Our suburban Tel Aviv apartment building has 24 units. The residents are an amazing mix of immigrants from the United States, France, Britain, Argentina and even Cuba and Iran and native-born Israelis. The building is a real microcosm of Jewish Israeli society. But it\u2019s also a microcosm in another more troubling way.<\/p>\n
Since the current far-right government took office, and particularly since the outbreak of the war in 2023, increasing numbers of Israelis have been moving abroad \u2013 including people from my apartment building. Some of the Israelis leaving aren\u2019t picking destinations where they would likely stay permanently and where they would foresee their children and grandchildren growing up \u2013 places such as Thailand and Greece \u2013 but others are moving to the United States, where that might be more likely.<\/p>\n
In my building, a family precisely of the kind that had the most to contribute to Israeli society told us about a year ago that they were moving to Silicon Valley in California, to which the husband had gotten a transfer after working at the same high-tech company\u2019s offices in Israel. They said the move was open-ended in duration. Then last month, we learned that another young family was leaving the building \u2013 for Dallas.<\/p>\n
There has been an upsurge in emigration since January 2023, when the current government announced its intention to gut the independence of Israel\u2019s courts. The trend persisted after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas\u2019 massacre set off the war.<\/p>\n
The real question is whether we\u2019re witnessing a permanent exodus of some of Israel\u2019s best and brightest or whether they will return relatively soon. I think it depends on what has motivated them to go. The election of a more moderate government on Oct. 27 should go a long way toward luring many back.<\/p>\n
The irony is that, during that same period, there has been a major wave of immigration of Jews to Israel. In my building, the family that moved to California was replaced by a family in which the wife was French-born who grew up in England. And just as the Dallas-bound family left, new immigrants from South Africa moved into the building.<\/p>\n
A new study by researchers from Tel Aviv University found that in 2020, 24,400 Israelis left the country for at least a year. The figure rose to nearly 50,000 in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2025, we continue to see very troubling numbers of Israelis leaving the country for a significant period of time, adding to the 2023-24 wave of emigration,\u201d professor Itai Ater, one of the study\u2019s authors, said. \u201cTaken by themselves, these figures do not yet pose a risk to Israel\u2019s resilience. However, looking ahead \u2013 and unless there is a change \u2013 there is growing concern that rising emigration from Israel might jeopardize the country\u2019s future security and economy,\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in an age of migration,\u201d professor Alex Weinreb of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel told Israel\u2019s Globes business daily, a trend, he said, that has become apparent in other Western countries including the United States. But emigration from Israel is in total contradiction to the aliyah ethos around which Israel was built.<\/p>\n
The lyrics of a 100-year-old Zionist pioneering song reflected that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve come to the country to build and to be built in it\u201d \u2013 the idea that immigration not only helps build the Jewish homeland but also benefits the immigrants \u2013 creating a new Jewish society.<\/p>\n
The next Israeli government needs to make it a top priority to encourage those who have left to come back \u2013 and to sustain and increase the current wave of aliyah.<\/p>\n
Cliff Savren is a former Clevelander who covers the Middle East from Ra\u2019anana, Israel. He is an editor at the English edition of Haaretz.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our suburban Tel Aviv apartment building has 24 units. The residents are an amazing mix of immigrants from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[5859,28567,2492,48807,1660,41,19736,16159,16153,28566,996,16152,461,68716,28573,38,14150,16158,28570,51806,1655,16707,2254,5656,1665,1741,1658,35074,16147,1411,16145,16149,100,28574,16150,1680,29169,1743,34,218,1656,1651,13089,37,1653,10796,51807,16146,1659,2421,1189,28569,28568,28572,68717,502,16151,499,28571,1650,15960,30339,16156,16157,11104,16705,16155,49,1652,2928,498,13087,2253,10258,28565,81,1740,1654,9572,10801,1671,15984,13146,1657,501,51808,15959,10804,11080,16154,16148,36,3909,65048,6393],"class_list":["post-247095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-aliyah","tag-anti-judaism","tag-antisemitism","tag-apartment","tag-arab-israeli-conflict","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-bnei-brak","tag-book-of-esther","tag-branches-of-linguistics","tag-bundism","tag-conflicts","tag-cultural-assimilation","tag-culture","tag-demographics-of-israel","tag-doikayt","tag-donald-trump","tag-election","tag-eliezer-ben-yehuda","tag-ethnoreligious-groups","tag-flag-of-palestine","tag-foreign-relations-of-israel","tag-gadi-eisenkot","tag-gaza-strip","tag-gaza-war","tag-gaza-israel-conflict","tag-government-of-iran","tag-government-of-israel","tag-haaretz","tag-hadassah-medical-center","tag-hamas","tag-haredi-judaism","tag-hebrew-language","tag-hezbollah","tag-history-of-israel-1948-present","tag-human-communication","tag-immigration","tag-immigration-to-israel","tag-international-relations","tag-iran","tag-iran-israel-war","tag-iran-israel-military-relations","tag-iran-israel-proxy-conflict","tag-islam-and-judaism","tag-israel","tag-israel-related-controversies","tag-israel-palestine-relations","tag-israeli-citizenship-law","tag-israeli-system-of-government","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-israelis","tag-jerusalem","tag-jewish-groups","tag-jewish-movements","tag-jewish-nationalism","tag-jewish-polities","tag-jews","tag-jews-and-judaism","tag-judaism","tag-judaism-and-politics","tag-judaism-and-warfare","tag-judaism-related-controversies","tag-kippah","tag-language","tag-languages","tag-levant","tag-likud","tag-linguistics","tag-middle-east","tag-military-of-israel","tag-missile","tag-palestine","tag-palestine-region","tag-palestinians","tag-passover","tag-passover-seder","tag-politics","tag-politics-of-iran","tag-politics-of-israel","tag-politics-of-palestine","tag-politics-of-palestine-region","tag-politics-of-the-arab-world","tag-politics-of-the-arab-israeli-conflict","tag-politics-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-politics-of-the-middle-east","tag-purim","tag-refusenik","tag-society-of-israel","tag-society-of-palestine","tag-society-of-west-asia","tag-sociolinguistics","tag-supreme-court-of-israel","tag-war","tag-west-asia","tag-yeshiva","tag-zionism"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}