What happened next involved shouting, shoving & airport security.
I think the only reason it didn’t involve blood was because the other American girl & I jumped in front our raging fellow American, and talked him down.
Well, that and the fact that he realized he was outnumbered by a group of actual bee-crushing Israelis. And airport security.
In hindsight, I think those Israelis were trying to communicate with us in a direct way which agitated our American play-nice sensibilities. We Americans rarely express anything that directly, so we were pissed off by the Israelis’ bluntness. We’re used to p.c. phrasing accompanied by smiles & all kinds of other make-niceties that many foreign cultures just don’t engage in.
So, we definitely do not see ourselves as “tyrants.”
When we look into our national mirror, we see the good guys. We see ourselves as the victim of tyrants. When we war, we’re only fighting back.