On the eve of its 78th Independence Day, Israel is not just surviving, it’s surging. The Central Bureau of Statistics put the country’s population at 10.244 million, up roughly 146,000 people, or 1.4 percent, over the past year. Born out of war, tested by war, and still absorbing the shock of October 7 and the campaigns that followed, the Jewish state enters Yom Ha’atzmaut more populous, more prosperous and, by its own citizens’ accounting, happier than most of the Western world.

The demographic snapshot tells a story no adversary wants to hear. Jews and those classified as “others” make up 7.79 million residents, about 76 percent of the population. Arab citizens number 2.157 million, and roughly 296,000 are foreign nationals. Some 177,000 babies were born in the past year, a figure that dwarfs the birth rates of virtually every comparable developed economy, alongside around 21,000 new olim and 48,000 deaths. Four in five citizens are Israeli-born sabras. More than a quarter of the country is 14 or younger; only 13 percent are over 65. In an aging West, Israel is conspicuously young.

The contrast with 1948 is almost hard to process. The state was founded with 806,000 residents. It has since grown more than twelvefold, and today close to 45 percent of the world’s Jews live inside its borders, a reversal of nearly two millennia of exile that no planner in Ben-Gurion’s era would have dared predict. Life expectancy has climbed by nearly two decades since independence, now sitting at 81.1 years for men and 85.5 for women. Average wages have jumped from roughly 2,300 shekels a month in the 1990s to just under 14,000 today. Car ownership, that crude but telling marker of middle-class arrival, has climbed from 3 percent of households in 1959 to about 72 percent now.

Despite the hostage crisis, the rocket fire, the war with Iran, and the drumbeat of international hostility, Israelis overwhelmingly say they’re doing fine. Ninety-one percent report being satisfied or very satisfied with their lives. Eighty-three percent rate their health as good or very good. Ninety-six percent are satisfied with their family relationships. The United Nations’ World Happiness Report ranks Israel eighth in the world for 2026, ahead of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and nearly every European country that spent the past two years lecturing Jerusalem. The figures include war casualties, which makes the numbers less a boast than a statement of something deeper, a society that has absorbed extraordinary pressure and, rather than fracturing, is still building.

Enemies from Tehran to Gaza have for decades bet on an Israel that would shrink, tire, or demographically give way. The opposite is happening. A young, high-fertility, economically rising population is the single most durable answer the Jewish state can offer to those who still wish it gone. As the torches are lit on Mount Herzl and the flyovers streak across the coast, the 10.244 million number is more than a statistic. It is a verdict.