Why Are Thousands of Jews Leaving Israel?

Leaving Israel is easier, Shira Z. Carmel thinks, by saying it's just for now. But she knows better.

For the Israeli-born singer and an increasing number of relatively well-off Israelis, the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack shattered any sense of safety and along with it, Israel's founding promise: to be the world's safe haven for Jews. That day, thousands of Hamas militants blew past the country's border defences, killed 1,200 people and dragged 250 more into Gaza in a siege that caught the Israeli army by surprise and stunned a nation that prides itself on military prowess. This time, during what became known as Israel's 9/11, the army didn't come for hours.

Ten days later, a pregnant Carmel, her husband and their toddler boarded a flight to Australia, which was looking for people in her husband's profession. And they spun the explanation to friends and family as something other than permanent — “relocation" is the easier-to-swallow term — acutely aware of the familial strain and the shame that have shadowed Israelis who leave for good.

“We told them we're going to get out of the line of fire for a while,” Carmel said more than a year later from her family's new home in Melbourne. “It wasn't a hard decision. But it was very hard to talk to them about it. It was even hard to admit it to ourselves."

Thousands of Israelis have left the country since October 7, 2023, according to government statistics and immigration tallies released by destination countries such as Canada and Germany. There's concern about whether it will drive a “brain drain” in sectors like medicine and tech. Migration experts say it's possible people leaving Israel will surpass the number of immigrants to Israel in 2024, according to Sergio DellaPergola, a statistician and professor emeritus of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

“In my view, this year people entering will be smaller than the total of the exit," he said. “And this is quite unique in the existence of the State of Israel.”

Early information points to a surge of Israelis leaving

The October 7 effect on Israeli emigration is enough for prominent Israelis to acknowledge the phenomenon publicly — and warn of rising antisemitism elsewhere.

“There is one thing that worries me in particular: talks about leaving the country. This must not happen,” former premier Naftali Bennett, a staunch critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted in June after a conversation with friends who were leaving. Israel, he wrote, needs to retain the talent. “Who wants to return to the days of the wandering Jew, without real freedom, without a state, subject to every anti-Semitic whim?”

Thousands of Israelis have opted to pay the financial, emotional and social costs of moving out since the Oct. 7 attack, according to government statistics and families who spoke to The Associated Press in recent months after emigrating to Canada, Spain and Australia. Israel's overall population continues to grow toward 10 million people.

But it's possible that 2024 ends with more Israelis leaving the country than coming in. That's even as Israel and Hezbollah reached a fragile ceasefire along the border with Lebanon and Israel and Hamas inch toward a pause in Gaza.

Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics estimated in September that 40,600 Israelis departed long-term over the first seven months of 2024, a 59 per cent increase over the same period a year earlier, when 25,500 people left. Monthly, 2,200 more people departed this year than in 2023, CBS reported.

The Israeli Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, which does not deal with people leaving, said more than 33,000 people have moved to Israel since the start of the war, about on par with previous years. The interior minister refused to comment for this story.

The numbers are equally dramatic in destination countries. More than 18,000 Israelis applied for German citizenship in 2024, more than double the same period in 2023 and three times that of the year before, the Interior Ministry reported in September.

Canada, which has a three-year work visa program for Israelis and Palestinians fleeing the war, received 5,759 applications for work permits from Israeli citizens between January and October this year, the government told The Associated Press. In 2023, that number was 1,616 applications, and a year earlier the tally was 1,176 applications, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

They want to wake up in the morning and enjoy life

Other clues, too, point to a notable departure of Israelis since the October 7 attacks. Gil Fire, deputy director of Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, said that some of its star specialists with fellowship postings of a few years in other countries began to waver about returning.

“Before the war, they always came back and it was not really considered an option to stay. And during the war we started to see a change,” he said. “They said to us, We will stay another year, maybe two years, maybe more.'”

Fire says it's “an issue of concern” enough for him to plan in-person visits with these doctors in the coming months to try to draw them back to Israel.

Michal Harel, who moved with her husband to Toronto in 2019, said that almost immediately after the attacks the phone began ringing — with other Israelis seeking advice about moving to Canada. On Nov. 23, 2023, the couple set up a website to help Israelis navigate moving, which can cost at least 100,000 Israeli shekels, or about $28,000, Harel and other Israeli relocation experts said.

Not everyone in Israel can just pack up and move overseas. Many of those who have made the move have foreign passports, jobs at multinational corporations or can work remotely. People in Gaza have even less choice. The vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced by relentless Israeli bombing since Oct. 7, 2023, yet no one has been able to leave the enclave since May. Before then, at least 100,000 Palestinians are believed to have left Gaza.

Health officials in Gaza say Israeli bombing has killed more than 45,000 people.

Speaking by phone last month, Harel reported that the site has received views from 100,000 unique visitors and 5,000 direct contacts in 2024 alone.

“It's people who want to move quickly with families, to wake up in the morning and enjoy life,” she said. “Right now (in Israel), it's trauma, trauma, trauma.”

“Some of them,” Harel added, "they want to keep everything a secret.”

Leaving Zion, a threat to Israel and a shame?

Aliya — the Hebrew term for used for immigration, literally the “ascent” of Jews into Israel — has always been part of the country's plan. But “yerida” — the term used for leaving the country, literally the “descent” of Jews from Israel to the diaspora, emphatically has not.

For Israel's first decades of independence, the government strongly discouraged departing Israelis, who were seen in some cases as cowardly and even treasonous. A sacred trust and a social contract took root in Israeli society. The terms go — or went — like this: Israeli citizens would serve in the military and pay high taxes. In exchange, the army would keep them safe. Meanwhile, it's every Jew's obligation to stay, work and fight for Israel's survival.

“Emigration was a threat, especially in the early years (when) there were problems of nation-building. In later decades, Israel became more established and more self-confident,” said Ori Yehudai, a professor of Israel studies at Ohio State University and the author of “Leaving Zion,” a history of Israeli emigration. The sense of shame is more of a social dynamic now, he said, but “people still feel they have to justify their decision to move.”

Shira Carmel says she has no doubt about her decision. She'd long objected to Netanyahu's government's efforts to overhaul the legal system, and was one of the first women to don the blood-red "Handmaid's Tale" robes that became a fixture of the anti-government protests of 2023. She was terrified as a new mom, and a pregnant one, during the Hamas attack, and appalled at having to tell her toddler that they were gathering in the bomb shelter for “hugging parties" with the neighbors. This was not the life she wanted.

Meanwhile, Australia beckoned. Carmel's brother had lived there for two decades. The couple had the equivalent of a green card due to Carmel's husband's profession. In the days after the attack, Carmel's brother alerted her to the possibility of a flight out of Israel for free, if on very short notice, which she confirmed with the Australian embassy in Israel. Basic logic, she says, pointed toward moving.

And yet.

Carmel recalls the frenzied hours before the flight out in which she said to her husband in the privacy of their bedroom: “My God, are we really doing this?”

They decided not to decide, opting instead for: “We're just getting on a plane for now, being grateful.” They packed lightly.

On the ground half a world away, weeks became months. And they decided: “I'm not going to go back to try to give birth in the war.” In December, they told their families back in Israel that they were staying “for now.”

“We don't define it as forever,'" Carmel said Tuesday. “But we are for sure staying for the foreseeable future.”

-AP