The State of Israel is a country made up overwhelmingly of immigrants, and Jewish immigration to Israel, or aliyah, remains a central tenet of Zionism. And while aliyah has continued through the past two years of war, during this time — and in the months preceding it — Israel has become a state of emigration, with more people leaving the country than moving to it, according to fresh data released today by the Knesset’s Research and Information Center.

The center found that emigration rates surged in 2022, up 44% from the previous year, jumped again by 39% in 2023 — particularly in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks — and remained at this elevated rate in the first eight months of 2024 (the last months for which data were available). The growing number of Israelis leaving the country for extended periods is also compounded by a shrinking number of Israelis living abroad returning to Israel. From January 2022 to August 2024, roughly 125,000 more people left the country than arrived, according to the survey.

The statistics were published ahead of a discussion on the topic this morning in the parliament’s Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, led by Labor MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv.

Immigration has played a critical role in Israel’s development. It began with the rapid influx of post-Holocaust European Jewish refugees and of Jews expelled from and pushed to emigrate from Arab countries, which provided the critical manpower needed by the nascent state. In the early 1990s, the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands Jews from the former Soviet Union, including thousands of doctors, nurses, engineers and other scientists, who have been central to the development of the country’s modern economy. Immigration also serves as a seal of approval, concrete proof that the country is attractive and inviting. 

“Tens of thousands of Israelis have chosen to leave Israel in the past two years. This is not a ‘wave’ of emigration but rather a ‘tsunami’ of Israelis opting to leave the country,” Kariv said, promising to have his committee continue to track the matter.

The issue of emigration has become a highly politicized issue within Israel, serving as something of a Rorschach test. To those more critical of the government, those tens of thousands of people leaving the country are proof that the current leadership is making the country unlivable, while to supporters of the government, the criticism is directed primarily at the people leaving (most of whom appear to be more secular and therefore less likely to support the coalition). Many of the people leaving the country appear to have been part of the wave of immigration from Russia and Ukraine in the wake of Moscow’s war against Kyiv and its domestic crackdowns. This too is in the eye of the beholder, with some using this as a reason to restrict immigration and prevent people from receiving Israeli citizenship “just in case,” while others see the phenomenon as a failure of the government to sufficiently integrate these recent arrivals into Israeli society.

The committee hearing highlighted a dearth of information about those émigrés — namely who they are and why they are leaving — and a lack of governmental responsibility for addressing the phenomenon.

“We are the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, not the Ministry of Preventing Emigration,” the deputy director-general of the ministry, Eric Michaelson, told the committee. He noted that the ministry is legally tasked with encouraging aliyah and assisting new immigrants integrate into Israeli society. As a corollary, the ministry also works to maintain a relationship between the state and Israeli expats, with the goal of encouraging their return to Israel. According to Michaelson, the ministry does not have a legal mandate to address emigration.

Danny Zaken, a representative from Israel’s National Insurance Institute, which tracks Israelis’ residency status and automatically strips it after five years of someone not living in Israel, noted that recent years have also seen a rise in the number of Israelis actively canceling their residency status.

“From 2015 to 2021, there were an average of 2,500 requests to terminate residency each year. In 2022, the number stood at 3,700; in 2023, it was 6,300; and in 2024, more than 8,400 requests to terminate residency were filed,” Zaken said, noting that these requests are for entire households, not individuals. 

A key unanswered question from the hearing dealt with the fears of a “brain drain” from Israel, with anecdotal reports indicating that a disproportionate number of Israeli academics are leaving the country. A representative from Israel’s Council of Higher Education said that not only does the body not know how many people with advanced degrees have left the country, it does not have an estimate for how many academics employed by Israeli institutes of higher education have left the country. 

“There must be tracking of academics leaving Israel and moving to universities abroad,” Kariv said, scheduling another hearing specifically on this matter.

While the hearing was initially meant to focus on emigration, the discussions often shifted to the efforts needed in order to convince Israelis living abroad to return to the country. Nadav Douani, the CEO of the nonprofit ScienceAbroad, which supports Israeli scientists living abroad, noted that many expat academics have expressed an interest in returning to Israel, particularly those in the United States in light of the Trump administration’s funding cuts for scientific research. 

“A lot of people want to return, but it’s hard and unclear,” Douani said, noting that someone considering moving back to Israel can’t even sign their children up for school until they have a registered address. “I am planning to move back in August. Now it’s March, and I want to register my kid for school. [The system says,] ‘You don’t have an address, you can’t register.’”

Opposition MKs called on the government to develop a national strategy to address the emigration issue, both on the side of preventing it and of encouraging those who have left to return. 

“The people choosing to leave the country are the kinds of people who can have a profound impact on the Israeli economy, and their emigration causes damage in the billions of shekels,” Yesh Atid MK Vladimir Beliak said at the hearing. “A clear policy must be devised to keep the best of our children in Israel.”