Rude or what, or not.

It was long before I came to Israel for the first time that I heard some epic tales about the legendary Israeli impoliteness. Thankfully the Lord didn’t make me wait very long at all to have them backed up by my very own little taster. While I was considerably shaken by the experience at a time, my perception’s shifted already. A passionate fight in a public place, sucking in bystanders, who each feel obliged to take sides and express their personal opinions? I’d say, nothing out of the ordinary.

Impoliteness - it's omnipresent - it saturates the entire country through and through. The moment you step foot on the Holy Land, your circle of personal space shrinks rapidly. Here tact is nonessential, conversations are direct and queues have a culture of their own. Strangers make comments to you about things that, in Australia, you'd only hear from the mouths of close kin.

Israelis are raised to feel they are kings and queens and consequently shyness is a rare quality. People will talk to you in the street if they feel like it without the slightest hesitation and will tell you what to do without a second thought. There’s a joke that explains this:

Why does no one make love on the street in Tel Aviv?

Because if they did, someone would come along and say:
‘No, no, no! Squeeze her ass before you kiss her! Where did you learn to do this? Alright, move aside and let me show you…’

Now, Western foreigners do get hit hard. The atmosphere in Israel is something new. The country seems developed, modern and civilized. They see the Americanization at work and wonder how the heck Israelis still aren't behaving American! They seem so direct and, well, unrefined.

What follows, is the common assumption: Israelis are rude, barbaric and inconsiderate.

While I’ve certainly has some less than pleasant interpersonal encounters whilst in Israel, I’m refraining from straight off the bat judging and criticizing the whole nation. Perhaps I’m simply sentimental and let people get away with lots of crap for my unexplained affinity with their ways. I’m also trying to be observant here, and understanding.

Israelis simply love to argue. The saying ‘You have four Jews in a room and five opinions’ couldn’t be more correct. They shout at one another but no one’s really angry. It’s just their way of saying that they care.

The grandparents of Israelis came from all corners of the world and so the country is essentially a melting pot of European, American and Middle Eastern cultures, all mixed up with a dash of Zionism and a healthy paranoia that everyone always has been and always will be, out to get them.

But Israelis love to assimilate and the one million Russians who arrived in the 90’s are already thoroughly Israeli – which doesn’t mean that the national jokes about them all being criminals or whores have completely died out. The Sephardic Jews are still sometimes seen as being one step away from being Arabic and everyone knows that when the Polish Israelis are in a good mood they sit in the dark until it passes. The Iranian Jews never want to spend a shekel, the Moroccans all carry knives and the Americans aren’t real Israelis but Jews living off their rich relatives in New York.

Although they can appear the rudest people in the world, at heart they’re immensely kind and hospitable. Israel is a tribal society so if you’re on the outside they seem quite hostile. But once you’ve cracked their shell, they’ll spoil you rotten with their hospitability: they’ll invite you to their homes, offer to kill your enemies or their daughter’s hand, that kind of thing. The Israelis are very much community oriented and often exist as tight networks of friends and family. They are fiercely loyal to and protective of the ones they love. Prickly-skinned fruits with big bleeding hearts inside.

These people make the polite Americans and Australian appear ingenuine and constrained by comparison. And my little Slavic soul has no choice but to long to jump right into the middle of that row and bellow: "Ma ani, ez?"*

* "What am I, a goat?"- an expression used as a protest against unequal treatment