Israel is a country made up of diverse tribes, communities, ethnicities and religions. There are rival political camps and many different approaches to issues. If there is a single aspiration that almost all Israeli citizens have in common, it can be summarized by a desire to be a normal country. A nation just like all the other nations.

Israelis take pride in their complex society and in what makes their country so special and unique. But they are also frustrated by it. The percentage of people who travel overseas each year is among the highest in the world. Israel is a densely packed pressure cooker, always on the verge of boiling over. It is crammed with existential challenges, terrifying threats and overwhelming risks. Even those people who can’t afford an expensive jaunt overseas still need to “clear their heads” every so often.

One of the gauges of a normal country can be found in the questions: What do citizens vote on in elections? What is the primary consideration that brings Israelis to the polling booth? What consideration determines which ballot Israelis slip into the envelope, when they decide for whom to vote?

There are very few countries in the world where the electorate votes exclusively on national and personal security concerns. In Israel, however, this has been the primary consideration when people go to vote, ever since the country was founded and until today. It is easy to understand why. Israel is the only country in the world with a significant security threat hovering over it ever since it declared its independence. It is the only state (with the possible exception of Taiwan) that has so many other countries calling for its destruction (with one of them hard at work developing nuclear weapons to achieve that goal).

Read the article in full at Al-Monitor.