Badass Israeli

The Star of David-spangled woman with a plan.

"They're not the 'Oh, let me help you with your taxes' Jews. They're the 'Can you hold my machine gun while I take a leak' Jews. It's a different culture."

— Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Israelis are badass in most cases. They are a Proud Warrior Nation and it is a national law that each one must have a Moment of Awesome on his Bar Mitzvah or her Bat Mitzvah. The Nice Jewish Boy with glasses is a showcase of Beware the Nice Ones. If one miraculously appears, you can count on him being a Badass Bookworm. If an Israeli is a villain you can count on him being something cool like an Arms Dealer or an assassin of a Kosher Nostra, or even The Fundamentalist. Every female Israeli is an Action Girl Squadette who always looks great in her combat fatigues and beret with her Uzi jauntily slung over her shoulder. Every male Israeli is an Ace Pilot, or a spy for the Mossad (their other intelligence agencies are so secretive, Hollywood hasn't heard of them; and anyway no one can beat that name for coolness). The Israel Defense Forces do not have a single Obstructive Bureaucrat like, oh, every other army in the entire world. It is too much of a Badass Army.

The above is popularly portrayed within predominantly western media and can be shown as Truth in Television, since the IDF maintains a more independent, less regimented mode of operation than many militaries, training their units to think on their feet (sometimes, though, the army does disagree: e.g. the case of Elor Azaria). This, however, also leads to the IDF making mistakes that a more regimented army wouldn't, with conscription being mandatory leading to a dispute in morality. Oh, and it definitely does have its fair share of Obstructive Bureaucrats (any Israeli can tell you about how horribly inefficient the IDF can be), mostly in the form of disgruntled 19-year-olds. Despite all this, the Israeli Army has won a consistent string of victories against conventional Arab-Armies during the cold war, thus evoking the trope.

Israeli-born Jews' preferred nickname for themselves evokes the same trope. Tsabar (pl. tsabarim) — borrowed into English as "sabra" — are cactus fruits, soft and sweet on the inside, but tough, thorny and nigh impenetrable outside.

Fun Fact: "Israel" literally translates to "wrestles with God", after Jacob did just that, and almost won!

Related to Israelis with Infrared Missiles. Can loosely apply to non-Israeli Jewish characters who are as tough as shoe leather, at least if their Jewishness is played up enough.

Given the controversial nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, expect this trope to be heavily headed towards The Fundamentalist types in many modern examples, especially if the author is Palestinian or Lebanese.

Due to the way this trope uses national stereotypes, No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Sabra from Marvel Comics is a badass female member of the Mossad and a mutant to boot. And is the SOLE superhero for Israel, which she is more than qualified for. Her codename is the Anglicized form of tsabar.
• Richard Dragon: "Iron" Aron Abromowitz, is a former MOSSAD agent and one of the deadliest martial artists in the world, in the 2004 series.
• In Y: The Last Man, Israel becomes a regional military superpower (even more than it is now) because its armed forces contain the most trained and serving women, both relative to its population and in absolute numbers, after the gendercide wipes out a large chunk of other nations' militaries. Like in real life, many of these women are shown to be inexperienced in actual combat since most women in the Israeli Defence Force are used in support and logistical positions, but they at least possess the training and background experience to maintain a functioning war machine, at a time when other nations' militaries are falling apart. Israel has occupied large portions of the Middle East, and can even project force as far away as the United States, when Alter crosses the Atlantic in an attempt to find the last man. Her soldiers might be inexperienced, but Alter herself is badass (Also psychotic, obsessed, willing to kill innocent people to achieve her goals, and looking to die...but still badass).
• Epraim Katz, an elderly Mossad agent who also fought in the XV international brigade, teams up with his old comrades in The Black Order Brigade to fight a band of old fascists from the Spanish Civil War. Katz has survived the holocaust, after losing an eye in the civil war, and after that, he has been working with the Mossad. He survives the whole storyline until he is taken down by gunfire from the fascists at the end of the book.
• Sharmin Rosen, a one-shot character in the 1988 comic miniseries Batman: A Death in the Family. She was born in New Jersey and emigrated to Israel as soon as she was old enough to leave home (and at one point, self-identifies as an Israeli despite being American-born). She works for the Israeli intelligence, knows judo and has no qualms about shooting Lebanese terrorists in the head. More to the point, she is one of three women who could possibly be the biological mother of Jason Todd (Robin). How Jason's father actually met her is never explained, but they were obviously just friends: Sharmin admits to never having given birth to a child in Gotham City.
• Magneto/Erik Lensherr was a Nazi Hunter working with the Mossad and the CIA at the same time for a while and was living in Israel when he first met Charles Xavier.
• Discussed throughout a chapter of Fables, in which Bigby Wolf talks at some length about how he admires Israel's tenacity and "grit" in a world that's aiming to destroy it.
• Killian Reed of Clean Room is an ex-Mossad agent now employed as personal bodyguard to one of the most targeted people in the world.

Fanfic

• Alluded in the Inception fanfic, "The Replacements", when Yusuf calls Cobb to complain that the extractor Cobb sent to help the team—who turns out to be Yusuf's ex-fiancee—is about to get him.
  Cobb: Moran's armed? Does she even know how to use a gun?
  Yusuf: She was in the Israeli army, Cobb! Of course she knows how to use a gun and for me she would certainly carry one. Perhaps two, or more.

Films — Live-Action

• IDF sniper Isabelle in Predators, who is the only woman in the group.
• You Don't Mess with the Zohan an Adam Sandler movie plays this for laughs and takes it up to eleven. Zohan is, simply put, the baddest man alive. His Palestinian rival the Phantom (a man so awesome in his own right that he can walk on the ceiling) is the only man in the world whose awesomeness can even compare, and he still does not come close. Zohan's most badass feat is shown in a flashback when after being captured and having a hand cut off, said severed hand flies up, chokes his interrogator to death and then fetches Zohan a drink. To top it off, he's surprisingly effeminate. His dream in life is to be a hairdresser, which he pursues. And he satisfies his customers in every sense of the word. The story is based on the real Nezi Arbib, though obviously embellished for humor.
• Mordechai in The Hebrew Hammer (a reference to Judah Maccabee) if he is really an Israeli, the movie is kinda vague about the location. But he even has his parody of the Shaft theme.
• Gal Gadot is not only a model and actress, she received military training as part of her mandatory two years of service in the IDF. She attributes her gun training and willingness to perform her own stunts to why she was chosen for the The Fast and the Furious franchise and later played Wonder Woman (even being allowed to keep her Israeli accent). As for her roles:
  • Gisele Yashar (who first appeared in Fast Five) is an ex-Mossad agent.
  • Natalie Jones from Keeping Up with the Joneses is revealed not to be Greek but an ex-Mossad as well.
• Referenced in City of God. Part of the sales pitch for some Brazilian arms dealers is to point out the Star of David on an Uzi to note that the gun is "Jewish."
• Eyal in Walk on Water begins the movie as a straight example but is gradually de-constructed. In the film, he is forced to take on lighter work until he can pass a psychological exam, and ends up pretending to be a tour guide for the grandson of a Nazi war criminal still at large.
• The shotgun-toting Rabbi in Lucky Number Slevin certainly qualifies. Some of his Orthodox Jewish henchmen are also pretty tough. When asked by Slevin, the Rabbi justifies carrying a shotgun by claiming that "self-defense" isn't a sin, even if self-defense involves shooting someone being held down by his men.
• In Steven Spielberg's Munich, this applies to varying degrees to all members of the assassination squad. Avner and Steve are both ex-Mossad while the rest of the squad make up for in guile and viciousness what they lack in military experience.
  • Most of the others likely also have some military/intelligence experience. Robert has one single blink-and-you'll-miss-it line after the Athens assassination, when confronted by Steve, revealing that he was a bomb disposal specialist for Shin Bet (and not a bomb builder, hence the several malfunctions of his bombs), indicating that he has served in another Israeli intelligence agency. Carl's background is never explained in great detail, but it is mentioned that he "gave everything [he] could for Israel", including his son who died in the Six-Day War, which makes it likely that Carl himself has served in the IDF in the early wars or even that he is an old Haganah hand (as one of the oldest members of the squad, he, as the film is set in 1972, probably qualifies). Hanns is the only one who never alludes to any military background, nor is it made clear if he's even Israeli or a German Jewish helper of the Mossad who is not a trained agent (called sayan in the Mossad, according to Real Life supposed ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky at least).
• While the male protagonist in the film Ushpizim is living a quiet religious life, backstory reveals that his temper was once feared throughout Eilat's criminal element. Even after years within a religious community, his career-criminal friends find his rage terrifying.
• World War Z. Israel falls to the Zombies. The IDF soldiers put up a last stand.
• The Israeli animated documentary Waltz with Bashir deconstructs the image of the badass Israeli soldier, looking at how the 1982 Lebanon War changed various soldiers, and in particular the events surrounding the Sabra and Shatila massacre (which was carried out by a group of Lebanese Christians) that Israel did nothing to stop.
• Any of the many films about the 1976 raid on Entebbe Airport, in which an Israeli commando squad flew into Uganda and rescued 102 of their countrymen who were being held hostage by terrorists, will have a lot of these. (Among them was Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, killed in the raid.). Among the dramatizations of the raid are the 2018 film Entebbe and the 1977 Israeli film Operation Thunderbolt.
• Any film about the Mossad, such as Operation Finale, about the capture of Adolf Eichmann.
• Subverted in the Palestinian film Farha, where the protagonist watches as Israeli Paramilitaries take over and destroy her village during the 1948 Palestinian Exodus.
• Zero Motivation is a complete subversion, as it focuses on a bunch of female IDF office drones who spend as much of their time goofing off and/or complaining about having to do the work they think is pointless. The one Badass IDF soldier we meet in the movie is a rapist.

Literature

• Ex-Mossad (or perhaps not-quite-ex-Mossad) agent Levi Abrams in the Babylon Rising series.
• Major Kabakov in Black Sunday. When a perp won't talk, he suggests offering the man some refreshments. "Call me when he has finished eating his testicles."
• In the Burke books by Andrew Vachss, Burke sometimes asks for and receives help from Israeli spooks working in the US.
• Jake Eldar and Miriam Schaeffer in Lance Charne's Doha 12 are a former IDF commando and former Magav (Border Police) respectively, and very badass. Plus there's the Mossad team...
• In the techno dystopian setting of the Eclipse Trilogy we have Steinfeld, an ex-Mossad agentes that leads the New Resistance against the NATO-appointed Security Alliance.
• Ender's Game Invoked. There is a myth that "Jewish generals never lose".^note Guess they never heard of Simon Bar Kokhba or Josephus
• Exodus by Leon Uris is Very Loosely Based on a True Story, namely, the founding of the State of Israel after World War II. The characters all take levels in badass, going from "trapped in a Russian ghetto" to "walking across Eurasia" to "taking on an entire village with just a whip" to "running an unarmed freighter through the whole Royal Navy". Then, the newly-formed nation fights off the combined force of the Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi armies.
• The Jack West Jr. series by Matthew Reilly. Stretch was pretty Badass, and he was Israeli.
  • To the point where he can shoot RPGs out of the air with a sniper rifle.
• The Mossad agent Rosenthol in Scarecrow by Matthew Reilly. He knew everything about everybody.
• Martin Kur(t)z (and his entire team) in The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carré.
• The Peleagea novels by Boris Akunin contain a predecessor to the Badass Israeli—Magellan is a 19th century Badass Zionist.
• Colonel Jake Shapiro of Israeli military intelligence, a recurring character in Anthony Price's spy thrillers.
• The Robe invoked this rather backhandedly. A Roman centurion says of Jews, "He whines in trade, but he is no whiner in battle"
• Rabin in Star Trek: Vulcan's Forge.
• In Three Days to Never by Tim Powers, the Mossad team and they are fighting an equally badass team of evil Templar Knights, no holds barred, for a secret that possibly could transform the world.
• In World War Z, Israel is one of the only nations still functioning after the war, mainly because they were the ONLY nation to actually take the threat seriously. It is specifically explained that after the surprise of the Yom Kippur War, Israel's intelligence agencies had become committed to considering any rumored threat, no matter how ridiculous it might sound. The sheer level-headedness with which the Israelis responded to the crisis puts all other nations to shame. While other nations were in denial, after thorough research the Israelis realized what was happening, and initiated a voluntary self-quarantine: building a giant wall of reinforced concrete around all of its land borders, like a mini-Great Wall of China. Then, to convince their Arab neighbors that this is not to secure territorial conquests, they announce that they will let any Palestinians back into the country, provided that they go through medical screening and arrive before the date they seal the wall. Few believed them at the time, but at least this measure prevented neighboring Arab states from openly declaring war over the quarantine. Within a year, most of the world was overrun by shambling hordes of the undead numbering in the hundreds of millions - while Israel survived behind the wall as an island in a sea of zombies.
• Ernest K. Gann's The Antagonists, a semi-fictionalized account of the siege of Masada, features a mountain full of badasses. Said mountain is so impenetrable that they had to flatten out one side of the mountain into a ramp to reach them.
• From Zero History by William Gibson we learn that even Israeli underwear is Bad Ass.
  Heidi shrugged out of her leather jacket, tossed it aside, and pulled her black T-shirt off, revealing an olive-drab bra that looked as combat-ready as any bra Hollis had ever seen.
  "Nice bra."
  "Israeli."

• In The High Crusade, Israel is actually shown as the ruler of a starfaring empire.
• In The Kingdom and the Crown Simeon, Yehuda, Daniel, the Zealots, and Galileans in general; the Romans are always wary of stirring them up.
• In Neal Stephenson 's Cryptonomicon Avi, one of the main characters, employs Israeli nurses who, while not exactly gun-toting, are still described as being fearsomely efficient.
• Dr. Tsion Ben-Judah in the Left Behind book series becomes both this and a Badass Preacher at the battle of Armageddon, risking his life to defend Jerusalem while preaching about Jesus Christ to the Jews before He comes.
• In Dan Simmons' Illium/Olympos series, Savi is a badass Israeli.
• In Harry Harrison's To the Stars trilogy, Israel is one of the few remaining true democracies remaining in the Post-Peak Oil Crapsack World ruled by a dictatorship. They are managing to hold their own against the world. In fact, in the third novel, they lead an attack against a heavily-defended spaceport in the Mojave Desert.
• Track by Jerry Ahern. In "The Hard Way", Dan Track is up against Israeli mafia, who are naturally all former intelligence and special forces types. However their leader turns out to be a Soviet undercover agent which, it's pointed out, make him not only a Badass Israeli but a Badass Russian too!
• The Kamal and Barnea books have Danielle, a former member of the Sayaret and the youngest woman to attain the rank of chief inspector in Israel's National Police.

Live-Action TV

• In Andromeda one of the Nietzchean Prides is named "Sabra". As Nietzchean naming customs always seem to relate to badass stuff, they must hold Israelis in high regard.
• Samar Navabi in The Blacklist is ex-Mossad, and portrayed to be calmer and more experienced than Liz. Mossad agents are hinted to have even more military equipment than the FBI, as Ressler learns when Levi Shur admitted to possessing a military-grade breach grenade.
• In the Burn Notice season 1 episode "Family Business", the episode's antagonists are The Zamar Family: Arms Dealers". The family members have varying levels of badass; the father is ex-Mossad, but the younger son is not too terribly bright, so the Guile Hero mostly deals with the latter and stays away from the former.
• Condor: Joubert is an Israeli Palestinian formerly with the Mossad, and she's a highly skilled assassin.
• Annie from Covert Affairs works with Eyal Lavin, a Mossad agent, in one episode, and he's unimpressed with her amateurish ways. Later she grows on him. In further episodes, Eyal appears as either an ally or a Worthy Opponent depending on the vagaries of the spy game. After Annie is captured by the FSB and held for weeks in a secret Russian prison, Eyal single-handedly rescues her without breaking a sweat.
• The Entourage gang suspect that Vince has a stalker, so they go overboard and hire a hardcore Israeli security team.
• Fauda, being about a former counter-terrorism specialist in the IDF, is full of this.
• Hana Gitelman from Heroes. Granted, she showed up mostly in the Graphic Novels, but she was awesome nonetheless.
• The sexy neighbor in Hung is a very fit and sexually aggressive Israeli former Squadette, with strong opinions about hummus.
• Meta-example: the titles of the American, Australian, British, Thai, and Vietnamese versions of Iron Chef are all more or less direct translations of the original Japanese Ryōri no Tetsujin. The Israeli version, however, is called Krav Sakinim — "Knife Fight".
• Lt. Ravit Bivas in The Last Ship. She was on a Joint Operation Training Program with the US Navy in Virginia when the virus broke out, leaving her stranded stateside. She, and an Australian Navy DCT operator who was in the same program, later join the crew of the "Nathan James" in Season 2.
• Mikel Dayan, Eliot's female Israeli muscle counterpart, in the Leverage episode "The Two Live Crew Job". Eliot references a Noodle Incident involving her killing a guy with a mop once. At the end of the episode, they compare scars, and it's heavily implied that the one Eliot got from a sniper's bullet in Myanmar was put there by Mikel.
• Mad Men referenced this in an episode where executives of the company try to learn about Israel while considering how to pitch it as a tourist destination. All they can figure out on their own is that the women are attractive and have machine guns. When asked for her opinion on Israelis, Rachel Menken (a New York Jew) can only advise Don Draper not to cross them.
• Eleazar ben Ya'ir from Masada, of the "Badass Jewish Revolts Israelite" variety. He's quite good at being The Leader and The Strategist of the show's eponymous Last Bastion for a while, at least until the Romans' siege genius catches up.
• NCIS has a few:
  • Ziva David, who is so badass that Gibbs has to remind her to slash the FBI's tires, not their throats. When she's left out of any stage of a mission, it's for the suspect's safety, not hers.
  • Ziva's brother Ari, even though he went rogue.
  • Michael Rivkin, despite his unpleasant looks and personality, could be interpreted more as a Worthy Opponent than a villain. He was still doing his job, the prey he was pursuing were dangerous enemies, not innocents, and he was effectively doing the same sorts of things Ziva did before she switched jobs. At least until he attacked Tony. He was drunk out of his mind when he did that though, but was hiding it really well.
  • Eli David's bodyguards were Badass Israelis. They were also nicer than Michael and one is a beautiful Lady of War.
  • Eli himself is pretty dangerous when necessary, as shown in a flashback when he helped a young Leon Vance take out a squad of Russian assassins.
• Invoked (by a pair of Nazis no less) in a quick jokes in an episode of OZ when a Jewish American inmate has a heart attack upon being threatened.
• In a fourth season episode of Queer as Folk (US), when a man is bashed on the street, an angry gay man tries to convince the community that they should stop being such "wimps" and defend themselves. The example he uses to protest against gays taking offensive slurs lying down: "Try calling an Israeli a kike! Man, they'd blow your ass right off the face of the Earth!"
• On Royal Pains, Boris' security team is made up of ex-Mossad agents. When called upon, they tend to be pretty competent.
• Israeli bombshell Yael in Weeds takes this in interesting directions, especially in her story about her dead commanding-officer boyfriend; apparently when she brought a man in for a threesome, he shot her in the shoulder, but she admits that if he hadn't she would've thought he was a pussy. Plus this whole speech begins with "Israeli men are so macho."

• Golda Meir in the miniseries A Woman Called Golda. Played by Ingrid Bergman. And in Real Life too. Hell hath no fury like a Jewish Mother.
• Ray Donovan: Ray's private investigator/muscle/right hand man Avi. Played by Steven Bauer.
• In the South African supernatural series Jongo, the antagonist's dragon is understood to be a volatile badass well before he's done much on screen beyond lurk menacingly, mostly thanks to the conversation where one cop informs another that the man is ex-Israeli special forces.
• Tehran: All of the Mossad agents are highly competent, skilled agents, including the protagonist Tamar.
• S.W.A.T. (2017): In "Never Again" the diamond robbers are all Israeli military veterans, using their skills against a criminal syndicate. As the syndicate is also Israeli, many are badasses too.

Music

• Texas country singer James McMurtry's "Choctaw Bingo" contains the lyric: "...and a Desert Eagle, that's one great big ol' pistol/I mean, .50 caliber made by badass Hebrews..."

Myths & Religion

• Appropriately enough, given the country. The Old Testament in The Bible is the Ur-Example , which portrays the Israelites as a Proud Warrior Religion. It was written by the Hebrews for the Hebrews, so its possible that their objectivity might not be all that it could be.
  • Samson kills a thousand soldiers with the jawbone of a donkey...and follows up with a pun.^* It even works in English: "With an ass's jawbone I have made asses of them." He also lifted two-ton doors and took them for a hike, lifted a loom by his hair, tore a lion apart with his bare hands, and, imprisoned, blinded and chained to a wall for his enemies to laugh at, simply yanked the chain hard enough to pull down the entire building.
  • The first example of Mossad-style infiltration and assassination is done by a short, left-handed Ehud. He is said to have invented the double-edged sword.
  • There is also Shamgar, mentioned only in one verse. All it says is he took an ox goad (which is essentially a stick with a pointy end, and a hooked end) and singlehandedly slaughtered a group of 300 Philistines.
  • Deborah, who led Israel against the Canaanites.
  • Yael dispatched Sisera, the fleeing General of the Canaanite army, by inviting him into her tent, giving him with milk (instead of water as he requested) to tire him out, "covering" him in her bed until he fell asleep, before finally driving a tent stake through his head. This single-handedly won a war.
  • Barak is something of a double subversion, though. He refused to go into battle against the Canaanites unless Deborah agreed to go with him, which she did. This only further cements Deborah's own badassery.
  • Moses killed a guy just by speaking God's name. He also iced an Egyptian who was beating up Hebrew workers.
  • David. As a teenage shepherd, he had to regularly kill wild beasts that would try to prey on his flock. Then he collected 200 Philistines Foreskins, killed Goliath and became a badass king. He's also a Warrior Poet, a portion of Book of Psalms was written by him, which contains his repentance after inventing the Uriah Gambit as well as a Prayer of Malice against the nations going after him.
  • David's Mighty Men, a group of thirty warriors who were recognized as badass even above the rest of the army, and three of those even more so. In one example, the Three (yes, it's capitalized in some translations) busted through the Philistine lines just to get their king a drink of water from a particular well.
  • Gideon, a judge and prophet, won a decisive victory over the Midianite armies despite a vast numerical disadvantage - he sent home a huge portion of his army, over 20,000 men, and succeeded with only 300 soldiers at his command.
  • Any of the leaders from the Book of Judges, which covers a time period where, in lieu of kings, Israel was ruled by a series of badasses.
  • Jacob, had his name changed to "Israel", meaning "Wrestles with God", after doing exactly that. From night till daybreak. To a stalemate. And didn't release his submission hold until he got a blessing (and after God moved Jacob's sciatic nerve an inch or two). Arguably makes him the Trope Codifier and Ur-Example, by virtue of being the very first Israeli. As explained above, he was Israel.
  • Elijah the Prophet destroyed two detachments of soldiers by saying, "If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you with your fifty men!"
  • Elijah's successor Elisha could summon she-bears to attack those who insulted him. Granted, he seems to have been over-sensitive since he set those bears on a group of young toughs.
    • Those young toughs, of which there were 50, mocked him for having no hair, which in that culture was THE sign of power. Samson above, for example, was not allowed to shave.
    • Since male pattern baldness was not a common issue in those days, it is more likely that he had shaved his head in mourning for the loss of his mentor Elijah, who had been taken away. They were insulting a man who was in mourning, jeering him to "go on up" like what had happened to his teacher.
  • Judah the Hammer/Yehudah Ha Maccabee, who started the rebellion against the Greeks, aka The Maccabean Revolt.

Video Games

• During the training mission in Hitman: Codename 47, the main character has a chance to try out an Uzi, the voice over the loudspeaker notes that it" "must be a fine weapon if the Israelis use it with such zeal".
• In the Rainbow Six series, Ayana Yacoby is portrayed as a upper to top tier special forces commando, and in the story driven Lockdown shown to be not only badass, but bitchy as well.
• The Deus Ex series has a few. The first game has Russo-Israeli UNATCO agent Anna Navarre, while the prequel features Tyrant leader Jaron Namir and Belltower commander Netanya Keitner.

Web Original

• Idol Corp: Kattarina Qutie is the head of a feared international mafia organization. She has her very own gun named Deagle-chan. Her hometown is Tel Aviv.
• Subverted, if not outright averted in The Salvation War, as the author has a far more negative view of the Israeli military qualitatively (not morally): an Israeli helicopter raid to take the Minos Gate is successful (though with unfortunate collateral damage), but he Israeli army is regarded by other countries' armies as brave to a fault but reckless (with both driving and fire discipline), and the Israeli Navy is outright dangerously incompetent. All the badassery isn't worth a damn when that attitude led to, in trying to avoid Rear-Echelon Motherfuckers (REMFs), getting rid of the ethic needed for seemingly "unmanly" staff work... like keeping track of your own nuclear submarine!
  • According to a more properly-trained general at the Israeli central headquarters, no one would have found it plausible if it were written fiction, yet here it was happening before his very eyes. According to him (and the author out-of-character), the USS Liberty incident was due to a previous catastrophic failure on the Israeli Navy's part.

Western Animation

• In The Simpsons 2010 episode "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed", the Simpsons, Ned Flanders, and others tour Israel. Jakob the tour guide (Sacha Baron Cohen) is nothing special, but his deceptively cute niece and assistant Dorit (Yael Naim) is this. At one point, she chases down and fights Bart. Sure, he says he knows karate (and does), but her Krav Maga is stronger. She even lampshades her groin attacks:
  "No groin, no Krav Maga!"

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