From my experience at Ben Gurion airport...security there has different stages. When you first walk in to the airport, even before you check in and get your ticket, some friendly attractive person will start chatting with you and ask about your trip. They will not identify themselves (or be dressed) as security. Your friend might very well have mentioned something to that person.

Later, when the more formal security process/interview starts, they might ask followup questions based on info they got from that earlier "interview".

>From my experience at Ben Gurion airport...security there has different stages. When you first walk in to the airport, even before you check in and get your ticket, some friendly attractive person will start chatting with you and ask about your trip. They will not identify themselves (or be dressed) as security. Your friend might very well have mentioned something to that person.

This is interesting, where can I read more about this?

On mobile, this article seems to provide some info http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4978149

Yup. You'd be surprised what comes out of your mouth if someone attractive and personable starts smiling at you and asking questions randomly. You don't have your "defenses up" and you start blabbing away before you figure out that no, this person is not actually trying to hit on me :-)

I'm aware, I travel via TLV a lot :)

That's bizarre -- if I met someone like that I'd assume they were a criminal trying to rob me.

With good reason, I can imagine how paranoid that would make me. I'd definitely try to find how they found this out, starting with checking whether I posted it somewhere public. That would be the least worrisome scenario.

Fuck, that freaks me out and I'm not gay nor traveling to the Mid East. Shit.

Most likely they were watching the Arab guy and were able to determine the name and travel plans of the person that was hanging out with the Arab.