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Source: https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-893904
Behind Israeli Resilience
(Jerusalem Report) Eric R. Mandel - Israelis are not fighting on distant battlefields, they are fighting in their own backyards. This is the essence of Israeli resilience. Their instinct to rebuild, to resume, to refuse defeat, defines Israeli society. After decades of spending time with ordinary Israelis, meeting victims of terror, embedding with soldiers, and observing how Israeli media covers conflict, I have come to understand that Israeli resilience is a fusion of necessity, history, and identity. Americans like myself cannot fully grasp what it means to wake up multiple times a night to sirens, rushing children into shelters, living under a constant cloud of fatigue. Nor can we easily comprehend a society where nearly everyone is one degree removed from someone physically or emotionally scarred by war. Israeli resilience is deeply embedded, a national operating system forged through both modern statehood and two millennia of Jewish vulnerability in exile. In the U.S., happiness is often equated with material success and individual achievement. Israelis value prosperity as well, but their sense of fulfillment is more closely tied to meaning, contribution, and collective responsibility. The sanitation worker and the tech executive stand side by side in the reserves. One of my friends, a major in the Home Front Command, repeatedly leaves her children in the care of grandparents so she can serve her country. The writer is director of the Middle East Political Information Network (MEPIN).