Israel’s most visible defences are technological.
Its most decisive defence, however, is human.
Long before sirens sound, before reservists are mobilised or systems activated, Israeli civil society is already moving. Volunteers organise food distribution. Mental health professionals open informal clinics. Farmers receive labour support within hours. Universities redeploy resources. Local networks fill gaps before the state can even assess them.
This is not improvisation. It is preparedness of a different kind.
Civil society in Israel functions as a parallel resilience system – adaptive, decentralised, and deeply embedded in daily life. It absorbs shock, redistributes burden, and restores function with extraordinary speed. In doing so, it shortens recovery time and preserves social cohesion under pressure.
That cohesion is strategic.
Wars are not only won on battlefields. They are sustained – or lost – in kitchens, classrooms, hospitals, and neighbourhoods. Israel’s civil society ensures that while the state focuses on security, the society itself continues to breathe.
This is particularly visible during prolonged conflict. As reservists rotate between frontlines and home, community networks step in to support families. Employers adjust. Volunteers substitute. Schools adapt. Trauma is acknowledged, not suppressed.
Civil society does not eliminate pain.
It prevents fragmentation.
What makes Israel’s civil society remarkable is not only its scale, but its ethos. Participation is not transactional. It is relational. Israelis do not volunteer because they expect recognition; they volunteer because belonging carries responsibility.
This culture did not emerge overnight. It is the product of a small society that understands interdependence instinctively — where the line between “someone else’s problem” and “my responsibility” is unusually thin.
In many countries, civil society is seen as supplementary. In Israel, it is structural.
It complements military strength by sustaining morale. It reinforces innovation by translating ideas into action. And it anchors democracy by ensuring that power is not concentrated solely in institutions, but distributed across communities.
RenewingIsrael.org documents this not to romanticise it, but to recognise it as a strategic asset too often overlooked.
Israel’s enemies calculate weapons systems and troop movements. They rarely account for the quiet force of a society that refuses to disintegrate under pressure.
That refusal – collective, disciplined, humane – is Israel’s hidden Iron Dome.
And like all effective defences, it works best when it is least noticed.
- James Ogunleye, PhD, is the founder and editor of RenewingIsrael.org.
- A similar version of this essay appears in Resilience & Renewal: The Future of Israel, available on Amazon.