The Other Exodus: How War, Politics and Insecurity Are Driving Israelis Abroad
For a country built around the idea of immigration into Israel, the growing movement in the opposite direction has become an increasingly sensitive national issue. Since the upheaval surrounding the judicial overhaul in 2023 and, more dramatically, the Hamas attack of 7 October and the Gaza war that followed, tens of thousands of Israelis have established lives abroad for months or years at a time. Increasingly, those leaving are not simply backpackers, retirees or recent immigrants returning to their countries of origin. They include doctors, engineers, researchers, technology workers and young university graduates—the very groups Israel depends upon disproportionately for its hospitals, universities, military technology and export economy.
The exact scale is contested because Israeli institutions use several definitions of “leaving.” Someone who boards a plane is clearly not necessarily an emigrant. The Central Bureau of Statistics generally identifies longer-term emigrants retrospectively, once they have spent most of a year abroad, while researchers at Tel Aviv University have also examined people absent for three consecutive months as an early indicator of longer-term migration.
Using that broader measure, researchers Prof. Itai Ater, Prof. Nittai Bergman and Doron Zamir found that 268,509 Israeli citizens left Israel for at least three consecutive months during 2023–2025: 86,509 in 2023, 91,499 in 2024 and 90,922 in 2025. The comparable figure for 2013–2015 was only 183,219. The researchers estimate that 45,000–50,000 Israelis emigrated for at least a year in 2025 alone, indicating that what began during the upheaval of 2023 has not simply disappeared with time.
That distinction matters. It would therefore be misleading to say that all 268,509 have “permanently left Israel.” Many may return. But the figures demonstrate something different and nevertheless important: Prolonged absence has reached levels substantially above those seen a decade earlier.
October 2023 as an accelerant
The migration story did not begin on 7 October.
Emigration had already risen sharply during 2022 and the first nine months of 2023, amid soaring living costs and a political confrontation over the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul. Figures subsequently presented to the Knesset showed a pronounced increase in departures beginning in 2022.
Then came 7 October.
An early CBS examination found an extraordinary spike among Israelis who left during October 2023 and had still not returned months later: roughly 12,300, compared with about 3,200 in the corresponding calculation a year earlier.
Later statistics made the demographic impact clearer. Parliamentary hearings have repeatedly documented tens of thousands more Israelis leaving than returning. One 2026 Knesset presentation put 2024 emigration at approximately 69,500, compared with only 18,800 returnees, while earlier preliminary CBS releases had used a higher figure of about 82,700 because of different methodologies and reference periods.
That apparent contradiction is important: Israeli migration statistics have been revised as enough time passes to determine whether somebody really remained overseas. They should not simply be added together.
What is much less disputable is the direction of travel. During the years surrounding the Gaza war, outward migration rose markedly while returns fell, producing a substantial negative migration balance among Israelis.
And those leaving are unusually young.
Knesset figures show that nearly half of emigrants were aged 20–44, even though this age group represents less than a third of the population. The average emigrant in 2023 was only about 32.5 years old.
That is precisely the age at which professionals complete their training, form households, have children, establish companies and reach peak productive years.
“Should we stay?”
Emigration has consequently moved from being a marginal social discussion to a regular subject of Israeli opinion polling.
A major Israel Democracy Institute survey conducted in April 2025 found that roughly one quarter of Jewish Israelis and one third of Arab Israelis were considering living abroad either temporarily or permanently. Among secular Jews, the figure climbed to 39 percent, and among Jews aged 18–34 to approximately 36 percent.
The findings are particularly revealing because the strongest desire to leave appears within segments of society heavily represented in academia, high technology and professional occupations.
The polling should nevertheless be interpreted carefully. “Considering” emigration is different from being certain of leaving. In fact, only around 10 percent of those considering departure told IDI that they definitely planned permanent emigration. About half of Jewish respondents considering departure did not yet know how long they would live abroad.
A later KAN survey published in August 2026 found that 18 percent of Israelis said they had considered emigrating during the preceding two years, while one third said they personally knew somebody who had left. Twelve percent said the result of Israel’s coming election could influence whether they remained.
Among university students the warning signs are stronger still. At a Knesset hearing in June 2026, the National Union of Israeli Students reported that 33 percent of students said they intended to leave Israel after completing their studies, principally because of housing costs and the general cost of living.
Yet Israel is not witnessing universal rejection. In the 2025 Israeli Democracy Index, 72 percent of Jewish respondents and 82 percent of Arab respondents said they would prefer to remain in Israel even if they could obtain citizenship in the United States or another Western country.
The country therefore faces something more complicated than a straightforward mass flight: a large majority still wants to stay, while a substantial, highly mobile minority is increasingly willing—and able—to leave.
Where are Israelis going?
There is no comprehensive official country-by-country database covering every Israeli who departed after 7 October. Dual citizenship makes tracking particularly difficult: an Israeli with a German, Portuguese or French passport may enter Europe as an EU national rather than being registered as an Israeli immigrant.
Still, destination data show a fairly clear geography.
Among Israeli citizens moving to OECD states in 2023, around 33 percent went to the United States, 18 percent to Germany and 9 percent to Canada, according to the OECD.
More broadly, demographic research by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research estimates that about 630,000 Israeli-born expatriates already live abroad, with the largest established populations concentrated in the United States, Canada, Germany and Britain.
But the post-7 October movement has added another geography: nearby European countries that allow Israelis to remain relatively close to home.
Cyprus has become one of the most visible examples.
Before 7 October, an estimated 2,000 Israeli families were living there. By late 2024, a local Jewish community estimate placed the number at roughly 3,500 families, or around 15,000 people. By August 2026, the Israeli Embassy in Nicosia was estimating 15,000–20,000 Israelis living in Cyprus.
The attraction is obvious: Tel Aviv is less than an hour away by air, Europeans schools and property are accessible, and technology employees can often continue working remotely.
Greece has attracted similar interest, alongside Portugal and Spain. Germany—particularly Berlin—remains important, while English-speaking professionals disproportionately consider the United States, Canada and Britain.
Polls capture this orientation. Among Israelis contemplating emigration in the 2025 IDI survey, 43 percent preferred an EU country, versus 27 percent who preferred the United States or Canada.
For many, then, emigration no longer necessarily means cutting ties with Israel. A family can live in Cyprus or Athens, retain Israeli employment, visit relatives frequently and postpone deciding whether the move is permanent.
Temporary relocation can gradually become migration.
The people Israel can least afford to lose
The most serious issue is not simply how many people leave.
It is who leaves.
Israel has always depended unusually heavily on human capital. It has few natural resources relative to the size of its economy, and technology accounts for a substantial share of exports, investment and tax receipts.
The Israel Innovation Authority has consequently raised alarms about long-term relocation by technology workers. It estimates that approximately 8,300 high-tech employees left Israel for a year or longer between October 2023 and July 2024, equivalent to about 2.1 percent of the country’s entire high-tech workforce.
October 2023 was particularly dramatic: 1,207 high-tech employees began long-term stays abroad in that month alone, almost three times the number recorded in October 2022.
That may look small against a country of roughly ten million people.
It is not small if those thousands include software architects, cybersecurity specialists, artificial-intelligence researchers, chip engineers and entrepreneurs.
Their economic contribution is far larger than their numerical share.
The Innovation Authority also reported that Israeli high-tech employment actually declined by about 5,000 workers in 2024, the first fall for at least a decade. Meanwhile Israeli technology companies now employ roughly 440,000 people overseas compared with about 400,000 inside Israel.
That creates another risk. Companies do not necessarily have to leave Israel formally. They can simply place their next engineering team, research laboratory or management unit in New York, London, Lisbon or Berlin.
Human migration can therefore precede corporate migration.
Doctors on the move
Healthcare may face an even more immediate problem.
A Tel Aviv University study released in September 2026 found that approximately 1,370 physicians left Israel for more than one year during 2023–2025—a 94 percent increase compared with the equivalent three-year period a decade earlier.
The annual figures were approximately 416 doctors in 2023, 530 in 2024 and an estimated 419 in 2025.
Two-thirds of the doctors who emigrated in 2024 had reportedly been trained in Israel itself. At the same time, the number of physicians returning has fallen.
That represents more than a numerical shortage.
Training a specialist physician can require more than a decade of university education, residency and advanced specialization. Losing an experienced anesthesiologist, oncologist, radiologist or surgeon cannot be compensated for by recruiting an inexperienced graduate the following year.
The effects accumulate: Fewer specialists mean longer waiting lists, heavier workloads for remaining doctors and potentially another incentive for those doctors to leave.
It can become self-reinforcing.
Engineers, academics and researchers
The same pattern appears elsewhere.
Knesset discussions have reported an increase in engineers leaving combined with a fall in returning engineers. Israeli reporting based on parliamentary research has also pointed to thousands of graduates in science, technology and computing among recent emigrants.
Academia presents a particular structural danger.
Universities rely on international research networks. Israeli scientists who complete fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Oxford or European research institutes have always spent years abroad. Historically, Israel’s challenge was persuading them to return.
But when an academic already has an overseas post, citizenship rights and children integrated into foreign schools, war and political instability change the calculation.
Every professor who does not return affects more than one job. Laboratories train doctoral students. Senior scientists attract international grants. Engineering professors collaborate with defense industries. Medical researchers train clinicians.
The departure of one senior researcher can therefore dismantle a small ecosystem built over many years.
Why they leave
The Gaza war is an essential part of the explanation, but it is not the only one.
Polling repeatedly identifies a mixture of factors: personal security, the future of children, political polarization, the cost of housing, cost of living, professional opportunities and dissatisfaction with the direction of the country.
For some, missiles and sirens were decisive.
For others, the crisis began before 7 October with the judicial overhaul and intensified after the war.
Long periods of reserve duty have disrupted careers and family life. Schools repeatedly closed during major escalations. International airlines suspended services during security crises. Families with young children have experienced repeated rounds of rocket and missile attacks.
And professionals possess something much of the population does not: exit options.
A software engineer can work in Berlin.
A doctor can seek certification in Canada.
A scientist can remain at an American university.
A startup founder can move headquarters to London.
An Israeli holding an EU passport can move to Lisbon or Athens with relatively little bureaucracy.
Thus the very skills that make someone valuable to Israel also make that person highly mobile.
An unequal demographic exchange
There is another uncomfortable dimension.
The Israelis most capable of leaving are not necessarily representative of Israeli society.
They are disproportionately young, educated and economically established. IDI’s research found particularly high consideration of emigration among secular Jews and younger adults.
At the same time, groups with much lower emigration intentions—particularly the ultra-Orthodox—have some of Israel’s highest birth rates.
If those trends persisted for decades rather than years, emigration would not merely reduce population numbers. It could subtly alter Israel’s social composition.
A society losing disproportionate numbers of doctors, engineers, academics, entrepreneurs and secular professionals would ultimately lose some of the taxpayers financing the services upon which the larger population depends.
This is why Israeli policymakers increasingly describe emigration as an economic and national-security concern rather than simply a personal lifestyle choice.
In the IDI survey, 64 percent of Jewish Israelis and 73 percent of Arab Israelis said the departure of educated and economically established groups—a brain drain—posed a danger to Israel’s future.
From “Start-Up Nation” to distributed nation?
Israel is unlikely to empty out.
Its family networks, Hebrew language, cultural identity and strong attachments to place remain extraordinarily powerful. Polling shows that family proximity is the single strongest reason Israelis give for staying.
Some who left after 7 October will undoubtedly return.
Others will maintain lives in two countries.
But perhaps that is precisely what makes the present phenomenon important.
Emigration no longer requires a dramatic ideological rupture with Israel. A software engineer can live in Cyprus and code for an Israeli company. A scientist can retain collaborations with Tel Aviv while holding a laboratory position in Boston. A doctor can move to Toronto but return several times a year.
What begins as refuge can become relocation; what begins as relocation can become permanence.
And for a country whose military, economy, hospitals and universities depend unusually heavily upon a relatively small pool of highly trained people, even modest changes at the top of the skills pyramid can have consequences far larger than the headline migration figures suggest.
The central question, therefore, is not whether hundreds of thousands of Israelis are permanently abandoning their country. The evidence does not support such a simplistic claim.
The question is whether the Gaza war and Israel’s wider political crisis have pushed enough of its youngest and most internationally mobile professionals to establish alternatives abroad that returning is no longer automatic.
Three years after 7 October, the statistics increasingly suggest that this is the issue Israel has to confront.
Its most serious migration problem may ultimately be measured not by how many passports leave through Ben Gurion Airport, but by how much knowledge leaves with them.
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