Stop expecting Israelis to be strong.
Calling Israelis "strong" or "resilient" actually lets the cycle of war continue.
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.
“Resilient” has become one of the most common words used to describe Israelis. It shows up in headlines, speeches, and social media posts — often offered as a compliment, even as admiration. Israelis, we are told, are strong. They endure. They bounce back.
But it’s time to say it plainly: We need to stop calling Israelis strong and resilient.
Because what sounds like praise is, in reality, a quiet lowering of expectations. It is a way of normalizing a reality that should never be accepted.
Resilience is what you expect from someone enduring hardship that cannot be avoided, like a natural disaster, an illness, or some type of temporary setback. But Israelis are not enduring random misfortune. They are living under the constant threat of deliberate, sustained violence from enemies who openly declare genocidal intent.
And when that reality is reframed as “resilience,” something deeply dangerous happens: The abnormal begins to be framed or at least is expected to be normal.
But moving entire hospital units underground is not normal. Designing neighborhoods around bomb shelters is not normal. Setting a Passover table, only to cancel the Seder because missile sirens won’t stop, is not normal. Keeping children indoors because rockets are purposefully aimed at playgrounds and schools is not normal. Kidnapping people and turning them into bargaining chips is not normal. Iranian cluster munitions indiscriminately sent toward population centers is not normal. Needing to invent the Iron Dome because the very first victims of Gazan rockets were a 3-year-old boy and an immigrant grandfather is not normal.
None of this is normal. And yet, by constantly praising Israeli “resilience,” much of the world subtly accepts that this is simply the way things are.
Imagine a woman in an abusive relationship. She is constantly harmed, constantly threatened, constantly forced to adjust her life around her partner’s abuse. And instead of intervening, instead of demanding that the abuse stop, people around her say: “You’re so very patient with him.”
At some point, that stops being a compliment; it becomes absurdity.
That is what has happened with Israel.
Calling Israelis resilient shifts the focus away from the core issue: not how well Israelis endure violence, but why they are expected to endure it at all.
And more than that, it traps Israelis in a cycle. Because resilience, by definition, is about recovery, not resolution. A resilient society absorbs the blow, rebuilds, and continues. It adapts. It improves. It survives. But it does not necessarily end the threat. In fact, resilience can coexist with repeated harm. That’s what makes it so appealing to outside observers: It allows them to admire strength without demanding change.
But for Israelis, resilience has come at a compounding cost.
Every round of conflict follows a familiar script: War is waged by Israel’s adversaries, civilians are targeted, Israel responds, international pressure builds, calls for restraint intensify, and a ceasefire is reached.
And then it happens again and again and again and again and again.
Israel’s resilience allows it to withstand this cycle. Its technology improves. Its defenses strengthen. Its people endure. But the cycle itself remains intact. And in that sense, resilience becomes a ceiling. It ensures survival, but not victory.
Consider the pattern: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad embed within civilian areas, launch rocket attacks, and rely on international pressure to limit Israel’s response. Hezbollah builds an arsenal larger than many national armies, positioned deliberately within Lebanese population centers. The Islamic Republic of Iran funds, arms, and coordinates multiple fronts, escalating just enough to destabilize, but often stopping short of triggering full-scale consequences.
Even now, the Iranian regime thinks it’s winning simply because it is surviving the onslaught of U.S. and Israeli attacks, and its survival just prolongs the conflict and extends the expiration date. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah feel the exact same.
Each time, Israel demonstrates resilience. It intercepts missiles and rockets. It mobilizes reserves. It rebuilds. But it is rarely allowed to militarily, politically, and diplomatically end the threat once and for all.
Resilience, then, becomes a substitute for resolution, and that is not sustainable. No country should be expected to live indefinitely in a state of managed danger. No society should have to build its identity around endurance of violence. No people should be praised for adapting to what should be intolerable.
What Israelis need is not enduring resilience. What we need is a different paradigm entirely: We need to be seen not as survivors of endless cycles, but as a nation with the right to end them — a nation that can win.
“Victory” is a word that makes many people uncomfortable, especially in modern conflicts. It feels outdated, too definitive, too absolute. But when a country is facing enemies that openly seek our destruction, ambiguity is not a virtue.
If we want to end wars and establish true, lasting peace, we have to win wars outright. Otherwise, they don’t end. They pause. They are contained. They are renamed “cycles,” “rounds,” or “flare-ups.” But the underlying reality remains unchanged: the same enemies, the same intentions, the same violence waiting for its next moment. An unwon war doesn’t disappear; the enemy lingers, regroups, studies your limits and learns your patterns, and tests how far it can go next time. And there is always a next time.
When victory is off the table, endurance becomes the strategy. And endurance, no matter how admirable, is not a solution; it’s a delay.
Victory, in this context, does not mean conquest for its own sake. It does not mean unnecessary destruction. It means something far more fundamental: removing the threat so that normal life can exist and persist.
It means children can play outside without fear. It means families can gather for holidays without contingency plans. It means hospitals can operate above ground. It means the absence of sirens, not just the efficiency of response to them. Victory means normalcy, and normalcy should be the baseline expectation, not resilience.
To be clear, Israelis are resilient. Their strength, creativity, and determination are extraordinary. But continuing to define them by that trait alone does Israel a disservice. It confines Israelis to a role they never chose: the people who endure.
It’s time to replace that narrative. Stop calling Israelis resilient; start asking why they have to be; and start insisting on something better — that they be allowed to live in a reality where resilience is no longer required, because the threats that made it necessary have been decisively defeated.
This is a very silly piece of writing.
It boils down to no more than banging your head against the wall in frustration at circumstances.
That’s what this Iran / Lebanon war is intended to achieve: an end to this continuous cycle. The negotiations after the Yom Kippur war effectively achieved this result with the Arab countries.
But the 1979 Iranian revolution opened a new front that created circumstances that were totally unanticipated, not only for Israel, but for the entire Middle East and further afield.
If the shah and the Iranian government at the time had realised a reincarnation of the nazi regime would be created with at least a 47 year shelf life, they probably would have ensured khomeini did not step foot in Tehran.
If that was the case, a far more stable Middle East would have been achieved decades ago.
Now the USA and Israel are left to clean up the mess, which after 47 years, is proving not to be a one month campaign.
If ever the world is to return to a far more stable and less threatened geopolitical environment, the khomeini regime does need to be replaced.
Whether this will happen or not, is not yet assured. It is essential to occur though, otherwise there is no guarantee that these evil maniacs won’t rebuild, and in 20 years or less, threaten the entire region again.
If the nazis had had the opportunity, they would have also tried again.
The world needs to do their absolute best to ensure this monster does not raise its head again.