It's important to do most of these with a sudden, sharp motion up or down...it seems to increase the insult value. I'd never heard of the Israeli version before.

There's also a common gesture in many cultures: You want to indicate that another person is crazy, stupid, idiotic, and all that...so you gesture conspiratorially in his general direction, then point your index finger at your own head, make an appropriately idiotic expression, and rotate the finger several times.

There's a German expression that goes with this. It sounds something like "By dir pipst!" (but I don't know how it's spelled) and it means "something goes tweet! in his head". So I was told, anyway...

- LH