Israel was supposed to be the one place in the world where Jews could live without fear of persecution, war, or being driven from their homes. That was the entire argument behind the creation of the Jewish state following the Holocaust. Yet under Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has become a country where growing numbers of its own citizens are questioning whether they have any future at all.
The October 27 election is now approaching, and Netanyahu is facing a population exhausted by years of war, political division, military mobilization, and the constant threat of another attack. What is particularly revealing is that Israelis are not simply complaining about the government. They are leaving, and the numbers have reached levels that should alarm anyone concerned about the country’s long-term survival.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University found that 268,509 Israeli citizens left the country for at least three consecutive months between 2023 and 2025. That compares with 183,219 during the corresponding three-year period a decade earlier, an increase of approximately 47%. The annual figures were 86,509 in 2023, 91,499 in 2024, and 90,922 in 2025. These are not all permanent emigrants, and the distinction matters. Nevertheless, researchers estimate that between 45,000 and 50,000 Israelis emigrated for at least one year during 2025 alone. The trend has continued through three years of conflict, and the researchers themselves are concerned that continued departures could eventually threaten Israel’s economic and national security.
Israel’s own Central Bureau of Statistics reported that approximately 69,500 Israelis were classified as emigrants in 2025, while only 18,800 were classified as returning. That represents a negative balance of approximately 50,700 among those two categories. The official figures use a different methodology from the Tel Aviv University study and classify emigration after a qualifying period abroad, so they should not be confused with the number who physically departed during that calendar year. The Taub Center calculated that Israel’s overall international migration balance, including new immigrants, had turned negative in 2024 and was expected to remain negative in 2025. This is a remarkable reversal for a country that spent generations encouraging Jews from around the world to relocate there.
The Bank of Israel has acknowledged the deterioration. Its 2025 annual report found that the migration balance had shifted from an average annual gain of roughly 20,000 people during 2016–2019 to an average annual loss of approximately 20,000 during 2024–2025. Some of that change reflects people who had recently arrived from Russia and Ukraine and subsequently moved elsewhere. It would be misleading to portray every departure as a lifelong Israeli fleeing Netanyahu. But the central bank also identified a meaningful increase in emigration among native-born Israelis. The problem cannot simply be dismissed as temporary immigrants returning home.
What is perhaps even more troubling is the number of people considering leaving. A survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in April 2025 found that approximately one-quarter of Jewish Israelis and one-third of Arab Israelis were considering living abroad, either temporarily or permanently. Among secular Jews, the figure reached 39%. These are people who have grown up in Israel, established careers, raised families, and contributed to the economy. They are now questioning whether remaining is worth the financial, political, and physical risks. Considering emigration is not the same as actually leaving, but when such a substantial portion of the population begins looking toward the exits, the government should be asking what has gone wrong.
The economic consequences are particularly serious because Israel depends heavily upon a relatively small segment of highly educated and productive workers. Reuters recently reported that high technology generates approximately 18% of Israel’s GDP, while the top 20% of workers account for 93% of income-tax revenue. Defense spending has doubled to approximately 8% of GDP, placing enormous pressure on public finances. Israel can withstand the loss of some residents, but the departure of engineers, scientists, physicians, entrepreneurs, and skilled professionals has consequences far beyond the number of people boarding airplanes. These are the taxpayers and innovators who sustain the economy and help finance the country’s enormous security establishment.
The Taub Center has also observed that Israeli-born emigrants are increasingly choosing destinations beyond the traditional United States, Britain, and Australia. Germany, Cyprus, and parts of East Asia are becoming more prominent. Germany is especially revealing given the history of the Jewish people in Europe. For generations, Israel encouraged Jews to leave Europe and establish a secure future in the Jewish homeland. Now some Israelis are looking toward Germany and other European countries for economic opportunity, political stability, and a different quality of life. The reversal is extraordinary, even though Germany’s inclusion among emigration destinations does not establish that all those moving there are Jewish or that every move is motivated by security.
Descendants of European Jews who fled persecution may qualify for citizenship in countries their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents once called home. Germany allows eligible victims of Nazi persecution and their descendants to reclaim or acquire German citizenship through constitutional and statutory restitution provisions. Austria provides citizenship to qualifying descendants of people persecuted by the Nazi regime, generally without requiring them to surrender their existing nationality. Lithuania permits eligible descendants of former Lithuanian citizens to restore citizenship, including many families whose ancestors departed before March 1990. Poland provides a process for confirming citizenship inherited through Polish parents or grandparents, provided the legal chain of citizenship remained intact. Hungary also has ancestry-based citizenship procedures, including simplified naturalization for qualifying descendants who meet the applicable requirements, such as demonstrating knowledge of Hungarian. These arrangements are not blanket offers of citizenship to anyone who is Jewish.
Israel is not experiencing a collapse of its population. Births still exceed deaths, and its total population has continued growing. Nor does the available evidence establish that most Jewish Israelis intend to leave permanently. But a country does not have to experience mass depopulation before emigration becomes an economic and political problem. The loss of confidence begins long before the demographic consequences become irreversible. The fact that Israel’s central bank, universities, and demographic researchers are now examining these trends should be enough to demonstrate that this is a serious national concern.