Why is Israel a Happy Country?

A Gallup poll just found Israel  the 7th-most happy country in the world.

The “happiness” list is headed by Denmark, Sweden and Canada came in second, followed by Australia.
Israelis are happy because Israel has become a lighthouseoflife, when life is the most endangered value of our time.

How can we explain the happiness of the only Western democracy under continuous danger?

Just in the last month we sadly read about an entire Israeli family butchered in Itamar, a bus bombing in Jerusalem, a school boy killed near Gaza and  Breslav chassidim gunned down at a Biblical tomb, one of them murdered.

Iran is building the nuclear bomb, the entire region is facing an Islamist movement and the rockets can now hit the entire Israeli territory.

Despite all this, Israel is very happy. Much more than all the European countries that went through the last war six decades ago.

The Israeli citizens live an average of 80 years, just like in the placid and wealthy Norway.

Per capita murders in Israel are a third of those in the United States.

Israel’s population exceeds 7.5 million, nine times that of 1948, the year of the creation of the Jewish State.

No other industrialized country does it better, expecially for a nation that doesn’t have natural resources and has a population roughly half of Belgium’s. The Jewish State has a history of scintillating and prosperous enlightenment. It has the highest production of scientific publications per capita in the world. Israel has also more museums per capita. Israel is second in the world for publication of new books.

But Israel is also the only UN member condemned to death and whose existence is under threat. The “Zionist entity” is boycotted all over the world and it’s struggling between life and death since its foundation.

During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, for example, the country lost more than 6,000 of her finest soldiers, which was 10 percent of her total population, the equivalent of 3 million losses pro-rated for America’s population. It was a devastating start on the road of independence. So when one recalls the reality which faced Israel in 1948 and where the country is today, it is nothing short of a miracle.

The nation is surrounded by neighbors willing to kill themselves to destroy the Israelis. It’s the only nation without recognized borders and that is globally elected to be an emblem of evil, deprived by the United Nations of its legal right to defend itself.

So what are the roots of the Israeli happiness?

Equality is not an explanation. In the 1960s, Israel had one of the most equitable societies in the West. Since then, the gap between rich and poor has widened.

A possible explanation is the high level of religious partecipation in such a prosperous and modern democracy. Two-thirds of Israelis believe in God.

Another good reason is success. Israel is an economic powerhouse and the source of medical and scientific discoveries that are helping to change the course of history. It’s one of the leading foreign countries with companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Israel has the highest proportion of university graduates and Ph.D.s in the world, per capita. And it’s home to four Nobel Laureates, two in chemistry and two in economics – an incredible number considering the size of her population.

A good reason is also the historical Israeli attachment to the Jewish land (the love for the land is a nationalistic taboo in much of the West).

And the most significant tool to measure this Israeli happiness is probably the fertility rate versus the suicide rate. 

Recent data show that Israeli demography is on the rise not only among religious families, but also among the bourgeois and intellectuals of Tel Aviv, where the average family still tends to have three children per couple.

Israelis are happy because Israel has become a lighthouseoflife, when life is the most endangered value of our time.

Nothing explains the Israeli joie de vivre better than the proportion of people who choose to create new life against the proportion who choose to destroy their own.

Judaism believes in a happy conclusion to creation, represented by the coming of the Messiah; or rather, in secular terms, of a just world. The Israeli happiness is a beautiful, enchanting and heartening mystery for all free men.  %ad%