To Bibi or not to Bibi: Israel remains the most hated and the most optimistic country in the world

Hatred isolates him; optimism keeps him going. The Alliance of Democracies conducts an annual study called the ‘Democracy Perception Index’. The latest report reveals that ‘Israel is the most unpopular country in the world’, with an approval rating lower even than that of North Korea under the gulags and Afghanistan under the Taliban. Being openly pro-Israel is currently a position that few dare to adopt.

It is not just that Benjamin Netanyahu is the bête noire of the international intelligentsia and “a pain in the ass”, as Barack Obama once described him. To quote editor Milana Gitzin-Adiram, “in many places we are simply persona non grata, almost Satan”. Like the ‘little Satan’ they speak of in Tehran. A few days ago, Luxembourg decided it no longer wished to be the country responsible for approving Israel Bonds’ bond issues within the European Union. This is the organisation that manages the sale of Israeli government bonds to Jews in the diaspora (a turnover of 2.5 billion euros a year). This decision is seen as a blow, given that Luxembourg had only taken on the role a year ago, after Ireland had stepped down from it.

Yet in the World Happiness Index, the Jewish state ranks ahead of Luxembourg, the tax haven which last experienced war on 10 May 1940 during the Nazi invasion (Israel stands in contrast to other war-torn countries that are understandably unhappy, such as Ukraine in 111th place and Lebanon, third from last in 145th place). Shuki Friedman, head of the Jewish People Policy Institute, tracks the sanctions imposed on Israel via a world map that is becoming increasingly crowded. His database records 110 sanctions currently in force, imposed by 54 countries. The only continent that does not impose sanctions on Israel is Antarctica.

Such is the price of military victory: to Bibi or not to Bibi. This week, the Israeli Prime Minister staked his political future after nearly twenty years in power, and has once again survived. Meanwhile, the image that some have sought to portray of Israel in the West is that of an undemocratic, sinister country on the brink of ‘suicide’, as in the pamphlet by the well-known academic from Sapienza University who accuses Israelis of being ‘hungry for supremacism’.

The reality is quite the opposite. Whilst Israel has held nine parliamentary elections over the last twenty years, no elections have been held in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza since 2006 (and none of Israel’s neighbours hold free and democratic elections). Out of two hundred countries worldwide, Israel ranks amongst the top twenty in terms of the longest-standing continuous electoral democracies. Since gaining independence in 1948, Israel has maintained its parliamentary democracy for 78 years. Israelis are very keen on voting (78 per cent turnout, compared with 63 per cent in Italy). Since 1996, elections have been held in Israel every two to three years (six elections since 2019), a shorter interval than that found in the other twenty democracies examined: a frequency higher than that of Spain (3), Japan (3), Canada (3.2), the United Kingdom (3.8) and Italy (4.4), amongst others. A young country with a strong democratic tradition. And Israel has just demonstrated once again that it is the worst apartheid regime in the history of apartheid: no Arab country in the world allows Arabs to vote freely as they do in Israel, where Arab parties have doubled their number of seats (and, through their success, effectively prevented the formation of an electoral majority). In the renowned Democracy Index, compiled annually by The Economist, Israel ranks 30th: four places ahead of the United States and seven ahead of Italy (in 2022, Israel had risen to 23rd place after including an Arab party in the Bennett–Lapid government).

In "The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World", the new book by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, authors of "Start-Up Nation", Israel is ‘Morningburg’, whilst Europe is ‘Twilight City’. Despite the boycott, the 2026 Shanghai Ranking—the most important international ranking of research-intensive universities—includes the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science (to find an Italian university, one has to go down to 150th place).

According to the Pew Research Centre, Israel and Singapore are the only wealthy countries where more people are optimistic about their children’s financial future than their parents are. Across nineteen countries, the average proportion of respondents answering ‘worse’ is 70 per cent; in Israel, it is just 27 per cent (the least pessimistic). During the pandemic, the number of pessimists fell in Israel, whilst elsewhere it rose to record levels. The country is at once younger and has a longer life expectancy, more contentious and more cohesive, more exposed to death and more resistant to despair.

Israel is the anthropological anomaly that defies the maps of hatred and the geographies of well-being. Take the so-called ‘deaths from despair’ (suicides, drugs, alcohol): Israel has the lowest rate amongst OECD nations. Sweden, Denmark and Norway, which rank very highly in happiness surveys, have rates two to three times higher. Israeli men have the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world, whilst women have the eighth-highest. Adolescent suicides are virtually non-existent in the country: the rate is among the lowest in the world, less than a third of the OECD average and less than a quarter of that in the United States, Australia, Finland and Canada. Many theories have been put forward to explain the decline in adolescent mental health, ranging from social media and smartphones to a range of stressors. Yet these explanations do not account for why young Israelis seem immune to this epidemic: most have smartphones and access to social media, are bombarded by the same apocalyptic predictions about climate change, are exposed to an endless cycle of polarising political debates, and face more direct exposure to violence, whether from rockets, terrorism or direct combat experience (Israel has three years’ compulsory military service). Israeli teenagers should be even more stressed than their peers in calmer countries. The journalist Amit Segal writes that one in ten members of the next Knesset will have suffered a bereavement in this war.

Israel is situated in the most fanatical region in the world, yet in a Gallup poll analysing religious sentiment across sixty-five countries, Israelis rank the Jewish state amongst the least religious in the world. Fewer than a third of Israelis describe themselves as ‘religious’, a figure comparable to the levels of religiosity found in England and Scandinavia – regions which, according to the study, are among the least religious in the world. In an international survey on ‘morality’ conducted by the Per Research Centre, Israelis were found to be more tolerant than the global average on various issues, including homosexuality and premarital sex (the Aguda organisation has estimated that 300 Palestinian gay men are currently under protection in Israel, with all due respect to Judith Butler).

Despite its isolation and the war, Israel remains firmly in eighth place in the world happiness rankings (it was actually fourth before the tragedy of 7 October). Israel is the outlier amongst the happiest nations. Geographically, the countries ranked from first to ninth are all situated within a tight circle centred on Copenhagen: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland. These are peaceful, orderly, politically stable countries with generous welfare systems, where the food is poor and the weather is dreadful. Then there is Israel, where there is no peace, it is chaotic, politically unstable and has no welfare system (though the weather and food are better).

Yet boisterous and quarrelsome Israelis rate their lives as more satisfying than those of Swedes, Swiss, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Italians and Singaporeans. Israel ranks first in the world for the number of living kidney donations (including altruistic ones) per capita, a result largely due to the Matnat Chaim organisation in Jerusalem.

In contrast to a West that looks back with nostalgia and forward with pessimism, the Bank of Israel’s forecasts suggest that the Jewish state’s economy will grow by 5.6 per cent in 2026 and 7.5 per cent in 2027. As columnist Amit Segal observes: “These are not the figures of a country that has been in the midst of a war on multiple fronts for three years. If the forecasts are confirmed, Israel would outpace every other OECD economy in terms of growth.” Tomorrow, the country will be faced with difficult and strategic choices, ranging from accelerating its military self-sufficiency away from the United States to a shift in industrialisation that moves away from European partnerships towards anti-Chinese alliances in Asia and anti-Iranian alliances in the Arab world (since 7 October, Israeli technology firms have lost 8,500 employees due to emigration).

Meanwhile, Israel ranks third in the world for start-ups (Global Start-up Ecosystem Index 2026); it is the country with the highest global score for ‘quality of social relations’ (the country is united, a crucial factor for well-being); it ranks tenth for the number of Nobel Prizes won (per capita, it surpasses the United States, Germany, France, Canada and Japan), fourth in the world for scientific publications, sixth in the World Index of Healthcare Innovation (Israel has conceived of itself as a nation that must, as Arieh Herzog, former head of Israel’s Missile Defence Agency, put it, ‘innovate or disappear’), fifth for the number of patents per capita (after Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and South Korea, all of which are not at war) and nowhere else amongst developed countries are as many children born as in the Jewish state (and by 2050, Israel is expected to be twenty years younger than Italy, Spain and Germany).

Israeli women not only have three to four times as many children as South Korean women, but they also have more than twice as many children as women living in far less developed countries such as Thailand and Jamaica.

Paul Morland recounts this in his book "No Future: The Demographic Crisis Threatening Humanity" (Liberilibri). In the spring of 2023, Morland found himself visiting the maternity ward of a large Israeli hospital outside Tel Aviv. “Unlike similar facilities in much of the developed world, it was teeming with activity. Russian-speaking midwives were coming and going from the delivery rooms, whilst Ethiopian families waited patiently for their newborns to be examined. Veiled Muslim female doctors were offering advice to ultra-Orthodox mothers of European origin wearing wigs, while their husbands, with beards and black hats, looked on. There was a constant stream of Jews of Iraqi, Yemeni and Moroccan origin carrying their children in their arms, while excited Arab children greeted their newborn little brothers and sisters. If the world wishes to avert the looming demographic winter, it may have something to learn from a nation that takes the words of Deuteronomy seriously: ‘Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live’.”

Despite the Second Intifada, the war in Gaza and 7 October, the net migration figure stands at 480,094 people who have arrived in Israel from all over the world since 2000. Meanwhile, the Israeli region bordering Gaza, known as ‘Tekuma’ (rebirth), has grown by ten per cent compared with the situation prior to the attack on 7 October 2023. What other people with Western customs would return en masse to live where, just three years ago, over 1,200 of their fellow citizens were murdered in scenes reminiscent of the Middle Ages?

Little Satan laughs happily, because he has learnt not to confuse unpopularity with defeat and has taught the world that life is just as good at the foot of a volcano.