Israelis are extraordinary people in an ordinary land.
What makes Israel extraordinary is not the land itself, but the people who are always prepared to defend it.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Most Western societies have separated civilian life from national defense.
Soldiers are a distinct professional class. War is something done by other people, somewhere else.
Most citizens can go their entire lives without imagining themselves carrying a weapon, commanding troops, evacuating wounded civilians, or defending their communities.
Israel is different, as brilliantly articulated in the song “Superheroes” (“גיבורי על” in Hebrew) by the Israeli band Hatikva 6. The genius of “Superheroes” is that it captures this reality better than any political speech or military analysis could.
The song is essentially a list of ordinary people: a Bible teacher, a language teacher, a construction contractor, a lawyer, a high-tech executive, a bank manager, a toy store owner, a bus driver, a university student, a paramedic, an electrician, and a musician.
In any other country, that would be the end of their identities. In Israel, it is only the beginning.
The construction contractor is also an IDF reservist. The lawyer is also an officer. The high-tech executive is also a sniper. The toy store owner is also a tank commander. The bus driver is also an artillery commander. The student is also a military captain.
The song repeatedly returns to the same idea: “Everyone looks ordinary, but we are a nation of superheroes. There is always a soldier hiding in everyone.”
That line reveals something profound about Israeli society: The soldier is not a separate person, the soldier and the civilian are the same person. Israelis do not leave one identity behind and adopt another. They live simultaneously as parents, entrepreneurs, engineers, teachers, musicians, students, and soldiers.
A software engineer writing code on Tuesday may be commanding a platoon by Thursday. A university student studying for exams may be operating on the Lebanese border the following week. A father coaching his child’s soccer team may find himself in Gaza a few days later.
This is not normal — not necessarily because it is admirable, but because it is extraordinarily rare. Most nations spend generations trying to prevent civilians from ever having to think this way. Israel has spent generations ensuring that civilians do think this way, out of necessity.
The song even mocks the idea that this belongs in fiction: “This is not a parallel universe here, not a Marvel reality. This is our story — the people of Israel.”
That line gets at the heart of the Israeli experience.
If Hollywood wrote a story about a nation where doctors become battlefield medics overnight, tech executives become snipers, teachers become infantry soldiers, and musicians become combat officers whenever the country is threatened, audiences would dismiss it as unrealistic. Yet Israelis accept this as normal because it is the reality they inherit generation after generation.
In many countries, citizenship means paying taxes, voting, and obeying the law. In Israel, citizenship has traditionally carried a deeper meaning: personal responsibility for the survival of the nation. That responsibility is not delegated. It is shared.
The reserve system creates something unusual in modern society: It ensures that the nation’s defense remains woven into everyday life. The people making business decisions, teaching children, driving buses, performing surgery, writing software, and selling toys are often the same people who may someday be called upon to defend the country.
October 7th exposed this reality to the world. Within hours, hundreds of thousands of Israelis left offices, classrooms, construction sites, university campuses, restaurants, and living rooms. They did not wait to be transformed into soldiers; they already were soldiers. The uniforms were already in the closet, the training was already there, the responsibility was already understood.
That is what “Superheroes” is really about.
The song’s message is that Israeli society has created a citizen unlike almost any other in the modern world: a person who builds a normal life while remaining permanently prepared to defend it.
In 2005, author Donna Rosenthal published her book, “The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land.” While the book is fascinating, I tend to disagree with the subtitle — that Israelis are ordinary people in an extraordinary land. Having lived in Israel since 2013, it is clear to me that Israelis are extraordinary people in an ordinary land. As former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously joked:
“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!”
Israel possesses no magical advantages. It is a small country in a difficult neighborhood with limited natural resources and a permanent need to defend itself.
What makes Israel extraordinary has never been the land. It has always been the people.
That is why the song “Superheroes” resonates so deeply with Israelis. It is not describing fantasy. It is describing reality. The superheroes are not flying through the sky. They are teaching in classrooms, driving buses, running businesses, studying for exams, performing surgery, writing software, and raising families.
Since October 7th, Israelis have lived through something almost unprecedented in modern history. The country has faced attacks and military threats across seven fronts — Gaza, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. What began as a war against Hamas evolved into a regional conflict involving Iranian proxies across the Middle East and eventually direct confrontation with the Iranian regime.
And yet, somehow, Israelis keep showing up. The reservist who spent months in Gaza returned to work and opened his laptop. The teacher came back to the classroom. The business owner reopened the store. University students returned to their degrees between reserve deployments. Parents attended school plays after nights spent in bomb shelters.
Restaurants stayed open. Weddings continued. Babies were born. Startups raised money. Farmers harvested crops. Musicians performed concerts. People argued about politics, complained about traffic, and worried about paying their mortgages.
To an outsider, this can seem almost irrational. How can a society function normally while living through a war that has stretched from Gaza to Lebanon, from Yemen to Iran? The answer is that Israelis have never had the luxury of separating life from survival.
For most nations, war interrupts life. For Israelis, life continues alongside war.
That does not mean Israelis are fearless. It does not mean they are unaffected. The trauma, grief, exhaustion, and anxiety are real and visible everywhere. What is remarkable is that they refuse to stop living. The same society that mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists also kept schools open, businesses running, hospitals functioning, and families moving forward.
That is the deeper meaning of the song’s claim that there is “always a soldier hiding in everyone.” The soldier emerges when necessary, but the teacher remains a teacher, the entrepreneur remains an entrepreneur, the student remains a student, and the musician remains a musician.
Israelis do not become soldiers instead of living their lives. They become soldiers in order to protect the possibility of continuing to live them.
Excellent summary
Unfortunately this does not apply to a significant portion of the population who refuses to serve.