'Ideological Emigration': The Most Optimistic Israeli in Jerusalem Is Leaving the Country - Israel Political News
"That's it," Hagai Agmon-Snir wrote to me on WhatsApp last month. "On July 21, if there's no objection from the Houthis and the Iranians, we're flying one-way on an immigration visa."
Three days later, he sold his house in upscale Mevasseret Zion near Jerusalem. The house that he and his wife, Iris Meiri-Snir, bought in the city of Arona in northern Italy awaits. Meiri-Snir is the vice principal of one of Jerusalem's most prestigious high schools, but the couple have decided to join the wave of departures.
For me, Agmon-Snir, a brain researcher who abandoned a promising career to help found the Jerusalem Intercultural Center, always represented the city's optimistic camp, the people who believed that despite everything, something different could exist in Israel.
He helped initiate the talks between the LGBTQ and ultra-Orthodox communities to let the Pride parade happen in Jerusalem. He trained thousands of police officers in nonviolent methods in a city with a large Palestinian community. He spent dozens of nights in Zion Square to argue with youths from the far-right Lehava movement and prevent them from harassing Palestinians. And he assisted in hundreds of tolerance initiatives, including a project that taught tens of thousands of Israelis to speak Arabic.
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"The equation of hopelessness is composed of a lack of trust and an inability to change the situation," he told me in 2017 in an interview that concluded my Hebrew-language book on Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem between 1967 and 2017.
"This is the essence of the Middle East, whose result is 'let's get a European passport,' or if you're a slightly wealthier Palestinian, you're already abroad," he said. "We're trying to create the opposite – to show a woman from East Jerusalem that she pushes a door and the door opens, that she manages to change the situation with her neighbors."
Almost a decade later, Agmon-Snir sounds completely different. "I think the situation here is hopeless and we have to distance ourselves from this evil," he says. "If I could, I'd establish a movement for ideological emigration from Israel."
The couple know that the ability to leave is a privilege, but they call on others to do the same. They're departing with no intention of returning, but for them, their move is also part of the struggle for the country's future.
All lost
The disillusionment came well before October 7, 2023; it came the day after the general election the previous November. Agmon-Snir sat in front of his computer and checked the voting rates for the Religious Zionism party in the settlements.
"I call them the fascist party, because they meet all of Umberto Eco's criteria for fascism, one after another," he says. "In Efrat, the most left-wing settlement, 50 percent voted for a fascist party, every second resident. In Ofra, also a relatively enlightened settlement, it was 70 percent.
Hagai Agmon-Snir'I think the situation here is hopeless and we have to distance ourselves from this evil. If I could, I'd establish a movement for ideological emigration from Israel.'
"The religious community is very sick; there are good people there, but the community itself is sick. There are indications that this is also the situation among soldiers and young people – some say 30 percent, others say 70 percent."
For Agmon-Snir, the deterioration of the religious Zionist community into fascism was a sign that the cause was lost. "I once had a lot of hope for this community," he says. "I met good people there and hoped they'd become a hegemony that took responsibility, but greed took them over. They just can't stop. Greed, arrogance and complacency – that's what reflects this community – and Israel as a whole.
"We can't help but covet the next hilltop, convinced that if they just give us a chance, we'll conquer Lebanon and tie up the loose ends. And we're complacent, with a stupid smile on our faces. Still, I had some optimism. I told Iris, if there's one thing Bibi surely won't do, it's a narrow, completely right-wing government. It was clear to me that it couldn't happen."
The next stage in disengaging from the Zionist dream came a few days later, even before the far-right government was formed in December 2022.
"A relative of mine, a member of the Hadassah women's organization, said they met with somebody from the Foreign Ministry and he explained that everything would soon be resolved because of the Abraham Accords. The Saudis and the Emirates would 'soon get fed up with the Palestinians' and pressure them, and everything would be resolved."
"I told her: Let's think for a moment. Let's say the Palestinians give up, are ready tomorrow to sing 'Hatikva' with us on Memorial Day for the soldiers who killed them, and they no longer have national aspirations. What happens then?
Iris Meiri-Snir'I realized that you can't force citizens to want democracy. Many people say, "Of course we want democracy," but their interpretation of democracy doesn't apply to Arabs in Israel and certainly has nothing to do with the territories.'
"There are three solutions: one, a state of all its citizens, which no Israeli Jew would ever agree to. Second, two states for two peoples, but for 15 years now, between every two Palestinians there's a settler in a swimming pool. It's impossible today to establish a Palestinian state; that solution is dead.
"The third way is all the hybrid solutions: cantons or a nicer theory under which the Palestinians would be like Puerto Rico, or a federation where in the end everything converges into Indian reservations. The Palestinians would be able to decide the color of the signs on their stores and the kosher regulations for bulgur, but that's it.
"That's apartheid. I'm not claiming that the Palestinians are okay; they're not. But even if they were the best in the world, it wouldn't change the outcome."
A week after that conversation, Agmon-Snir developed severe night sweats. "I went to the doctor; she almost removed a gland, thinking it was related to hormones, but it was simply the realization that everything was lost," he says. "After a few weeks, it passed. I got used to this 'lost' feeling."
In May 2023, under the headline "What to Do When Everything Is Lost," Agmon-Snir published a series of Facebook posts analyzing Israel's social disintegration, the apartheid reality's dead end, the inevitable collapse. He also crafted two long posts of hope.
"In the Middle East, a miracle is a legitimate thing," he wrote, and provided two historical examples; the first was occupied France in the spring of 1941, months after the armistice agreement with Nazi Germany.
"It was clear to any sensible person that this wasn't going to change, that the European story would at best end in an armistice … in which France and large parts of Europe were part of the Nazi occupation for generations," he wrote.
"Fortunately, in June, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and found itself facing a new enemy. And fortunately, in December, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States joined the campaign against Nazi Germany and its partners within a few days."
The second example that Agmon-Snir cited was the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, a situation that had also seemed hopeless. "These descriptions are somewhat simplistic … but the message is clear: When dealing with complex and chaotic systems, our ability to predict is extremely limited, even when we think there is certainty in the course of history," he wrote.
Agmon-Snir'The religious community is very sick; there are good people there, but the community itself is sick. There are indications that this is also the situation among soldiers and young people.'
In the summer of 2023, businessman and peace activist Maoz Inon recommended Agmon-Snir's posts. "The bottom line: Power + Trust = Hope," he wrote. On October 7, Inon's parents were murdered at Moshav Netiv Ha'asara near Gaza, but unlike Agmon-Snir, he didn't lose hope. He stayed in the country, published a book with Palestinian journalist and social entrepreneur Aziz Abu Sarah, and maintained faith in the possibility of peace.
Agmon-Snir sees those posts differently today. "I set myself up," he says. "After all, what happened between 1941 and 1945 and between 1860 and 1866? Terrible bloodshed. And that was part of the miracle; there is no other solution. So, is the miracle that a nuclear bomb will fall here and only then everybody will say, 'We're friends'? I don't want to be here when that happens; I don't want anybody to be here when that happens."
In the summer of 2023, the couple began looking for a house in Italy; they had initially thought about waiting until retirement to leave. "When I told this to a neighbor, she asked: Do you really think it will last until then?" Meiri-Snir says.
"Three days before October 7, we were guests of religious people. They said, 'We have 25 grandchildren and you have two, so we win.' Yet they constantly tried to convince us to stay. October 7 made clear to us that we weren't moving fast enough." Less than two years later, the couple bought the house in Arona.
"I realized that you can't force citizens to want democracy," Meiri-Snir says. "Many people say, 'Of course we want democracy,' but their interpretation of democracy doesn't apply to Arabs in Israel and certainly has nothing to do with what we're doing in the territories.
"That is, they have no problem with things continuing as they are. I realized that if the majority here doesn't want democracy, I have one option: Either live in this thing that isn't really a democracy or say 'no thank you.'"
And what do you say to people who say that by leaving, you're weakening those who still want to fight?
"Of course it weakens them. All over the world there's a movement of democracy supporters who leave countries that are losing their democracy, and this greatly weakens those countries. Some tell me, 'Fight!' But I'm 61. If this place is put right, it will be a very, very long time from now, and I don't know if I'll live to see the fruit.
Agmon-Snir adds: "When people tell me, 'Stay to fight,' I don't ask, 'And what are you doing?' I'm polite, but they don't do much, they just say that sentence. Who does things? Those who provide a protective presence [for Palestinians] in the West Bank, lawyers at nonprofit organizations – they have the legitimacy to ask me."
'For 15 years now, between every two Palestinians there's a settler in a swimming pool. It's impossible today to establish a Palestinian state; that solution is dead.'
"I, unfortunately, won't do things like that because I'm not able to stand against this evil; it drains me to the point where I can't function. So once every week or two, I drive Palestinian patients from the checkpoint to the hospitals. I can also donate money for a protective presence from afar."
Meiri-Snir notes that the move to Italy also has costs. "I could have continued," she says. "I work at a magical place and could have worked there until retirement. I could have driven from the driveway at home to the parking lot at work and sealed myself off from reality.
"In Italy, I'll be a second-class citizen; I don't speak the language properly, I don't have the health insurance I have here, I don't have the connections. I'm paying for this move with the social privileges I have here."
Agmon-Snir adds: "That's the point. We could have done nothing; the judicial overhaul isn't relevant to me; I'm not gay ... and I don't do reserve duty. We could have managed perfectly well. This is ideological emigration. And you don't have to pity us; we're not refugees and we'll live well there. In Gaza and the West Bank there are refugees, and they're truly miserable."
But for him, life in Israel has become impossible. Carlo Ginzburg, the Italian historian who died last month, "spoke about how being a patriot means living with your country's guilt," Agmon-Snir says.
"Part of your identity is to be ashamed. I'm ashamed of Israel today because I'm Israeli. If I weren't Israeli, I wouldn't be ashamed. And I'm not going to stop being Israeli. I'm not anti-Zionist or post-Zionist, nor do I think Zionism was a mistake."
But he doesn't mince words about Gaza. "The denial of war crimes in Gaza is more severe in my eyes than Holocaust denial because the Holocaust has already happened," he says. "When I deny the Holocaust, I don't affect the Holocaust, but when I, in real time, provide moral backing to soldiers in Gaza by claiming that 'it's not happening,' I become a partner to war crimes."
A moral problem
Agmon-Snir, 65, was born in Jerusalem to a native-born Israeli mother and a father who immigrated from Lithuania before the Holocaust, during which dozens of his forbearers were murdered. He was an officer in Unit 8200, the elite intelligence unit, serving in places like Beirut and the nearby Chouf Mountains. He then studied biology and computer science, a rare combination in those days.
After his doctorate, he published an important study in the journal Nature on how the brain focuses on one conversation in a noisy room, and had begun the admission process to the Weizmann Institute of Science. But he quit – "I didn't have the passion to become a truly good researcher," he says.
He joined the Mandel School for Educational Leadership. For his final project, he and his partners founded the Jerusalem Intercultural Center, an institute that operates in the violent void between the capital's diverse communities. The center has made an enormous impact on the city.
"We realized that the point wasn't to hold dialogues," says Agmon-Snir, who ran the center for two decades. "Conversations between people are important, but it's more important to influence reality, so we started creating projects that influence reality in Jerusalem."
'The denial of war crimes in Gaza is more severe in my eyes than Holocaust denial because the Holocaust has already happened. When I deny the Holocaust, I don't affect the Holocaust.'
Alongside Mini Active, a group of Palestinian women striving to improve East Jerusalem's infrastructure and establish a center for East Jerusalem residents' rights, the Intercultural Center helped organize Jerusalem Day: Day of the Other, a riff on Israel's nationalist Jerusalem Day. This featured dozens of tolerance events, and Arabic Language Day took place on the city's light rail system.
Agmon-Snir also helped set up the first well-baby clinic in the Silwan neighborhood, worked at the East Jerusalem coronavirus headquarters, and developed a plan to deploy "humanitarian officers" to help civilians at the Qalandiyah checkpoint. In the vast majority of projects, the center didn't take the credit.
"We operate on a doula model," Agmon-Snir says. "We assist community work in Jerusalem; we don't give birth to it ourselves. We provide money, backing and publications, but it's not ours; our logo usually doesn't appear."
Over the years, the center has been criticized by left-wingers in Jerusalem, who argue that it focuses on tolerance and waste removal in East Jerusalem but doesn't address the occupation. Agmon-Snir stands behind his approach.
He says that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "abused the concept of conflict management, turning it into 'let's deceive the other side,' but originally it's an important concept that addresses conflicts that can't be resolved. The idea is that until we resolve them, we'll build trust, solve problems and lay the groundwork for the solution that will come later."
This approach culminated in Agmon-Snir's help with the initiative to speak with young people from Lehava, the racist organization founded by Kach activist Benzi Gopstein, whose members would come to Zion Square on Thursdays and Saturday nights to show a presence and intimidate Arab passersby. "Ostensibly, I gave them legitimacy by speaking with them, but Zion Square became a place where Arabs could move around a bit better," Agmon-Snir says.
The Intercultural Center also played a key role in mediating between the police and the ultra-Orthodox in the 2009 "starving mother affair," when a woman from the hard-line Toldot Aharon Hasidic sect, the power center of the overall community's most anti-Zionist stream, was arrested on suspicion of starving her infant son.
While the ultra-Orthodox community rioted throughout the city, Agmon-Snir and his partner in founding the center, Avner Haramati, arranged a meeting between the Jerusalem District police chief and members of the community at Haramati's home.
"In the middle of it, the district commander received a call that stones were being thrown on Route 1 [the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway] and he had to leave, so we all drove there and continued the discussion under the stones," Agmon-Snir says. "We managed to create a mechanism where the mother entered house arrest and the child was put with relatives in another city."
'Things can improve; it's possible that the judicial overhaul will largely be stopped after the election; people will get their privileges back. The problem is that morally, I don't see such a future.'
Agmon-Snir also organized a meeting between the LGBTQ community and ultra-Orthodox leaders in the city.
"Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Toldot Aharon told them, 'I'm not going to argue whether it's an innate tendency or not; that's irrelevant. You are there, that's you, I don't deny your existence. Your situation entails prohibitions, but I, as a straight person, also have prohibitions. God tests you more than me. What you do with it – that's your business,'" Agmon-Snir says.
"Then he pointed at me and said, 'Hagai drives on Shabbat; I don't know if he eats treif or not, and he's still my friend.' This warmed their hearts, but more importantly, it was for the ultra-Orthodox people in the room."
After long negotiations and one parade that marched in circles inside a stadium, the Jerusalem Pride parade became a tradition. Apart from a handful of far-right protesters, the ultra-Orthodox community is completely indifferent to it.
One of the most important projects for Agmon-Snir was his work with the police. At the peak of the cooperation, he led the center's instructors in courses for the force.
In 2021, he published an article in Haaretz on the danger of the public losing trust in the policeand the police's abandonment of soft-power methods, making the force an overgrown version of the Border Police: What wouldn't work with force would be met with more force.
Then-Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai invited Agmon-Snir to a long meeting, but things only changed for the worse. In an article in June 2023, Agmon-Snir wrote: "A collapsing and untrusted police force is a surefire recipe for societal collapse."
Boxed out
At the couple's home in Mevasseret Zion, the floor and table are covered with boxes. The books are off the shelves and Hagai and Iris will sell or throw away most of their things. "I wanted to die in this house," Agmon-Snir says.
Meiri-Snir adds: "People ask us, 'What will you do there?' – and the truth is, I have no idea, and it's scary. All my life I knew I wouldn't have anything to do in retirement, because the thing I love most is my work. And another question is, 'What will you do about health?'"
At least regarding the first question, Agmon-Snir has an answer: In recent years, he has taken up drone photography; his pictures make it into Wikipedia. "I have at least a year of documenting the surrounding villages," he smiles.
Regarding health, he says it's clear that you can't compete with being 20 minutes from Hadassah, 20 minutes from Shaare Zedek and half an hour from Sheba – three medical centers. Then there are the "doctors and connections I know how to leverage in my own language. The healthcare system in Italy is pretty good but not to these standards. On the other hand, if I stay in Israel, the hospitals will save me from a heart attack in two years. In Italy, I'll die in five years without a heart attack."
Returning is currently not an option, even if the outlook isn't totally grim. "I have granddaughters here; my inclination is that Israel won't be destroyed," Agmon-Snir says.
"Things can improve; it's possible that the judicial overhaul will largely be stopped after the [October 27 general] election; people will get their privileges back. The problem is that morally, I don't see such a future. In my scientific understanding, which deals with complexity and chaos, I know that changes can happen.
"Maybe if there's crazy pressure from around the world, with economic and cultural damage, and with people outside who are free to say things that will soon be difficult to say inside, it will affect the system. I think that if I don't stay silent outside, I'll be contributing to this possibility at least as much as the people inside."