Arsim and The Brawl

There's a saying here in Israel: "Holy Land. Not so holy people."

Last weekend I experienced the quintessential "unholy people" moment when me and my friends Josh and Jason ran into some Israeli "arsim" at a club. And we were forced to beat the crap out of a few of them.


The three amigos in less-violent times...
L-R: Jason, (our friend Jenn), me, and Josh.

Now before I go on, allow me to define what Israelis call "arsim": Arsim are Israelis of Sephardic-Mizrahi descent, meaning they're darker-looking thanks to their Middle Eastern or North African lineage. For example, I am half Sephardic because of my mom's Tunisian roots.

Anyways, arsim are your typical run-of-the-mill punks...the same you would find anywhere in the world. Some stats and pointers if you ever see one in the wild. They generally:

-wear obscene amounts of fake gold jewelry.

-enjoy showing off their finely-coiffed chest hair (seriously, they bring the term "manscaping" to a whole new level).

-wear clothes that are so tight they actually make me suffocate.

-have the most retarded-looking haircuts man has ever conceived. And then to make matters worse, they apply copious amounts of gel/mousse/spray to what little hair they still have on their heads.

-are a menace to a society in which they contribute very little. Unless you consider "starting fights" and "being completely dysfunctional" as positives attributes in a human being.

Basically, imagine a Jewish guido wearing a porcupine on his head. That should begin to give you a sense of what these brainmorons look like. If you want an even better understanding, watch this hilarious video. This is exactly what an arse looks like:




Anyways, a few Fridays ago, I went to the recently remodeled HaOman 17 superbar here in Jerusalem for some drinks and innocent fun with Josh and Jason and some other buddies.



When we got there, Josh ran into some arsim who he's in the army with. These little punks don't like Josh because they're jealous of the fact that he moved to Israel, learned Hebrew in a year, and is a good-looking dude who gets a ton of chicks. So they decided to start trouble.

Around 1 am, one of these arsim walked up to Josh and started talking smack to him. Little did we know that this was simply a distractionary tactic. Because 30 seconds later, one of the arse's buddies came up from behind Josh and sucker-punched him in the back of the head.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

People who know me know that I rarely, if ever, get into fights. And lord knows I don't start them. They're senseless and stupid and I value my face too much to get unnecessarily beaten up. But this was different. You don't blindside someone and you don't screw with a friend, family member, or girlfriend. That pisses me off.

So as soon as the first punch was thrown, I ran after the dude who hit Josh and let him have it. Then Josh got into it. And even Jason threw some roundhouses towards the end. I'll spare everyone the details since I'm not particularly proud of having been in a major brawl, but from what people were saying afterwards...we dominated. The security guards eventually broke it all up but not after a few minutes of serious brawling. Remember this was all taking place in a major bar which looked something like this:



Anyways, the fight eventually got broken up and there were some small aftershocks later in the evening. But the punk arsim got kicked out of the bar and we continued to drink our free beers which the bar manager was happy to provide after realizing what had happened.

Vindication came a week later, when my friend Yoan (who's in the army and not at all part of this story) told me that some friends of his were talking at lunch about "The Fight" they saw at HaOman 17 and how a bunch of "arsim got the crap kicked out of them by some American guys."

Americans 1, Arsim douchebags 0.

-Erik