“confronting an Israeli tourist, telling him "This is Thailand, not your country", spread widely on social media.” Interestingly, I flew from Phuket to Bangkok yesterday. I was the last one on the plane, so almost everyone else was settled. As I sat down, there was a big commotion in the row behind mine. A young Thai lady in the window seat was shouting at a middle aged foreign lady sitting in the aisle seat, with a youngish foreign lady sitting between them. The flight attendant came over and tried to calm down the Thai lady who was getting very agitated and shouting louder and louder. The foreigner seemed to more or less stay quiet. The two protagonists flapped a few hands at each other, but what with seat belts and passengers crammed in like sardines, they couldn’t really reach each other. Anyway, what struck me at the time was that the Thai lady kept repeating two phrases over and over in English. One was “why do you look at my face” and the other was” this is my country, not yours” No idea what the former meant, but at the time the latter struck me as very nationalistic. And now I read about the phrase being used again. The thing is, nationalities don’t matter. It’s the actions of the individuals that determine right and wrong in any dispute. I do hope that we aren’t going to get more and more of this “it’s my country so you are wrong” style of sentiment. It’s not a good feeling.
