(
Mar. 29, 2026
/ JNS
)

If there were an Olympic sport for self-pity in a flourishing country, Israel might finally take home the gold—courtesy of its most comfortable citizens.

In a March 27 post on X, Netta Seroussi—a staffer at Channel 12’s “Uvda” (“Fact”), hosted by bleeding-heart Ilana Dayan—was clearly vying for the coveted medal.

“In my area code, there isn’t a single person who isn’t thinking about emigrating—some in practical terms, others as a wish,” she wrote, with readers understanding full well that the reference was to Tel Aviv. “It’s long since not just high-tech workers and doctors. Public-sector and third-sector employees, with no real employment prospects abroad, are willing to throw years of local experience into the garbage in order to give the next generation a different future.”

Never mind that this isn’t how the rest of us, including residents of the White City, perceive the sentiment of our neighbors; if that’s Seroussi’s experience, so be it. But her follow-up rant revealed the real motive behind her observation.

“I think about my grandmother, Alisa, who spent weeks vomiting on a ship from Montevideo to reach the Promised Land, or about my grandfather, Dov, an Irgun activist who was a prisoner of Zion in Africa for four years,” she stated, adding the clincher, “Of everything on the long list of apologies that the state owes me, this is perhaps the most unforgivable.”

One has to admire the sheer audacity of her words, even if her syntax leaves much to be desired. To invoke the trials and tribulations of her grandparents, who embodied the essence of Zionist history, to whine about her plight in the modern miracle of the Jewish state they helped to build goes beyond chutzpah.

Worse than that, she actually believes that the state owes her multiple “apologies” for failing to meet her expectations and those of her “area code” peers. Not the majority, mind you, but a narrow slice of society: urban, for the most part, economically secure and culturally influential.

Thankfully, her insulated bubble was burst by a slew of social-media followers who couldn’t tolerate the spoiled-brat attitude.

The following comments constitute a taste of the outrage on the part of Israelis who rejected her complaints:

“No one owes you anything. Certainly not an apology. You’re more than welcome to leave. Bye.”“‘The state owes me an apology’… that’s where the failure is … No one owes me anything, and I’m not a victim.”“Your grandfather fought so you could live in your own country—and you want to leave and blame it? What would he think?”“In my ‘area code,’ nobody’s thinking about emigrating. There are challenges—but also dedication and hope.”“You should be asking your grandparents for forgiveness—not the state asking you.”“We see the problems—and still don’t think for a moment about giving up. The people of Israel live, thrive and endure.”

In other words, outside the curated echo chamber of the likes of Seroussi, Israelis are doing what we always do: debate, grumble and persevere—raising families at the highest rate in the Western world, and managing, against all odds, to sustain an upbeat mood under the constant strain of having to defend against enemies bent on wiping us off the map.

Seroussi’s woe-is-me theatrics aside, Israel ranks eighth on the latest World Happiness Report. Evidently, the citizens polled neglected to align their answers about their overall well-being with the gloom and doom emanating from left-wing Hebrew-language TV studios.

Not only that. Surveys indicate that an overwhelming majority of Israelis back the war against Iran and its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon—despite having spent the past month running to bomb shelters throughout the day and wee hours of the night.

Seroussi and her fellow moaners are free to view things differently. They’re also at liberty to depart for what they imagine to be greener pastures abroad.

Such prerogatives are among the many options taken for granted by the sniveling classes. You know, the people who tend to omit a certain inconvenient phenomenon for Jews, regardless of their political persuasion: the explosion of antisemitism in New York, London, Paris and just about everywhere else.

It’s open Jew-hatred that would have seemed unfathomable not long ago, though probably not to Seroussi’s grandparents.