Despite war and political turmoil, Israel is the 8th happiest country on earth. I think I know why
A new survey shows the troubled country is weirdly content, while happiness in the U.S. has plummeted
Relatives and friends of Israeli people killed or taken hostage by Hamas smile as they watch a live stream and follow the news of the hostages’ release, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Jan. 25. Photo by Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Senior Columnist Rob Eshman March 20, 2025
The World Happiness Report 2025 ranking just came out, and Israel is once again in the top 10.
Say what?
How can it be that people embroiled in war and internal strife, facing a degraded economy and international isolation, can still be happy?
I mean, from afar, Israel doesn’t look happy. Just this week, at a mass protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to resume combat in Gaza, policemen threw opposition leader Yair Golan, a retired general, to the ground. The night before, Haredi protesters in Beit Shemesh, angry over a zoning decision, overturned the mayor’s car — with him and his family inside. After Israel resumed airstrikes and ground operations, militants in Gaza are back to launching rockets toward Tel Aviv, and Houthi rebels in Yemen this week fired ballistic missiles at Israel, sending millions of Israelis to bomb shelters at 4 a.m.
Also this week: former Israeli Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak said the country is heading toward civil war.
All that in a year when tourism is down 71%, and some 80,000 Israelis left the country.
But when investigators for the World Happiness Report pooled Gallup World Poll data from people in more than 140 countries and ranked those countries on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, Israel came out number eight, below Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Norway.
That’s three spots down from its previous rank of number five, but Israel is still comfortably nestled among mostly northern European countries we associate with the easy life.
This finding, which has been similar since the report began in 2012, tends to evoke the same explanations. Israel has a strong sense of community, which is a primary factor in happiness, proponents will say. It is family-oriented. Taxes pay for health care and education, taking those worries off the table. It is a free society, where you can do and say what you want and love whom you love, and where people, no matter what else is happening, still like to go out and have a good time.
With some exceptions, that’s all true. And even the Arab Israeli minority, which makes up 20% of the population, and who still face some legal and cultural discrimination, identify strongly as Israelis, with some 60% in past surveys describing their personal situation as “good” or “very good.”
But do those explanations go far enough? The United States landed 22nd on the list, its lowest spot ever, sinking from number 11 in 2012. Is the U.S. that much less free, less family-oriented, less communal? The U.S. has its own fair share of political strife right now, and healthcare and education costs can range out of control. But overall, we have a higher standard of living, stronger economy, no wars on domestic soil, longer weekends and 85% less shouting. (I’m estimating that last stat, but it feels about right.)
My hunch is that Israel’s weird, persistent happiness has to do with some other aspect of its character. Something that might have to do with some words Re’ut Karp, the owner of Cafe Otef in Tel Aviv’s boho chic Florentin neighborhood, shared with me when I visited last summer.
Hamas terrorists killed Karp’s former husband and his girlfriend in front of the Karp’s three children at Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7. The murderers scrawled “Hamas doesn’t kill children” on the wall, threw a blanket over the children, and left.
Karp, who was away, spent the rest of the day on the phone with her traumatized kids until the IDF arrived.
When the government relocated the members of the destroyed kibbutz to central Tel Aviv, Karp opened the cafe to provide them with work and a feeling of home.
I told Karp how much I liked the cafe’s bright, friendly design.
“That’s important to me,” she said, “that it’s happy.”
Happy? Along with bright red pictures of the Negev’s poppy-like anemone flower, the cafe also displayed a large, haunting drawing of Dvir Karp, the murdered father of Karp’s children. Many of the workers survived the Nova music festival massacre, which took place on Kibbutz Re’im’s grounds. All of that tragedy is rolled into the design of a place that, when I visited, was buzzing with life.
If there’s the Swedish model of happiness, in which life is safe, cardamom-scented and relentlessly hygge, there’s also the Israeli model, in which overcoming life’s challenges is its own gratification.
And that just may be the secret.
Dan Ariely, an Israeli-born economist whose most recent book, Misbelief, explains why people believe irrational things, told me it is Israel’s very hardship that accounts for its happiness.
“In most countries people lead a somewhat comfortable life, and they have no experience where the people around them step up to really help them,” Ariely wrote in an email. “In Israel, life is for sure less comfortable, but it is also very clear that people can count on their friends and family to step up and help them in a time of need.”
Friends, family and total strangers. During my July visit, I also saw an old friend, someone who is highly critical of Israel’s religious parties, who since Oct. 7 has been doing the laundry of Haredi Jews displaced by the attacks.
“My friends look at my laundry line and see these white underwear and tsitsis waving in the wind, and wonder ‘What the hell?’” he said.
If Israel’s happiness has ticked down a bit because it is subject to the same forces of political polarization and internet-driven isolation as the United States, it remains high on the list because its citizens come together under unimaginable hardship.
As long as those communal bonds hold fast, so will Israel’s position near the top of the World Happiness Index.
“This is a big part of resilience,” said Ariely, “and Israel has a lot of it.”
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