Some things never make the news. Not because they aren’t important, but because they don’t fit the usual narratives. They don’t generate enough outrage, or maybe they’re just too simple to be interesting.
Like this: My favorite soccer team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, and Maccabi Bnei Reineh, an Arab club from a small town in northern Israel, decided to honor the memory of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz at their upcoming match. Players from both teams will wear black armbands. That’s it. Nothing dramatic, nothing controversial. Just a quiet, human decision.
No one forced them. No one pressured them. It’s just two teams, from different backgrounds, choosing to do the right thing.
And yet, I know most people outside of Israel will never hear about this. It won’t make international headlines. It doesn’t fit into the usual “us vs. them” storyline. But for me, it’s something worth noticing.
Because in Israel, everything is political. Every action is analyzed through layers of history, identity, and conflict. A gesture like this could have been complicated. It could have led to criticism. But it didn’t. It was simple. Because sometimes, people just choose to be human.
And that reminds me of the U.S.
From the outside, it often seems like America is divided over everything— politics, culture, even what kind of coffee is acceptable to drink. The news thrives on showing a country at war with itself. But having spent time there, I see something else too. I see how much Americans still share.
Sports, traditions, culture — these things still bring people together, even when the headlines suggest otherwise.
Once a week, I work from a public workspace in a city where two of the hostages were from. For months, there were two yellow chairs left empty as a quiet reminder. One of them, Agam Berger, made it back. And now, instead of two empty chairs, there’s only one. A small but powerful shift — one life returned, one absence that remains. A reminder that even in the darkest times, there is still hope.
In Israel, we argue, we fight, we disagree — but when something really matters, most of us still share the same heart. I think the same is true for the U.S.
Maybe that’s what really holds societies together. Not the things we fight about, but the things we quietly, instinctively agree on. Even when no one is watching.
Yair Nativ is the CEO of Mind Guard, “The First Line of Defense for Your Mind.”