Israel and The Irrationality of Belonging

Jun 21, 2025

A bizarre sociological phenomenon that defies explanation: 150,000 Israelis abroad are rushing, insisting, and making supreme efforts to secure limited spots back to a war zone.

Let this sink in for a moment:

In every other conflict, "evacuation" means removing civilians from dangerous areas, with people making supreme efforts to flee the line of fire. In Israel, we speak of "evacuation to Israel," meaning arrival into the conflict zone. Israelis are perhaps the only people in the world willing to pay thousands of dollars to return to crossfire.

Logic dictates fleeing from danger. While the rest of the world desperately seeks to escape explosions and sit comfortably outside the battlefield, Israelis desperately seek to return to explosions just to sit comfortably in shelters like sitting ducks at a shooting range.

The statistics are clear: Most don't have babies waiting at grandma's house or emergency family situations. Most aren't religious with deep spiritual connections to the land and holy sites. For most, the flight costs more than several additional weeks in an Airbnb, and their work productivity will suffer anyway from rising anxiety and frequent shelter visits. Many workplaces have shifted to remote work that's entirely possible from abroad. We have no guarantee their workplace won't be classified as "non-essential" or place them on unpaid leave given the circumstances.

Most aren't operationally necessary either. In fact, they constitute a significant net burden on infrastructure and systems, especially if they get hurt or injured.

We've eliminated all the 'immediate suspects' the media echoes: patriotism, altruism, finances, operational necessity, emergency presence, and messianism.

What remains is something rarely acknowledged and seldom discussed in secular-mainstream discourse. It sits at the very foundation of Israeli identity. Every Israeli, to varying degrees, feels it, thinks it, believes in it, and yearns for it, whether indirectly or directly, consciously or subconsciously:

'Shared fate.'

The need to be "part of it," even when the "it" may be a terrible, helpless, and horrifying situation - so long as it is shared.

Or in cynical terms (which I prefer): the willingness to absorb suffering, provided the environment absorbs similar suffering, coupled with symmetrical guilt when that environment suffers while we don't.

This represents a strange and exceptional phenomenon in the global landscape.

I'm not here to criticize or praise. I don't know whether it's justified and admirable, or obviously irrational and strange. Call it inspiring or complete insanity.

But there's no denying that on a conceptual level, the fact that a country under daily deadly attacks experiences record-high demand for incoming flights provokes profound thought and amazement.

Someone will write a doctoral dissertation about this someday.

Jacob's Ledger

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Israel and The Irrationality of Belonging

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