Everything you mention is true including the readily apparent line of questioning for those traveling to Israel. What you should note, though, is not the acute subject of questioning but rather the method. A screener in any terminal in the world knows at the least two facts. One, the city of embarkation and two, the destination. With these two facts alone and not including any other known information, both overt and covert, a trained screener can weave together a battery of questions that would be quite difficult to answer untruthfully without rousing suspicion. I've had it done to me many times and no two times are the same. Always different.

Again, it is the method that is important. A specific answer to a specific question in itself is not important, rather the exchange as a whole is what paints a picture of the one being questioned. Lets take your line of questioning - A guy says "I'm visiting friends... where? Comstock - it's near Sargent." Now the screener may not know where that is so lets go with that... Oh, Comstock? Where is that from (lets say) New York? How are you getting there? Is someone picking you up or are you renting a car? Who is picking you up? Do you have a rental car reservation? Where will you be staying when you get there? And on and on. This is how screeners are trained to question. They use the answers that you supply to continue probing until they are satisfied with the story as a whole.