Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Why the War in Isreal Helped Me Realize I Want Kids

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

It sounds counterintuitive, but it's true— and it comes from Nicole's reflections on Israel's resilience and wondering: what does the path to rebuilding look like? To unpack the question of Israel's future, Nicole is joined by author and foreign policy expert Dan Senor. Their conversation spans the startup landscape in Israel, the question of aid from the United States, how a country in an unstable region could rank so highly on happiness and yes, Nicole's realization that she wants to have kids. To donate to United Hatzalah, the organization Dan mentions in the interview, click here: https://israelrescue.org/  For more on Dan and his research on resilience in Israel, check out his upcoming book The Genius of Israel: https://www.dansenor.com/

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I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no

maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits

apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. As I've been covering the war in Israel, I've asked myself time and time again, how can I describe Israel to people who aren't Jewish or who haven't been to that part of the world? Because if you know Israel only from these headlines, you might think that it's just the center of war and religion. And that is part of the story. But what you might not know is that it's also the center of entrepreneurship, culture, and resilience. Some of the biggest companies of this century have come out of Israel, especially in tech. Companies like Waze, Monday.com, Fiverr,

and so many more. I wanted to unpack why Israel has become a startup hub, what the impact of war will have on industries, including tech, worldwide, and how the psyche of such a persecuted part of the world can remain so resilient. Today I have some awesome help painting this picture. I couldn't think of a better person to help me do that than Dan Senor, an expert on Israel who co-authored the New York Times bestselling book, Startup Nation, the story of Israel's economic miracle. Not only is Dan a New York Times bestseller, but during George W. Bush's presidency, he lived in Baghdad, where he served as a chief spokesperson for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. Before that, he was a senior defense department official at U.S. Central Command in Qatar.

He also has a new book coming out called The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World. So he is the exact person I wanted to be talking to right now for a dose of economics and hope. Dan Senor, welcome to Money Rehab. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. How are you? It's been a rough few days since October 7th. The war in Israel completely caught me off guard,

caught the country off guard. And I have a lot of family there. I've got a lot of friends there. The co-author of my last book and my next book is there. And he's also a member of my family. We have a lot of family members who are being called up to the reserves to be deployed. And when you know someone who's been affected in something like this, given the horror of it, it's pretty demoralizing. So you asked me an honest question, I'm giving you an honest answer. I appreciate that. This is deeply personal for me, and it's also deeply personal for you. So thank you for taking the time to talk about this. You have a book, The Genius of Israel. Wow, the timing coming out soon. But I actually want to start with your

book, Startup Nation. It addressed the question, how is it that Israel, a country, a teeny country, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies with no natural resources, the hotbed for startups? Yes, we try to ask that question. We believed that Israel was the most important innovation economy in the world outside of Silicon Valley. But when we wrote the book, very few people outside of Israel had known about that. And it happened while most of the world wasn't paying attention. And the biggest factors, just to put some fine point data on it, when we wrote Startup in Israel, Israel had and still does today the highest density of startups in the world. It attracts back then and still does more global venture capital than any country in the world on a per capita basis.

More companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange from Israel than any country in the world outside the U.S. and maybe one or two other very much larger countries today. And there's a variety of factors. There's a variety of reasons why Israel has become just this dynamic innovation juggernaut. One is the role of the military. Now, when we say the role of the military, people think, oh, the way the role militaries play in most economies, which is some kind of industrial, military-industrial complex. There's some of it that goes on in Israel, but it's really not the important part. The way the military plays a big role in the economy is that almost every single Israeli at a formative age, between 18 and 21 for males, 18 and 20

for females, and then longer for both of them if they go on into a special unit or officer training school, gets this crucible leadership experience at this very important age where at age 18, 19, 20, 21, they're learning how to manage people, how to lead people, how to manage massive amounts of hugely valued assets. They are learning how to deal with literal life and death decisions. They're learning how to deal with ambiguity. They are learning how to become self-starters in the fog of war. And these are just invaluable leadership lessons for anybody, let alone people who are, like I said, 18, 19, 20, 21. And the Israeli military is very anti-hierarchical. So it's probably the flattest structure of any military in the world, which is to say that a lot of decision-making is driven down

to the most junior ranks of the military. So young people in the world, which is to say that a lot of decision-making is driven down to the most junior ranks of the military. So young people in the military get enormous decision-making responsibility. So they take all that experience with them out of the military, and then they get gobbled up in the best possible way by the startup scene. And these skills they've developed, as Eric Schmidt at the time when we were working on the book said, former CEO and executive chairman of Google, he said that Google did business in over 100 countries. They have a huge operation in Israel. And he says, you take the average Israeli 25-year-old and you put him up against his or her peers anywhere in the world. And almost any day of the week, Google would hire the Israeli because

at age 25, these young people just have this incredible experience that very few of their peers have anywhere in the world. So I think that the role of the military was a big one, the role of immigration. So if Israel is the startup nation, it's also an immigrant nation. Two out of every three Israelis is an immigrant themselves, the child of an immigrant or the grandchild of an immigrant. Over 70 nationalities are represented in Israel. And so people come from all over the world. They're scrappy in the best possible way. Immigrants, we argued, are like the ultimate entrepreneurs because their whole life is a startup and they have to learn how to deal with adversity and start anew and build. And then these are people who are connected to markets all over

the world because they come from all over the world. And Israel is a very export-oriented economy. So they come from all over the world, they build businesses in Israel, and then they market all over the world and have all this connective tissue to these countries they came from. So in that sense, a very externally focused economy and labor force. I just think you can't overstate the role of the training, the leadership training most Israelis get, and the sort of scrappy immigrant culture that is very much part of Israeli society. It's so interesting to hear you say that because

my parents immigrated from Israel, so I'm first generation American. So to think of immigrants to Israel is like a paradigm shift for me, but it makes a lot of sense for people who don't know more about the Israeli economy. Can you paint a picture? So it's export driven, immigrant driven, obviously tech driven. What else should we know about how it's operated? And of course, how what's going on now might affect it. It is an export oriented economy, which we'd expect the population, when we wrote Startup Nation, it was about seven plus

million. Now the population is about 9.3 million, which is still tiny. So the United States is 40 times the size of Israel's population. So there's no way the economy could thrive and get the kind of growth you get, the per capita GDP growth Israel has experienced without it focusing on foreign markets. There's just not enough of a local market to export. When you add in that it is isolated in its region historically, now that's been a big change since we wrote Startup Nation, where now all these diplomatic and commercial opportunities are opening for Israel in the Middle East. But it wasn't the case when we wrote the book. So it was isolated in the region. in the Middle East. But it wasn't the case when we wrote the book. So it was isolated in the region.

So export-oriented economy that's isolated in its own geography makes it even harder. And so they have to leapfrog the region and market to all these other parts of the world. They've been exporting obviously a lot to the US and Europe. And now in the last few years, it's really exploded all over the world. And tech has been the engine of that export economy. So the question is, why tech? One, the early pioneers of Israel's economy believed that since it had to be an export-oriented economy, and they were basically shut out from export markets in their own region, and because it's very hard to leapfrog the region and export goods if those goods are hard to move across the world, what's the easiest thing to export from just a kind of practical, logistical standpoint is tech. And that was one motivation for tech. It also happened to be that Israelis were very good at tech because in order to make their country survive, they had to get good at tech.

They had to make the desert bloom. country survived, they had to get good at tech. They had to make the desert bloom. They had to rely on all sorts of technologies, agri-tech and water tech in the early days to turn this scrap of desert, this speck of a country that was in the middle of a desert into a thriving country that was really developed. So technology was a big part of how they built the country. And then that expertise in technology became the way they exported what they did in the country to other parts of the world. So what are the areas of tech that are hot in Israel? Recent studies have forecast that Israel will be one of the five or six most important centers for AI, generative AI in the world going forward. So I would actually say just about almost every interesting area in tech anywhere in the world, there's something going on in Israel on it. So anything tech, basically.

Yes. Yeah, tech. Ad tech, med tech, all the tech. Israel has a- All the AI. Israel's non-tech economy is highly centralized, highly taxed, and highly regulated. And it's not a big growth area, other than tourism. I'd say the only non-tech area that booms in Israel is the tourism industry. But other than that, it's mostly a pretty slow moving. The tech economy is the opposite of everything I just said. It is lightly regulated,

it is decentralized, and it is lightly taxed, and it's flourishing. The labor force in Israel, this is really interesting. So most complaints in most Western economies is that the labor force, the percentage of labor force that works in tech is too small. So it's great that all these people are accumulating all this wealth, doing all this great innovation in the tech space, but how many people in that economy are actually benefiting? And Israel's is an outlier. It's like well over 10%, depending on how you calculate it. Some calculate as high as 14, 15. If you broaden the calculation, you can even get as close to 18% of the labor force is in tech. In many other economies, there's resentment in other parts of the labor force towards the tech

economy. You don't have that in Israel. there's not a there's not really a resentment stratification around who's in tech and who's not again there's not there's not this natural resentment of the tech elites like you see sometimes in the united states and i think it's partly because many israelis are proud of israel's tech accomplishments they're proud that tech has put israel on the map globally and so many people are directly working in the tech sector in a broader, more representative way than you see in other economies. Oh, I was stunned by this. When I was there 15 years ago, I was going from CNN to CNBC and focusing more on business news. I met some of my closest friends in the tech world in Tel Aviv.

Yes. I would say the other thing that's interesting about this period in Israel's trajectory is when we wrote Startup Nation, entrepreneurs in Israel were really good at building companies and flipping them really quickly and moving on to the next thing. So Israeli entrepreneurs were extremely impatient. They would build something, they would sniff a potential buyer, and they'd flip it. And they weren't terribly interested in building companies that would last and be big standalone companies. And there was this concern in Israel, is that all we're going to be? Where are Googles? And I think what you are seeing now is much more Israeli patience. Israeli entrepreneurs are ready

to not do a quick flip, but are actually trying to build companies that are maybe not built to last forever as a standalone company, but built to last for a very long time. And it is, I know the unicorn word is not cool anymore, but Israel has one of the highest concentration. Is that enough cool? All right. All right, you think it's cool. I think it's cool too. So you and I think it's cool. Okay, so there's two of us. There's, you know, the negativity or the eye rolling because it's a vestige of the pre-tech downturn nomenclature. But I agree with you. Unicorns are cool. And for purposes of this conversation, they're still cool because you and I agree. And Israel has one of the

highest concentration of unicorns in the world. Now, you could say it was a bubbly economy globally for tech, but the reality is Israel had something like 80-plus unicorns, which largely was a reflection of Israeli entrepreneurs not flipping their companies too soon and building real companies. The other big change over the last decade is they are building companies that are generating real revenue. So when we wrote Startup Nation, the number of companies that were generating like $100 million, hundreds of millions of dollars in a top line a year, there was a handful of them. Now there's a lot of them. And you have a lot of these companies now that are not only unicorns, but are generating real cash flow. And they're run by entrepreneurs who want to build these companies and want to build them in Israel and not just get quickly

acquired. And that's been a big change, by the way. You mentioned Waze. I think one of the biggest changes about Waze and when Waze was sold to Google in 2013, I think, Apple, Facebook, and Google were all competing to acquire Waze and Waze ultimately went with Google. But one of the reasons that Waze went with Google is because Google was going to let most of the Waze operations stay in Israel. So historically, when these startups would get acquired by foreign companies, they would relocate most of the teams to wherever it is, Menlo Park or London or wherever it may be. And the founders of Waze said, no, we actually want to stay in Israel. We want to keep most of our operation in Israel.

And Google let them do it. So now you have a lot of companies that even if they sell, they stay in Israel. And that, of course, strengthens the ecosystem in Israel. Because in Israel now, the ecosystem consists of a lot of really interesting startups that are building rather than flipping. You have a bunch of multinationals, and we can talk about the role of the big multinationals, over 400 multinationals right now with operations in Israel, innovation operations. And then you have all these Israeli startups that have matured, gotten acquired by foreign companies, but the foreign companies have kept them in Israel. And so the ecosystem

is stronger, which means you have a deeper bench of talent all around, which makes it easy for entrepreneurs who want to build real companies because they've got a wider and deeper well of talent to tap into. We're seeing a bunch of tech companies setting routes in Israel. A lot of tech founders who would traditionally set up offices in New York, Silicon Alley or Silicon Valley are now setting up offices in Tel Aviv. Is there an alley there? Like Silicon Beach or whatever? Yeah, they used to call it Silicon Wadi. That's what they used to call it, W-A-D-I. Yeah, that's not sticky. It doesn't work and it hasn't stuck. It hasn't stuck. No, I'll tell you why there isn't one.

Here's the thing. The country has been defined by its tech economy that it doesn't get the cool name. It doesn't get the Silicon Valley or the Silicon Alley or the whatever. It's just, it's startup nation. It's the country. That's what's interesting about it. When we called the country startup nation, we called it startup nation not just because we believed it was a country of startups, but the whole founding of the state was a startup. It's the whole culture of the way the country was built was like a startup. So the country wears the startup culture. It's not just like a little nook. Yeah, it's like meta, but not the company meta, but the concept. Yeah. How do you think the attacks in Israel will affect startup culture? So, I mean, it goes without saying. In the near term, in the near term, it's a very difficult time, really difficult time, and will be for some time for Israel generally, for any part of Israeli society, including the economy. And for the near

term, the economy will take an especially big hit. The Bank of Israel has just forecast in recent days that they expect something like Israel will lose about 1% of its GDP. And that's just with basically, there's not a lot of economic activity happening internally while the war is going on. Obviously, there's a complete wipeout of tourism. So most of the non-tech economy will grind to a halt. And that is obviously very bad for Israel's economy. Its tech economy will take a little bit of a hit because many of the people who populate the tech economy are being called up into reserves. Israel has mobilized 300,000, 350,000 people in its reserves, and many of those are people who work in the tech

scene. Now, it's been disproportionately combat soldiers, combat reservists who've been called up, so they may be less represented in the tech economy, but still, you're seeing lots of people in the tech sector who are either formally supporting the military effort or are playing some kind of volunteer role in the economy, in society, as the country mobilizes for this hell, hellish, horrific period. It is already in as of October 7th, and it's about to get worse. I will say, though, and this is early days for me saying this, but I'm going to say it because an entrepreneur in Israel made this point to me today. I think in the long run, you are going to see entrepreneurs and others in the

Israeli tech ecosystem come together and improvise and mobilize and, and ultimately persevere in ways that would be hard to imagine in almost any country. There's this organization, for instance, called Brothers in Arms, give you an example, which is an organization formed during the judicial reform debate in Israel that sort of rocked Israel's domestic politics for the nine months before this period. And this big protest movement was largely, not singularly, but largely organized by this organization called Brothers in Arms, which are former reservists, military reservists, people outside of the army, a lot of people in the tech space, a lot of players in the tech economy.

The moment October 7th happened, it was like snap of the fingers. They completely flipped to forget about politics, forget about the judicial reform debate that has been so divisive. We have one job, and that is helping this country mobilize to survive this horrendous period we are in right now and to win this war. I saw one stat that blew my mind. When Israel called up reserves for this war, reserve turnout since October 7th? I don't know. I bet it's 80%. 150%.

Shut up. 150%. Wow. How does that even happen? Because they called up more people than they need. They called up more people than they needed because they thought what you just said. They thought, okay, let's say it's 80%. So let's go way over. Which 80% is high too.

80% is high. 150% they're turning people away. They're literally saying, thanks, we don't need you. And these people are saying, we don't care. We're here to serve. And if there's nothing for them to do on the military front, they're volunteering in all these other areas to just like in civilian roles. Look, I believe Israel's secret weapon in this war is Israeli solidarity, which is ironic because everyone had written Israel off as divided. It's Israeli solidarity. And it just reminds one of

the resilience of this country. Absolutely. And I'd love for you to help us wrap our minds around the economic impact long-term of the attacks on Israel. But I guess this really lends to your next book, The Genius of Israel, which is coming out in November, where you say that there is more to be optimistic about their society than any other country in the West after the attacks. It sounds like you still believe that to be true. Yeah. Israel has been tested in the past, its tech economies in the past. If you go back to, say, 1991, which was the first big test, because its tech economy was pretty developed by 91. It wasn't as big as it was in the 2000s, but it was still pretty big. Intel, for instance,

had set up two huge operations in Israel,. Some of the most important work for its most important chip at the time was being done in Israel. So they had bet its most important area of R&D in Israel. And then the 1991 Gulf War happens, Scud missiles are being launched in Israel, the entire country shuts down. And Intel Israel, its Israel operation doesn't miss a beat. And over in California, where Intel is headquartered, they thought they were screwed. And because their most important innovation hub was bogged down with scud missiles landing on the country and people in gas masks and sealed rooms and no one going to the office. And they worked 24-hour shifts. They set up kindergartens because schools were closed down. They set up kindergartens at Intel Israel. Different workers who weren't on shifts, like working on fabs, were manning,

volunteering in the kindergarten to look after kids so other people could work, and they were taking turns, and they never missed a beat. They never missed a shipment. Everything was on time, on schedule. I think the same thing is going to happen here. I think by and large, most of the tech economy, most of the multinationals will keep working. Their Israeli employees will keep working and not much will change. The economy will take a hit for the reasons I said earlier, but I think the tech economy is going to prove as resilient as ever. about what we call the genius of Israel, which in the subtitle, I think, describes it. We could not have anticipated this moment that we're in and that we're not surprised by it, which is, the subtitle of the book is The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World. So what do we mean by a turbulent world? The world is a mess. Polarized politics in most countries, most countries, the people are divided in ways that are so mind-blowing,

including the one that you and I are in right now, the United States. And people who disagree politically can't have a conversation with one another, let alone work together and collaborate. And then you have all these other social trends, high rates of loneliness, high rates of mental health crises, especially with teens, teen mental health. The CDC had a study out a few months ago, which was horrific, not only about the teen mental health crisis, but also the, I can't even believe I have to say these words, but I will, the teen suicide crisis. large numbers higher than we've ever seen of teens tragically taking their own lives. We have life expectancy, which has either plateaued in most places or is actually declining in some places. You have people feeling disconnected from the country, from the sort of the national spirit of the country, feel these atomized lives they're living. And then you have a demographic crisis, which is people aren't having children at the rate they

used to populations are shrinking and which means populations most countries are becoming they're shrinking and aging which is like the worst combination if you want to be a healthy vibrant optimistic forward-looking country and if you want to be an innovative if you want to have an innovative economy having aging shrinking populations that does not bode well so in every one of these metrics i just mentioned every single one israel's moving the opposite direction hold on to your wallets money rehab we'll be right back i love hosting on airbnb it's a great way to bring in some extra cash but i totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated

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so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that

you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bank Corp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A.

Members FDIC. Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in Spot Me and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. And now for some more money rehab. First of all, Israelis are having lots of children. They're way above replacement rate. And when I say this, people say, as you can imagine, oh, it's just the ultra-Orthodox. It must just be the Haredi communities that are overpopulating. It is

true that they have those communities in Israel, which represents a minority of the population, but they do produce a lot of kids. What's wild about Israel is the secular Israelis are also having lots of kids. So secular Israelis who work in Tel Aviv in the tech community or work in the television scene in Israel in the creative arts scene are having three, four, five kids. And it's always been a sort of rule of law, a kind of demographic rule of law that as countries become more economically productive, they become less reproductive. As people, countries become richer, they have, families have fewer and fewer kids. Israel is the only country in the world to defy that law. It is becoming wealthier and

wealthier. Its per capita GDP is going up and up, and they're having more and more children. So that's interesting. There's no loneliness crisis in Israel. Israel has the lowest teen suicide rate in the OECD. Most Israelis are living longer than their peers anywhere in the world, including the U.S. They live longer than Americans. They live longer than most Europeans. And I should add, ranked among the happiest places in the world. The UN does a study every year ranking- Fourth, right? Fourth in the world, exactly. So the fourth happiest country in the world. Now that is amazing, right? So you say to yourself, okay, how is this country that is in a state of war since its founding is literally now in a war has been rocked by waves of terrorism where most young people have

to serve in the military many of them lose their lives or no loved one no friends who've lost their lives or no friends who've been victims of terrorism. They are in a highly polarized environment politically, as we've seen over the last few months. You would think this is not a recipe for happiness. And yet they consistently not only rank among the happiest countries in the world, they keep growing. They keep rising and rising in happiness. So that was the impulse for this book.

We're like, how is this possible? We want to understand why and here we are we the factors we're describing in the book that explain why it's so societally healthy explain its resilience we didn't expect that we'd be seeing this resilience on full display in the middle of a war as our book is coming out. But I think our book actually explains the resilience we're seeing and that we're going to be seeing in the weeks ahead. My therapist calls it post-traumatic growth. It's a great term, by the way. Post-traumatic growth is a great term. First of all, I love that you openly cite your therapist on...

She's the best. She's been on over-duty this week for me. Because of the warmth? Yeah. Yeah, I think she doesn't really know what to say, but she says that in psychology too, there's a lot of studies of the post-traumatic growth, like post-Holocaust, like how did the Jews do all that we've done? There's a lot of research on this. It's really interesting.

It's hard to talk about. You brought it up, so I'll run with it. We'll blame your therapist. There's a lot of work done, going back to Viktor Frankl's book, During the Holocaust. There's a lot of work in this area. And we cite some Israeli psychologists in the book who are experts on this subject and on happiness. And at the risk of being glib, the question is during a traumatic period,

the question many of the experts we speak to cite, and I'm really summarizing here, is do you have something to live for? Are you living a life of meaning? If you are living a life of meaning and purpose, it's not to say you can survive anything, but you can survive a lot. And then you can deal with the pressure and the tension of the crisis and then grow from there because it matters. You're not leading a life of aimlessness and purposelessness

and waking up every day saying, what's it about? One of the characters we said in our book is one of the most inspirational people I know. So after you talk to your therapist, I advise that you listen to podcasts by this man. His name is Mika Goodman. He's a public intellectual in Israel and a political thinker. And we have a chapter in the book called Touching History. And what Mika argues in this conversation we have with him is that Israel is a small country. And it's a small country, which means you can have a real impact. In small countries, you can have a real impact because it's not so untouchable and inaccessible and impenetrable to try to make a difference in the place that you're in, civilian mobilization. Every day you feel that you can have a role in this tiny country. And I say tiny, smaller than the state of New Jersey, something like, as I said, 140th of the U.S. population. But it's a country where big things are happening, right?

Big things are happening. You look at just the role Israel plays in biblical history. It's a big story, Israel. You look at the role Israel plays in geopolitics and national security issues in the Middle East and the world, outsized role. We just spent the first half of this conversation talking about the economy. The role Israel plays, as I said, most important tech economy outside of Silicon Valley, innovations coming out of Israel that are permeating throughout

the global economy, outsized role. Big things are happening in this little place. So when you have a small country where big things are happening, so it's small enough that you can have impact, but it's big enough that the impact you have really matters. And that's what it means to touch history. You don't observe history. You're not passively observing history. Regular citizens in this country can touch history and shape it. To come back to your therapist, I think there's something to that, that Israelis, it's yes, it's post-traumatic growth. It's the sense that out of incredible trauma, I can do better, get ahead, grow. That's part of it.

And I also think it's that people are living with purpose. They're living with meaning. They think their lives matter. They think the role in their society matters. And I think it's probably also cyclical, too. Anecdotally, I am a stone's throw away from 40. I grew up in the States, very proudly Jewish, was on the fence about kids during this existential crisis. I'm like, it is time to pop out some Jewish kids.

I think it goes full circle back to the fertility. You know what? That is a great formulation. It's funny that you say that. So we leave this point out of the book. But you said it. So we're in it. So we leave this point out of the book, but you said it, so we're in it. I do think we try as much as possible to rely on social science data or epidemiological data, depending on the issue make the point, but I think your sentiment is widely held by many

Israelis, which is, it's my job to populate the world with, in this case, in their case, Israeli Jews. And when you think about a third of the Jewish people were wiped out during the Holocaust, so you think about what the size of the Jewish population would have been globally had six million Jews not been wiped out when you think of the offspring of the Jewish people. And so there's this sense that we got to do our part here. We got a lot of catching up to do. And I think what you're expressing is of a piece with that. I've never felt it until now, but it is real. So during COVID, that's when you... No, like in the last week. Oh, wow. Okay, got it. I was on the last week. Oh, wow. Truly, this existential crisis. No, fuck COVID.

I feel like our people need my two eggs up in the attic somewhere. All right. Back to Israel's economy. Help me untangle this picture, though, that we're seeing on social media. God, I don't even know where to begin. But there are a lot of calls to donate to the IDF. But their website now says that they don't need donations, right? And there's this overall perception that maybe Israel doesn't have enough money to defend itself.

Is there any truth to that? That's a great question. There are a lot of charitable efforts that are pretty decentralized to support Israel during this war. I think the challenge of mobilizing 300 to 350 reservists on a surge moment means that some resources they're short on. And so there are all these independent philanthropic efforts to get tourniquets and bandages and whatever food supplies to help different military needs. I think there are some organizations on the medical side, an organization like United Hatzalah, which if your listeners are interested in, we can post somewhere, United Hatzalah, which is a volunteer medic, ambulance motorcycle volunteer medic network of something like 7,000 of these volunteers that move around the country on these motorcycle ambulances. They have raised a lot of money in

recent days, as they should, because they're doing extraordinary work to augment the healthcare system and the emergency needs of the healthcare system. But I think the big one in the weeks and months ahead will be what the U.S. government does. And I do believe there will be a big assistance package that goes before Congress to get Israel funds and potentially more military equipment. And that will be the big one that the U.S. government will have to deal with. Some experts say that the United States is going to give Israel whatever funding is needed, but I suppose there's always a limit. But I suppose there's always a limit. Yeah, there's always a limit.

I'm not sure there will be too much resistance to Israel's needs. I think in the scheme of things, what Israel's needs will be a tiny percentage of U.S. GDP. So it'll be economically not that important in the scheme of things to the U.S., but extremely important to Israel. I think there's overwhelming support in the United States right now for supporting Israel. It's wall to wall. Now, this is an interesting question, why? Why are Americans so supportive? Americans in recent years have had more of a tendency to want to disengage from the world rather than stay engaged in the world. But when you see forces of barbarism going up against forces of civilization.

I think the American people generally know where they stand. I remember seeing this about 10 years ago when there were a bunch of polls about whether or not the US should stay engaged in the Middle East. Something like 60 plus percent said we should be out of the Middle East. What are we doing in the Middle East? And then ISIS, you may recall, beheaded on video to one American, I think, and one Australian, and they broadcast it. And American public opinion almost flipped overnight, where majority of Americans said, we got to be engaged. We got to be in the Middle East. I think when they see forces of just cruelty and barbarism against people who share our values that we have a shared history with, the American people rally to that cause. And I think that's exactly what happened the weekend of October 7th, is people over in the United States watched literally.

over in the United States watched literally. It just, I hate to be graphic, Nicole, but I feel like it's just, they captured people, they tortured them, in some cases they raped them, and they then either burned them alive or murdered them and then burnt them or kidnapped or took them hostage.

This was the experience of the over 1,300 people who are now dead in Israel or the hundreds more that are unaccounted for and are probably dead. And I fear for the 200 on top of that, and it could be as high as 250, that have been taken hostage. It's like Israel experienced 10 9-11s in one weekend. If you look proportionately, again,

140th of the population. So you just add these numbers up. It's like it is 10 or more 9-11s on one weekend in this country, and it's because you have your own experience in history with Israel. Everyone in Israel knows everyone. Many people in the Jewish diaspora knows someone in Israel. So we all feel very connected to this. And it makes us all feel very vulnerable. But I think for most Americans who have no connection to Israel, they watch what's happening. And it was also well documented. And I just think there are these moments where it's just so clear. And there's a moment of moral clarity that President Biden spoke to in recent days, that it's just when these moments occur, they're just very

clarifying, they're very stark. And I think we're in one of those moments. And I think that's why the American public so far is so strongly supportive of the U.S. standing with Israel and why I don't think you'll see any gridlock in Washington over the U.S. providing assistance to Israel. And Israel also says, we need resources, we need arms, we need munitions, we need funding. We don't want your troops. We don't want Americans fighting this war. We will fight this war, the Israelis say. We do not want American blood expended on this war. Israel will fight this war. Back us up, but we'll do the fighting. So we end our episodes with a tip listeners can take straight to the bank. For this one, I'd love your advice. In my experience,

anyone who celebrates Israel's accomplishments gets hate. I've gotten hate. I imagine you've gotten a lot of hate. You've written now two books on Israel. How do you deal with it? I get a lot of hate hurled at me, but that doesn't worry me as much. I've grown up with a very strong Jewish identity. I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. It's all I know. But I do worry about my kids. I have a 14 and a 15-year-old, and I sometimes wonder, how will they react to the hate? And I think there's a sense, a tendency among many Jews, at least in the West, in the diaspora, that, what do I need all this Jewish stuff for? It's just a source of stress and noise and contention. And what I've been struck by for my children is they're very proud of their Jewish identity. They're totally engaged in their Jewish

life. And the key to it, I think, in dealing with the hate and deflecting the hate, which they do better, I'm just, watching them do it is to me the lesson is they lean into their Jewish life. They get so much joy and benefit and connection from the Jewish lives they lead and the Jewish community they're part of. And they go to a Jewish day school and they spend a lot of time in Israel. They lean into it. They're not doing it part time. They're not doing it on the side. It is so totally who they are. And once you make a life decision to lean into a way of life and an identity and a community, hate me all you want. Like I'm part of something that's bigger than your hate. I'm part of something that I'm proud of. I'm part of something

that is giving me joy. So in the face of that, I can handle your hate and smack it around a little bit and flick it off. And I watch my children. That's how they live. And so lean into Jewish life and lean into Jewish identity. And then in a way, you get the benefit and the joy of all that. And you can eclipse just some of the hate and negativity. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me and follow us on instagram at money news and tick tock at money news network for exclusive video content and lastly thank you no seriously thank you thank you for listening and for investing in yourself which is the most important investment you can make.