As in previous years1, the Gallup happiness report has been released, and once again Israel is in the top ten, being ranked 8th. As I wrote then, One thing is clear: maybe we were happy, but not in 2023! I suspect that the 2024 report will show a sharp decline in Israel's happiness. Then I was referring to the proposed ruin of the judicial system. The events of Oct 7 were six months in the future.
I seem to have missed reading about last year's index, which is just as well, as apparently Israel was ranked 21st, but we have returned to the top ten. I quote from the Globes article:
In Israel, according to Anat Panti, a happiness policy researcher in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Bar-Ilan University, it is mainly a sense of community that contributes to happiness. "The deep sources of Israeli resilience: family, community, faith, a sense of belonging and strong social ties - still manage to keep large parts of society well above the global average," said Panti. She says that one of the particularly striking figures this year is that, broken down by age group, Israelis under the age of 25 are ranked as the happiest age group within the Israeli population and in third place in the world. "The fact that Israel still ranks eighth in the world, and in particular that young Israelis rank third, is indicative of the strengths of the population in Israel relative to other countries," she said. However, in other indicators examined, there was a deterioration in Israeli responses. In the indicators about worry, sadness and anger - negative emotions experienced by the population - Israel jumped from 119th place before the war to 39th. In the Corruption Perceptions Index, it fell to 107th place, compared with 80th place in 2021.
"The rise in the indicators about concern and anger and the erosion of public trust make it clear that resilience is not immunity," added Panti. According to Panti, the survey on which the current ranking is based was conducted in July 2025, after the campaign against Iran but before the release of the hostages from Gaza. In her assessment, the level of negative feelings in the Israeli public would have decreased if the survey had been conducted after October 2025.
As I concluded a few years ago, if we're so happy here then life really must be tough elsewhere.
On other quotidian matters, yesterday was a strange day. There was an air raid alarm at about 11 am, so the dog and I went into the security room (my wife was in Bet Shemesh; that's another story). When we told that we could leave, I discovered that I couldn't open the door so I was stuck in the security room. Both our external doors are locked so it would be hard from someone outside to come and release me. Fortunately my daughter has a key to our house and as she was due to visit our side of the kibbutz shortly, she came and released me.
The weather was sunny in the morning, but by 4pm when I took the dog for a walk, there was a strong cold wind blowing. As we were coming home, sporadic drops of rain fell on us. Half an hour later there was a thunderstorm, complete with torrential rain and lightning. 12.9 mm fell. At about 23:30, we had an hour of continuous air raid warnings.
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