Trend of Israelis leaving post-October 7 is impossible to ignore - but why is it happening?

‘The vaulted ceilings need some work. There’s mildew. But where isn’t there mildew in Northern Italy?” Dr. K (false name to protect identity) gushed as I pressed my forehead against the OCT (optical coherence tomography) scanner foam.

I’ve casually addressed my eye specialist as “Dr. K” for at least a decade. He doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, I think he likes it.

“Hey, Dr. K., how’s it going?” I routinely ask when entering his office. We have a warm relationship. I know about his daughter’s climb to operatic success, his son’s med school conundrums, and, as of this visit, that he and his wife will soon be leaving Israel – permanently.

“Look at these floor-to-ceiling windows,” Dr. K continued after completing the scan, holding up cellphone images of his under renovation future home-to-be. “Eighteenth century. Exquisite!”

“Wowwww,” I fawned genuinely. Internally, I ticked off an invisible score sheet: “There goes another one.”

Another tally mark for the many times I asked myself, “Should I also be creating an exit strategy?”

The trend of friends, neighbors, colleagues, and relatives opting out of Israel since October 7, 2023, has been impossible to ignore.

The first of my contact list to go were close neighbors: Yarden, his wife, Mayumi, their son, Gal, and the family’s Border Collie duo, who frolicked energetically in the local dog enclosure beside the grassy patch where Gal played football on mixed Jewish, Christian, and Muslim teams. Gal was 10 years old at the time.

“From Berlin, I watched the horrors unfolding hour by hour, day by day,” Yarden recounted during a recent call from Japan. “There seemed to be a sort of glee or celebration in the revenge and destruction of Gaza.

“I saw Israel’s societal illness… Racist to the core. And aside from maybe half or one percent of the population, there’s no empathy for the other side. Plus, there’s an idealization of the army as the holy grail, which, in my opinion, is the most problematic part of the country,” he said.

Yarden’s sentiments are intense, including his wish for Gal to “never, ever serve in the IDF,” despite completing his own Israeli army service decades ago.

A successful architect who maintains business ties in Israel, he admitted, “It’s a dilemma. I’m contributing to a society whose values I largely condemn. But I’m attached to my friends and family there. And I love the place and always will.”

“Historically, the message in Israel is: ‘We are Jews first and foremost,’” explained Prof. Svetlana Chachashvili-Bolotin, head of the Immigration and Social Integration Institute at the Ruppin Academic Center.

“Don’t forget that not long ago, the Hebrew term for ‘emigration’ from Israel was the negatively connoted yored, translated as ‘descending’ or ‘going downhill.’” Immigration to Israel continues to be called aliyah, or “ascent.”

Israel Central Bureau of Statistics figures released in September show that 79,000 Israelis left the country in 2024, vs 46,000 who made aliyah or are returning residents.

The key factors traditionally prompting people to move are personal security and economic stability.

“It’s not surprising that when a country is at war, people leave,” Chachashvili-Bolotin highlighted. “Standards of living decrease during war, so people go.”

According to her research, those opting to leave Israel tend to be educated, economically stable, and have strong standings within society.

About half of all émigrés are non-native Israelis who didn’t grow up in the country; hence, they “aren’t used to war,” she explained.

“Israel is losing human capital,” said Chachashvili-Bolotin. “The strongest of both populations are leaving.”

In past years, Jews made up the majority of émigrés, but that is changing as Arabic-speaking Israeli residents increasingly leave.

“The figure is currently 6% – an increase over previous years,” she said. “Like we see within the Jewish sector, Arabic-speaking people who move away tend to be educated and economically stable.”

Catalysts for the uptick in departures from Israel’s Arabic-speaking sectors include a lack of security, concerns over children’s futures, the ongoing war and violence, and murders within Arab population centers.

Sarit, another former neighbor of mine, remembers the exact moment she decided it was time to go.

“The morning of [October] 7, Yonatan came down to the kitchen in his uniform, and I told him: ‘When you finish with this, it’s over. We’re taking the kids and leaving,’” she recounted on a call from her rental home in New York.

Sarit and Yonatan are not their real names – they insisted on anonymity because Yonatan is a former high-ranking IDF career officer who is now working on a research project with the US government. At the same time, Sarit maintains key business affiliations in Israel.

Yonatan retired from the IDF in 2024, and a month after toasting his long, successful career, the couple relocated with their three teenagers to the United States. They now live on Long Island.

“The direction Israel is headed in made me feel this had to happen,” Sarit explained. “Long before the 7th, I felt that Israel was losing its moral compass. It started with the government’s moves to change the legal system.

“My obligation is to my kids. I had no choice: I had to protect them and show them there are other options,” she continued.

“Will we return? Who knows?” Sarit admitted. “I miss my friends – and the food – terribly. I took the quality of Israeli fruits and vegetables for granted. Here, I have to go to the farmers’ market and pay $4 for a single tomato if I want something decent tasting,” she declared.

Clinical psychologist Ohad Moran described today’s Israeli society as “living in a sort of mass psychosis characterized by widespread despair.”

“When individuals predict [that] the economy, politics, and social systems won’t get better even after the war, they then perceive little or no future for themselves or their families,” Moran explained. “That leads to exodus.”

Despair is what’s driving 63-year-old Simon Joseph Wrigley and his Israeli husband to carve out a plan for leaving Israel within the year.

“This is not the country I made aliyah to,” Wrigley said. “Israel has become such a divided country, with so much hatred and intolerance. Obviously, there is good and bad everywhere, but I don’t see a future here…. Democracy is eroding… Enough is enough. We just want a quiet life.”

Wrigley moved from the UK to central Israel in 1990. He and his husband plan to relocate to a cottage in Winchester, England.

“Who knows what comes next?” ruminated Dr. K., while running my insurance card through the magnetic processor on his desk. “Unless something radical changes, I don’t see anything better coming down the road, and I’m not interested in waiting around for it to get worse.”

Friends and neighbors interviewed for this story reflect that trend.

Dr. K said that his Italy home renovations – and relocation plans – continue. “We decided on this before October 7 when the government decided to change the legal system and strip our democracy. We made a choice then: We aren’t sticking around for that.”

Sarit, when asked if she will now come back, responded with a laughter emoji.

And Simon Joseph Wrigley confirmed that he and his husband are staying the course for departure. “I can’t wait to leave. There will never be peace here – we can’t even make peace between us. Israel is a divided nation – our strength was that we were one nation. However, Netanyahu has destroyed that… Enough is enough!”

Yarden in Japan said, “We don’t plan to return to Israel. Not yet. Maybe not at all. The war may be over for now, but the mindset that enabled it hasn’t changed. For peace in Israel, one would have to give up a great deal, change patterns of thought, and actually change the culture itself. Maybe it will [change] in the future. I’m following closely and never stop hoping, honestly.”■