‘Tsunami’ of emigration reshapes Israel’s future, experts warn

An increasing number of Israelis are leaving the country ahead of critical elections later this year, reversing a trend that has sustained Israel for decades.

A study by the Israeli tax authority published earlier this month builds on a series of reports suggesting that as the Israeli government grows more hardline and right-wing, more typically highly-educated and wealthier Israelis are fleeing a country many claim to no longer recognise.

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The study found that emigration was not only higher in 2023 and 2024 than in previous years, but that those who had left were from higher tax brackets.

Many Israelis who self-identify as liberal believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has made the country less secular and weakened the independence of its institutions, particularly the judiciary.

The government’s efforts to weaken judicial oversight in 2023 brought tens of thousands of Israelis to the streets to protest what they saw as an attempt to fundamentally alter the nature of their country.

Misgivings over the character of the government among Israel’s educated elite were exacerbated by the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, and the response to it, which saw Israel embark on a genocide in Gaza – killing more than 73,000 Palestinians – and war on multiple fronts across the region. While many Israelis may not be opposed to those wars in principle, the open-ended nature of them, and the government’s inability to achieve the victories it has claimed it would, has left many feeling trapped in a cycle of continuous conflict.

An August survey by Tel Aviv University was another to find that the scale of emigration from Israel was increasing, with the bulk of those leaving being among the better educated and more prosperous.

Nearly 270,000 Israelis have left the country over the past three years, the Tel Aviv University study found, drawing on Central Bureau of Statistics data. More than 86,500 Israelis left in 2023, followed by about 91,500 in 2024 and a similar number in 2025.

Israel is facing a “tsunami” of emigration, the opposition’s Gilad Kariv, the chair of the Israeli parliament’s Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee, warned, which the government was doing nothing to address.

Stigma

Analysts and observers have often described the sense of stigma that accompanies those who leave Israel, as many Israelis, especially those leaning to the right, instinctively assume that immigration to Israel is the natural urge of Jews worldwide.

In the 1970s, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin described Israelis who left the country as “a cascade of wimps”, a term picked up by others across all spheres of Israeli politics. Even the terminology of migration carries a clear value judgement: Aliyah, the Hebrew term for Jewish immigration to Israel, means “ascent”, while emigrants have traditionally been known as yordim – “those who descend”.

Israel’s migration balance has tipped into the red before, but only briefly and often in response to short-term financial crises, the Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio Della Pergola said. Other countries, such as Ireland and New Zealand, often also experienced higher outward migration than inward; but for Israel to experience such a high outward flow over a sustained period was alarming, he added.

“This time, it’s not clear what role the economy is playing,” Della Pergola told Al Jazeera. “Some may be leaving to pursue individual career opportunities, but overwhelmingly, we’re seeing people leave from what they regard as a persistent sense of uncertainty over their security and concerns over the country’s political direction.”

Della Pergola said that the prominence of figures regarded as “extremists” had deepened Israel’s political polarisation. He cited National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who recently called for killing 30-40 Palestinians in Gaza each night, as one example. But he argued that such figures were ultimately instruments of Netanyahu’s political strategy rather than independent forces.

“Make no mistake, these are all players in an orchestra conducted by Netanyahu,” he said.

Economically vital

Retaining young, educated and liberal people is vital to sustaining the growth that young economies, such as Israel, depend on, Michael Ben-Gad, a professor at City St George’s, University of London, said. Ben-Gad referenced concerns voiced decades ago by other economists, such as Dan Ben-David, who warned that Israel’s economic, and therefore political, future was reliant upon its ability to innovate and develop.

Yet, as demand for skills in innovation and development has reached unprecedented levels, the Israelis best equipped to provide them are disproportionately represented among those leaving the country, according to a qualitative study by Lilach Lev Ari, an immigration and demography professor at Oranim College in northern Israel.

“The profile is becoming much more defined, particularly among those who immigrate to the United States,” Lev Ari said of the recent wave of emigres, compared with those studied in her earlier quantitative research on Israeli emigration. “Increasingly, it’s highly educated, high-achieving young families leaving the country – partly, many say, as a consequence of the judicial reforms, the socio-political atmosphere, and the war.”

“We’re losing some competent people, but we still have good people here,” Lev Ari said, stressing that there was no need to panic. “But it’s a rising emigration wave that’s been going on for almost three years now, and it’s one we should be alarmed about.”

Political economist Shir Hever agreed that mass migration from Israel was a “gigantic story”, but said that many in Israel were looking at it from the wrong perspective.

He argued that much of the debate has focused on the departure of high-earning, high-profile professionals, such as doctors, while paying too little attention to nurses and other essential staff whose loss could be equally damaging.

The emphasis placed on development and technology, he added, also revealed something more fundamental about the nature of the Israeli state.

“Israeli economists like to say that the survival of the Israeli state is dependent on it retaining its edge in research and development, but why? Why is that the case if it’s not true for other states, such as Romania?” he said.

“Maybe it’s only true because Israel needs that edge, because it’s ultimately a colonising project.”

Reporting originally appeared via Al Jazeera. Read the full source for additional context.