> English is pretty-well universally understood there

No, this is absolutely not the case. I was there just over Christmas, and we did have problems to communicate with locals. Sure, the college educated all speak English. They don't work as bus drivers or at the gas station though. But these are the people I interact with the most as a tourist.

That is not to say that people aren't multilingual there. I'm sure they all speak two or three languages. Such as Hebrew, Arabic or Russian.

Israel isn't just Tel Aviv.

That's a good point. You can get around Tel Aviv while only speaking English, but perhaps not so much in the north.

The inability to read is a major hurdle when trying to mass transit. Having a data connection and bus.co.il helps. Not speaking the language only caused problems in Jordan and even there not much.