That’s the yiddisha Neshama coming through. Even Lapid put on T’fillin during the war in Gaza.
In general, it’s hard to pigeonhole Israelis by look or dress. My daughter witnessed a Chiloni woman who went to the hospital to visit a mother whose son was in a very bad car accident. When asking what she can do, the mother said to just say Tehillim. This Chiloni woman, dressed in shorts and a sleeveless shirt, took out a Sefer Tehillim from her purse and said the entire sefer cover to cover. How many of her equivalent level people in the U.S. or anywhere else would even know what a Tehillim is, let alone carrying one?
I was in a taxi in Yerushalayim and the driver asked how I was doing, after finding out that I was a new Oleh at the time. I answered B”H and he got happily excited that I answered that way. He was also Chiloni. It shows, don’t judge a book by its cover.