The Cradle: " 'Loss of safety' fuels exodus of Israelis."
Well-off Israelis continue to leave the country over one year after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October
Thousands of people have emigrated from Israel to western countries since 7 October 2023, saying they do not feel safe after over a year of war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, The Independent reported on 20 December.
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 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.
The Israeli Ministry of Immigration and Absorption said more than 33,000 people have moved to Israel since the start of the war.
Jews from around the world are allowed to immigrate to Israel and receive automatic citizenship, while the children and grandchildren of Palestinians expelled by the Israeli army from their homes and made refugees in 1948 and 1967 are not allowed to return.
The UK newspaper stated that after 7 October, many well-off Israelis do not feel Israel is the world's safe haven for Jews, as Zionist ideology promises it should be.
Israeli singer Shira Z. Carmel says that 10 days after Hamas invaded Israeli settlements and military bases enforcing the siege on Gaza, she emigrated to Australia with her husband and toddler.
She told family and friends that the move was only temporary so she could deflect the social pressure to remain.
“We told them we're going to get out of the line of fire for a while,” Carmel said. “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.”
Sergio Della Pergola, a statistician and professor emeritus of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says it is possible the number of people who left Israel in 2024 will surpass the number of immigrants to Israel in the same year.
Gil Fire, deputy director of Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, said he has seen a trend of doctors leaving the country for good.
“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.’”
Many Israelis are able to move because they have foreign passports, jobs at multinational corporations, or can work remotely.
“Thousands of Israelis have opted to pay the financial, emotional, and social costs of moving out since the Oct. 7 attack,” The Independent wrote, despite the military measures Israel has taken in the past year under the pretext of restoring security.
Israeli bombs and ground troops have killed over 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority women and children, while flattening much of the enclave in what is widely viewed as genocide.
In Lebanon, Israeli bombing killed over 4,000 Lebanese and wiped out many villages along the border while heavily damaging major cities, including Nabatieh and Tyre (Sour).
Despite these measures, Jewish settlers have not returned to their homes in Israel's north after they were displaced at the start of the war due to fire from Hezbollah.
In October, a poll found that 70 percent of Israeli settlers who were evacuated from northern settlements near the Lebanese border have expressed an unwillingness to return to their homes.