Leaving Israel is easier, Shira Z. Carmel thinks, saying it’s only for now. But she knows better.
For the Israeli-born singer and an increasing number of relatively affluent Israelis, the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack every sense of security shattered and with it Israel’s promise to be the world’s safe haven for Jews. That day, thousands of Hamas militants blew past the country’s border defenses, killing 1,200 Israelis and dragging another 250 into Gaza in a siege that surprised the Israeli army and stunned a nation that prides itself on its military prowess. This time, during what became known as Israel’s 9/11, the military did not arrive 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 passed the statement off to friends and family as something other than permanent — “relocation” is the easier term to swallow — well aware of the familial tension and shame that has shadowed Israelis leaving for good.
“We told them we’re going to stay out of the line of fire for a while,” Carmel said over a year later from her family’s new home in Melbourne. “It wasn’t a difficult decision. But it was very difficult to talk to them about it. It was even difficult to admit it to ourselves.”
Thousands of Israelis have left the country since October 7, 2023, according to government statistics and immigration figures released by destination countries such as Canada and Germany. There are concerns about whether this will cause a ‘brain drain’ in sectors such as medicine and technology. Migration experts say it is possible that the number of immigrants leaving Israel will exceed the number of immigrants to Israel by 2024, said Sergio DellaPergola, a statistician and professor emeritus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Thousands of Israelis have opted to pay the financial, emotional and social costs of moving 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 population continues to grow to 10 million people. But it is possible that 2024 will end with more Israelis leaving the country than entering. That is even as Israel and Hezbollah reached a fragile situation. ceasefire along the border with Lebanon and Israel and Hamas are slowly moving towards a break in Gaza.
Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics estimated in September that 40,600 Israelis left long-term in the first seven months of 2024, a 59% increase from the same period a year earlier, when 25,500 people left. 2,200 more people left every month this year than in 2023, the agency reports.
Israel’s Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, which does not deal with departing people, said more than 33,000 people have moved to Israel since the start of the war, about the same number as in previous years. The interior minister declined to comment for this story, a spokesperson said.
Other indications also point to a notable departure of Israelis since the October 7 attacks. Gil Fire, deputy director of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, said some of its top specialists with a few years’ fellowship postings in other countries were starting to have second thoughts about returning.
“Before the war, they always came back and it wasn’t really considered an option to stay. And during the war we started to see a change,” he said. “They told us, ‘We’ll stay another year, maybe two years, maybe longer.'”
Fire says it is “of concern” enough for him to schedule personal visits with these doctors in an effort to lure them back to Israel.
Michal Harel, who moved to Toronto with her husband in 2019, said almost immediately after the attacks the phone started ringing — as other Israelis sought advice about moving to Canada. On November 23, 2023, the couple set up a website to help Israelis navigate their move, which could cost at least 100,000 Israeli shekels, or about $28,000, Harel and other Israeli moving experts said.
Not everyone in Israel can just pack up and move abroad. Many of those who have made the move have foreign passports, jobs at multinationals or can work remotely. People in Gaza, where local health officials say more than 45,000 people have been killed, have even fewer choices. Harel reported that the site received 100,000 unique visitors and 5,000 direct contacts in 2024 alone.
Aliyah – the Hebrew term for immigration, literally the “ascension” of Jews to Israel – has always been part of the country’s plan. But ‘yerida’ – the term used for leaving the country, literally the ‘descent’ of Israel’s Jews into the diaspora, is emphatically not the case.
A sacred trust and social contract took root in Israeli society. The conditions were – or were – as follows: Israeli citizens would serve in the army and pay high taxes. In return, the military would keep them safe. In the meantime, it is the duty of every Jew to stay, work and fight for Israel’s survival.
“Emigration was a threat, especially in the early years (when) there were nation-building problems,” said Ori Yehudai, professor of Israel studies at Ohio State University and author of “Leaving Zion,” a history of Israeli emigration. . “People still feel like they have to justify their decision to move.”
Shira Carmel says she has no doubts about her decision. She had long objected to Netanyahu’s government’s attempts to overhaul the justice system, and was one of the first women to wear the blood-red “Handmaid’s Tale” robes that became a fixture of the 2023 anti-government protests She was terrified as a new mother, and as a pregnant woman, during the Hamas attack. This wasn’t the life she wanted.
Meanwhile, Australia beckoned. Carmel’s brother had lived there for twenty years. The couple had the equivalent of a green card due to Carmel’s husband’s profession. Basic logic, she says, pointed to movement. They could take a free flight seven hours in advance.
And yet Carmel remembers the frenzied hours before the flight when, in the privacy of their bedroom, she said to her husband, “My God, are we really doing this?”
They decided not to decide. They were lightly packed. But weeks in Australia turned into months and the couple decided to have the baby there. They told their families in Israel that they were staying “for now.”
“We don’t define it as ‘forever,’” Carmel said Tuesday. “But we will definitely stay for the foreseeable future.”
