So yesterday I was taking a bus to Netanya from the Tel-Aviv Central bus station. As the bus was getting filled with passengers, a young man in IDF fatigues approached the driver, and an argument developed. Apparently, the young man was heading home from the "Baku'm" (the army base in Tel Ha-Shomer which handles new recruits and discharges). He had just finished his army service (he showed the driver his papers), but for one reason or another, they didn't give him that one document he needed for a free ride home. The driver refused to let him on for free, and they argued for a couple of minutes until the passengers began taking notice. Some old woman offered to pay for his ticket; the young man refused, embarrassed, but immediately got half a dozen offers from other passengers, who then proceeded to stubbornly persuade him to "stop being so shy, we all have children in the army and we know how it is". Eventually, the poor fellow got so embarrassed he escaped their aggressive generosity and went back to the platform to wait for the next bus. The driver, who came out looking like a bad guy despite merely doing his job, had to endure constant guilt tripping from a couple of angry Jewish grandmothers for the rest of the trip- truly an unenviable experience.

Did I ever mention how much I love Israelis?