Want to be Happy, learn to carry out genocide from Israel! World Happiness Report 2025?

 World Happiness Report 2025 has continued its tradition to indicate how happy Israelis are as it has done for years ignoring the war crimes, acts against Humanity, and illegal, criminal occupation of Palestine by Israel. It is shocking that in World Happiness Report 2025 without any qualms Israel is stated to be one of top happiest countries in the world, right after Nordic countries. Seriously, is this a Joke on Humanity?

World Happiness Report 20235 is carried out by Well Being Research Centre at the University of Oxford in partnership with Gallup World Poll and United Nations Sustainable  Development Solutions. Given the stark contradiction in its conclusion with regard to reality it may be useful explore further into aspects or variables considered in the report to arrive at conclusion regarding the status of Happiness and Well Being for a Nation.

The list of variables considered in this research include: a) Life Ladder b) Positive Effect c) Negative Effect d) Log GDP per capita e) Social Support f) Healthy life expectancy at birth g) Freedom to make Life Choices h) Generosity i) Perception of Corruption. When considering contradiction with regard to certain variable and considering it together with the fact that Israel’s economy has been adversely affected because of over a yearlong assault, systematic slaughter of Palestinians it is unclear how Israel got such high scores.

a) Insensitive Research and Blatant Lies or Skewed Human Nature

The insensitive and blatant disregard for humanity is evident not just in the conclusion but the concept and research tools in this research inquiry into Israel. Let’s explore some of the specific variables:

Happiness Score of Subjective Well Being (this is considered as variable, Ladder, in this research study. Here the respondent is asked to self-grade from 1 to 10, for which the person is asked to imagine a ladder with ten steps and the individual has to consider on which step the person stands at the given moment with regard to the query “On which steps of the Ladder would you say you personally feel, stand at this time? Based on the response the person is given score 1 to ten, 1 being for the first step respectively and 10 is the highest positive score.

Israel scored high for this variable, what does it mean for humanity and global governance? Is one to assume as Israel committed war crimes, genocide or to be specific: as Israelis sniper shot children cradled in their parent’s arms; as Israelis bombed families while they were asleep at home; as Israelis instilled fear in hearts of Palestinians so much so that the parents wrote their children’s names on limbs for identification to prevent their children being unknown number in the list of individuals murdered; as Israelis tortured Palestinians who were stripped and made to sit in the open, in the cold and later threatened to be buried alive by bulldozer rolling menacingly towards the captured Palestinians; some were buried alive; as Israelis sexually assaulted, raped and tortured Palestinian men and women with sticks and gadgets from behind with some Israelis getting aroused by  the acts; as Israelis shut aid to ensure children were killed for want of medicines or had their limbs amputated without anesthesia; as Israeli turned Palestinian University, educational institutions, homes, businesses, mosques into rubble; as Israeli forces took selfies to express pride in their war crimes, torture, murder, maiming, rape, sexual assault; as Israelis destroyed water sources within Gaza and ensured Palestinians had to depend on contaminated water thereby sure to spread diseases; as Israeli forces burnt tents with the knowledge of extent of human suffering and destruction it would cause; as Israeli Prime Minister proudly went to US Congress to declare his genocidal achievement along with strong desire to continue the genocide and likeminded men and women in the US Congress kept giving standing ovation to the Israeli Prime Minister. While all these violence, inhuman acts were carried out, according  World Happiness Report 2025, Israelis considered themselves to be on stop of the Ladder and probable that is why songs praising Genocide were and are trending in Israel.

 It is possible as Israeli society doesn’t consider Palestinians even have right to life and Israelis do feel they are on the top of the world as they commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide. But how can research institutes, universities and research agencies, institutes like University of Oxford or research agency Gallop World Poll be so insensitive to the plight of Palestinians.

 Is it the new form of justice in United States and United Kingdom that educational institutes consider it imperative students who question Israeli genocide are put behind bars and those who support Israel are empowered to take the legacy of Genocide further on?

 b)     Positive Affect of a Genocide, War Crimes and Acts against Humanity.

 World Happiness Report 2025, has looked at the variable Positive Affect, this is scored based on average scores for responses to three queries; 1) Did you smile and laugh a lot, yesterday?

2) Did you experience the following feeling during a LOT OF THE DAY, yesterday? How about enjoyment? 

3) Did you learn to do something new yesterday?

These questions are scored high only when one is in a positive frame of mind, rationally something that does not jell with genocidal activity for human beings in general. But this does not apply for Israel for it scored high and came eighth in the list of ten top countries, it came right after Norway which scored 7.26 and Israel scored 7.23. The highest score was for Finland at 7.738.

If this report had been for any Muslim country and the victim of their assault was Israel, then the reporting would have been very different. The Western media would be having frequent breaking news, speaking about fiends, savages, blood thirsty Muslim population who are Happy as they carryon with genocide. But as it is Israel not a word about this contradiction, only silence. The West initially, even today other than United States some countries do support the genocide or state it is because of Hamas that genocide happened, ignoring the fact that Israel stole Palestinian land and continues to do so as it criminally occupies West Bank and hold Gaza under siege on and off. Why does the West expect Palestinians to love the Israeli Jews as they torture them and even question the right of Palestinian to Be? Why does the West insist Israel needs security from Palestinians when it is Palestinians who need security from the violent, lawless, land hungry and totally unscrupulous and genocidal Israel.

Beyond Israel:

Do find certain aspects about the report very thought provoking and seek to ask Why.

a) With regard to sample, the N value for Western Europe is 21,535 and for South Asia it is 8012

and 5491 for East Asia. Western Europe has 2.43 percent (199,723,053) of world population, South Asia has 2.04 billion or 25.33 percentage of the world population and East Asia the population stands 1.7 billion or 20.7 percentage of the world population. Which means for 46 percentage of entire global population (considering both South and East Asia) the study thought a sample of 13,503 is adequate to make comparison. There is another aspect to consider the lifestyle and standard of living in Western Europe may be similar within and across countries that is rarely the reality for South and East Asia, where there is lot of diversity and disparity within and across countries.

 b)     Number of meals shared in last week, just not sure how this works. For the number of members per household is below three for most countries in Western Europe and yet they all seem to share above eight meals per week. But countries in South Asia, where by tradition of joint families still exists, population is high and housing expensive, all of which results in sharing of houses and meals. Yet as World Happiness Report 2025 in South Asia people share only 4.1 meals per week and in East Asia it is 5.8.  In South Asia the members in a household in above 4 for most countries, except for Bhutan (2.9) and Sri Lanka (3.7), in case of India it is 4.4, Afghanistan it is 6.2, Pakistan 6.3, and Maldives 7.

 c)      How Social Connection improve Happiness of Young People, here the report looks at three dimensions of Social Connection, 1) Quantity which is Number of existing relationships an individual has. This ranges from complete social isolation (having no relationships) to being connected to many others. As per the study implication of this data, a large number of social relationships can provide access to a large pool of interactions, support and resources; 2) Quality which is actual or perceived support (e.g., emotional, social or financial) provided by relationships. Implication of this, quality social relationships can provide emotional satisfaction and perceived reliability of support. 3) Structure which is Structural makeup of one’s social networks. One example is density, or how interconnected members of one’s social network are with each other. Shapes the diversity, cohesions and accessibility of social resources available to an individual.

 What is confusing is the Figure 5.7 The relationship between social connection and subjective well being by country. Am confused as to how Hong Kong SAR of China which has a minus value for standardized regression coefficient for Quantity of Social Interaction but in case Quality of Social Interaction it is the top most country, how is that there was adequate number of interactions to make a comparison.

 Molly Charles

 

Reference:

1.      Al Jazeera.  Finland Takes top spot, US gets lowest-ever rank in World Happiness Report 2025.

              https://aje.io/vwleet

2.      World Happiness Report 2025

          https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2025/