How many Israelis decided to leave Israel in 2024? The total was 82,700.
These figures, published by the Central Bureau of Statistics, are quite staggering, especially when compared to 2023 when a comparatively low 55,000 Israelis sought other countries to call home.
On one level, it is understandable that 2024 resulted in a considerably higher number of Israelis choosing to exit the country. It has been at war for considerably longer than during any previous conflict.
An interesting question for those who chose to leave Israel: In contrast to those, who, like myself, chose to come here from another country, how many of those leaving were born in Israel?
To what extent can someone born and bred in Israel comprehend what it is like for the Jew living in the Diaspora?
While Israelis are known to be extensive world travelers, that cannot be compared to actually living as a minority in another country. The word “minority” does not exist for an Israeli Jew living here because this is a unique country, where the greater majority are Jews.
Conversely, the Diaspora Jew remains different and in a minority, however much he or she is accepted. Those who chose to leave their countries of birth for Israel appreciate what it is to feel at home in the Jewish state.
Living in Israel protects Jews from the antisemitism that our Diaspora brothers and sisters are experiencing in the very countries that Israelis are likely to choose as their new abode.
Could anyone have predicted that, following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Israelis, the level of antisemitism in the Diaspora would rise to a level comparable to that which preceded the Holocaust?
Antisemitism in the Diaspora
A RECENT Jerusalem Post article described the Australia of the past as “paradise, a haven for Jews outside of Israel.” Today, it is one of many countries experiencing a surge in antisemitic acts. Sydney has witnessed a kindergarten – in its suburb of Maroubra – suffer extensive damage, with offensive antisemitic slogans scrawled on its walls.
Cars have been set alight and many more graffitied with the vilest antisemitic language. Synagogues have been painted with swastikas, and attempts have been made to set them alight on the Sabbath itself.
A cache of deadly guns and bombs was discovered in a property in northwest Sydney, together with a list of Jewish targets in the country’s most populous city.
My thoughts went back to 2002 when, as World WIZO’s public affairs chairperson, I traveled throughout Australia addressing the Jewish community, Jewish and non-Jewish students, and academics on university campuses, plus non-Jewish NGOs. I felt perfectly at ease at every event, Jewish or otherwise.
In Sydney, I spent an interesting morning visiting the Jewish Museum, which offers high school students (the majority non-Jews) the opportunity to tour the museum and meet with Holocaust survivors. The day of my visit coincided with a visit by a group of 16-year-old schoolchildren. I sat in on the talk given by the Holocaust survivor on duty that day. He began by explaining that, subsequent to the end of World War II, Australia became home to the second-largest number of Holocaust survivors after Israel.
Following the talk, the youngsters addressed questions to the speaker.
One of the boys asked, “Why did you choose to come to Australia?” The survivor answered, “I looked at a map of the world and chose the place farthest from Europe.”
The assumption was that Australia was sufficiently distanced from Europe to be a safe haven for Jews. One can only wonder at the thoughts going through a survivor’s mind today, witnessing the unprecedented rise of Jew hatred throughout that country.
Australia is not alone in the upsurge in antisemitism. Canada can compete in terms of attacks on its synagogues and other places with a Jewish connection.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, London, in the United Kingdom, has witnessed a weekly Saturday pro-Palestinian antisemitic march attracting thousands of participants. Four weeks ago, an attempt was made to march to the BBC, whose headquarters are situated in London’s West End.
As a synagogue is located in the vicinity of the BBC, the police forbade any protesters from approaching the BBC, fearing it might lead to an attack on the synagogue, likely filled with congregants on the Sabbath.
Among the leaders of this specific demonstration was former UK Labour Party head Jeremy Corbyn. The police arrested 77 of the demonstrators, who attempted to break through the police barrier.
HOW IS it for Jews in the UK? A recent survey conducted by the Campaign Against Antisemitism produced some disturbing statistics. Only one-third (34%) of British Jews believe they have a future in the UK. During the past two years, half of the Jewish community has considered leaving Britain due to antisemitism. Among the 18- to 24-year-olds, two-thirds are contemplating leaving their country of birth. Ninety-two percent believe that the media fuels antisemitism.
The Community Security Trust (CST) – the prime organization that protects the UK’s Jewish community against antisemitism – notes that the unprecedented surge in antisemitic incidents immediately followed the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israelis.
The 2,699 antisemitic incidents reported to CST in October, November, and December 2023 were three times as many as those reported in the entire first nine months of that year.
While the situation then calmed minimally, the 1,978 incidents in the first six months of 2024 were more than double that of the same period of the previous year. The figure for the whole of 2024 has not yet been published but is likely to be almost the same as in 2023.
Much of Europe has become a bedrock of Muslim fundamentalism – a catalyst for the unprecedented rise in antisemitism within far too many European countries. The United States – once referred to as the “goldene medina” – is not immune from the antisemitism pervading the world.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect is what is happening at universities around the world – especially the Ivy League campuses in the US. Recognizing that future leadership for the country is likely to evolve from those universities is a matter of grave concern.
While living in Israel has its challenges, as we are currently experiencing, it is the place where we, as Jews, can feel at home.
Many of us who chose to come here did so in the knowledge that being Jewish in Israel was more than okay.
Each person has his or her own reasons for making aliyah. Our background and parenting inevitably play an important part in who we are and how we think. Certainly, my father played a role in my decision to make Israel my home.
Born in Warsaw in 1904, he arrived in Britain at the age of eight, together with his siblings and parents. It was my father who gave me a love of what was then known as Yiddishkeit – today we would say “an appreciation of being Jewish.” He also gave me a love of Israel – a country he, sadly, never saw personally – through singing and teaching me songs, in both Yiddish and English. The songs spoke of the hope to return to our land and the significance of those early pioneers. Here is one song, the words of which I recall:
With your packs upon your shoulders
Oh pioneers, pioneers prepare
Come and let us all march eastwards
Out of exile everywhere
Be the road how rough and winding
Who’s afraid of toil and pain?
One breath out of life in Zion
Gives us all our strength again.
IT WAS those pioneers who – through toil and pain – turned a desert into the amazing Israel we know today.
Back to the beginning and to those who seek another land to call home. Having recently commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where too many were murdered because no country would give them refuge, poet Robert Frost’s definition of home is particularly apt:
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Am Yisrael chai.
The writer is president of Israel, Britain and the Commonwealth Association (IBCA); she has chaired public affairs organizations in Israel and the UK.