There are two sorts of people in this world: those who make a big deal out of birthdays, and those who don’t.

If you’re in the former category, you look forward with anticipation each year to your birthday in the hope, or expectation, that friends and family will shower you with praise, parties and gifts. If you’re in the latter group, you likely see your birthday as just another day, in real terms no different, and certainly no more special, than any other 24-hour period of the year. Also, if you’re in the latter category, you are right: nothing actually changes on a birthday. Birthdays and anniversaries are for show – to realize this is to conclude that there’s really nothing special about them and no reason to celebrate.

But based on content in newspapers, magazines and TV, one must assume that the media is big on birthdays. For weeks now, everyone has been opining on Israel’s 60th birthday, mostly within the framework of questioning whether Israel can survive in either the short or long term.

All the media attention took me by surprise. It seems odd to me that everyone has suddenly decided to make such a fuss over Israel’s future.

In most cases, the commotion surrounds this hypothesis: Israel faces a greater threat to its continued existence now than at any time since 1948. The Iranians are going to get nukes, Hamas is the legitimately elected governing body in Gaza, rockets are tearing up houses and gardens in Sderot and the Israel Defence Forces is still reeling from the smackdown it received in Lebanon two summers ago.

Take a deep breath. If you unpack all that scary stuff, things don’t seem so bad, really. The Iranians don’t have any nuclear bombs yet, while Israel does. Plus, Israel has proved – twice now, in Iraq and more recently Syria – that it won’t tolerate another nuclear arsenal in the neighbourhood. Rest assured, also, that the Israelis will get much encouragement (read: military help from the United States) if Iran actually ever gets close to building the bomb.

As for Hamas, the Israeli government is actually playing this one quite well – slowly starving Gaza into some sort of submission, be it an internal revolt or ceasefire/peace talks.

True, Lebanon was a bust, but Israel didn’t lose, even if it didn’t win. It looked bad, but you’re going to lose every once in a while, and the IDF would appear to be in the process of making sure the mistakes in Lebanon are not repeated. Not winning in Lebanon was embarrassing, but it was also not a catastrophe.

And Sderot is Israel’s own fault. It pulled out of Gaza – on the false assumption that doing so would increase security – and it will, eventually, have to take the land back. Like the Lebanon war, Sderot is less an Arab victory than an Israeli blunder.

All told, the threats to Israel’s existence – both realized and existential – aren’t much different than they were five, 10 or 20 years ago. What’s more, the total threat to Israel probably isn’t going to change dramatically in the near future, and certainly not for the worse.

My best guess is that Israel will still be around 60 years from now. Follow the historical line from 1948 to 2008 and the trend for Israel is a healthy one. It has expanded, fought off radical, bloodthirsty enemies over and over again, and matured into the sort of state that exudes all the good (and some of the bad) that comes with being a western-style democracy.

Israel’s is a good story.

Are there threats to Israel’s existence? Sure. But there always have been, and there always will be. Sixty years later, that reality is one we should learn to accept – Israelis certainly have – and move on.

This birthday, when you think about, isn’t worth making a big deal over.