The whole truth is that I couldn’t stomach Israelis anymore...
I explained once to a friend that when you first land in Israel, you are immediately greeted with a fresh sheet of 220-grit sandpaper to your face. At first it’s refreshing. Exfoliating, even. Ah, people here are
real, you tell yourself.
Direct.
Straightforward. Honest. These are positive attributes, yes. After a while, when you’d really like for the sandpaper to stop rubbing your skin raw, well, no dice,
achi. Israelis and
olim alike delude themselves with all kinds of hypotheticals to obfuscate the truth that Israelis are, in actuality, extremely rude and ill-mannered. They will paper over this with proclamations like: Israelis are first to offer help in an emergency! Israelis will invite you over for Shabbat dinner five minutes after meeting you! Israelis are like cactus pears; prickly outside, soft, sweet inside! All of these stereotypes are, for the most part, accurate. But Israelis are, on average, also extremely short-tempered, chronically irritable, congenitally disagreeable, and narcissistic. Hell, one of the world’s
foremost experts on narcissism, a rare self-diagnosed narcissist, is also Israeli.