can burst forth at any moment,” Tirawi stated that the rifle “will burst forth from this [current] leadership… and if we are no longer alive… [from] our sons, our young lions

“A national enterprise cannot succeed without the National Liberation Movement, Fatah. We in this movement have not cast down the rifle and have not let go of the rifle. The rifle is here! The method of struggle we are adopting now [negotiations] is [only] one of the methods of struggle.

“But the rifle is here, and it can burst forth at any moment, with a new method and a new leadership. It will burst forth from this [current] leadership if we remain alive, because we are its people; and if we are no longer alive, [then] our sons, our young lions and you will be its people. Revolution until victory, until victory, until victory.”

Fatah also posted on its Facebook page a cartoon showing a small boy pulling the hand of a man carrying a rifle and dressed in a military uniform and wearing a traditional Palestinian headscarf. The child says to the armed man, “We have missed you, come back.”

Earlier this year, Tirawi said on a Palestinian Authority television program, “The negotiations are giving us nothing. The only thing that is possible is [what is called] the ‘sphere of activity’. We – all Palestinian organizations – must return to the ‘sphere of activity…. Resistance… All forms of resistance….

“Weapons or popular resistance. There are a hundred ways of resistance…. What you are hearing from Fatah isn’t anything new… At our Sixth Convention, held in Bethlehem, we did not rule out any of our options for resistance, of which armed struggle is one.”

Tirawi’s statements are logical considering the opening he was given earlier this year by  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who blurted out to an Israeli interviewer, “What do you want? Another Intifada,” meaning that Israel should give Abbas what he wants through “talks” or end up giving everything after a supposed “victory” through violence.

But that can’t possibly be the stand of the Fatah party or of Abbas because none other than President Barack Obama, who as president of the United States of America certainly has inside knowledge, states time after time that Abbas actually does not incite to violence.

It is hard to believe that Obama is on Planet Earth, but here are the man’s words last week, when Abbas graced his presence at the White House:

Abbas “has been somebody who has consistently renounced violence.”

And who knows better than President Obama?

A Palestinian Authority survey has found that terrorist Marwan Barghouti, serving five successive life terms in prison but hoping to be freed by Israel, would easily win the election for the successor Mahmoud Abbas if the vote were held today.

“If presidential elections were between Marwan Barghouti and Haniyeh, the former would receive 60% and the latter would receive 34% of the participants’ vote,” according to the results in the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll.

If presidential elections were between Abbas, Barghouti and Haniyeh, Barghouti would receive the largest percentage (36%) followed by Abbas (30%), and Haniyeh (29%).

The results are similar to a poll in December but more significant now because Barghouti is one of the terrorists who has been added Abbas’ list of terrorists he wants Israel to release in order for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace talks to continue.

If the Netanyahu government were to free Barghouti, and there is some support from the more leftist Cabinet minister to release him, Israel would in effect have named the successor to Abbas, who succeeded arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat.

Since Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize, it can be assumed that the same fate would await Barghouti in recognition of his love for killing Jews and then switching strategies to take over Israel through Zionist governments’ willingness to commit hari-kari.

Barghouti started out his career as a terrorist at the age of 15, joining Arafat’s Fatah terrorist party and showing his promise as a model for young people by co-founding the Fatah Youth Movement. By the age of 18, Barghouti already had been arrested, and he quickly learned how terror pays off in Israeli prisons.

He studied and received his high school diploma while in jail, where the prison system is so sure that educating terrorists will change their lives for the better.

In Barghouti’s case, it changed the lives of dozens of Israeli. More accurately, it ended the lives of dozens of Israelis, with the tacit help of the Israeli government.

Israel deported Barghouti to Jordan for his leadership in the beginning of the Intifada in 1987 but returned under the terms of the Oslo Accords, the agreement that the Palestinian Authority has torn up clause by clause.

Israeli governments have had a weird penchant for pardoning terrorists, perhaps because the powers-to-be want to make sure that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and IDF have plenty of work to do. Lebanon, Egypt and Syria apparently are too boring.

Seeing that Arabs could get what they wanted by  bleeding Israel dry in the diplomatic process backed by the United States and the European Union, Barghouti championed “land for peace,” so long as the Palestinian Authority could get land without having to agree to peace. The proof came in 2000 when he backed “new forms of military struggle” after the Camp David Accords.

He led the Tanzim terrorist group while proclaiming his opposition to violence against Israeli civilians – soldiers were fair game – and showed how much he could be believed by his involvement in suicide bombings. Barghouti was convicted for three attacks that killed five people in Tel Aviv, Judea and Samaria.

While in jail, Israel has given Barghouti all the mobile phones and tools he needs to use his jail cell to organize and incite Arabs throughout Israel and keep up his popularity. He even announced he would run from his prison cell to succeed Arafat after he died in 2004, but withdrew from the race in favor of Abbas.

He staked out his claim for the next Nobel Peace Prize by initiating and helping to formulate the National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners that called on Hamas, the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine to form a coalition government and negotiate with Israel.