This summer, Yaniv Allon and his wife packed suitcases for themselves and their three young children and flew 6,000 miles to northern Brazil, to a region of lush hills and ocean views, to scout for what they hope will become their new home.
Their quest to “relocate” — as many Israelis prefer to call the decision to move, a less emotionally charged linguistic choice than “leaving” — is part of a record wave of emigration over the past three years driven by ongoing wars and fraught internal divides.
“I love my country. I see it as the Promised Land. But we decided our kids are the priority. We have seen that you can live differently, without this level of stress,” says Mr. Allon, who until recently was living in Eilat, in southern Israel, and working with local youth.
Growing numbers of left-leaning, secular Israelis, in particular, began departing in 2023 following a government push to reform the judiciary, seen by opponents as a plan to undermine Israeli democracy. Émigré numbers swelled further in the wake of the war in Gaza, a conflict that expanded to multiple, still-simmering fronts, including with Iran.
Almost 270,000 Israelis have left in the past three years, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, outpacing the rate of immigration for the first time in decades. Israel was founded as a haven for Jews following the Holocaust, and Israelis are asking themselves what this wave of departures, which includes some of the country’s most educated and highest-earning citizens, might portend.
A new Tel Aviv University study found those starting new chapters abroad are predominantly under age 40, and include many physicians, engineers, tech workers, and academics. If the trend continues unchecked, researchers warn, it could threaten Israel’s economy, whose growth and tax base relies disproportionately on this demographic.
Achille Abboud/IMAGO/Reuters
Travelers at Ben Gurion Airport arrive to take a French air force evacuation flight to Paris during the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, outside Tel Aviv, Israel, March 16, 2026. The flight carried 215 French citizens and European Union nationals.
“The numbers are concerning,” says Itai Ater, an economics professor and co-author of the university study. “There is a 50% increase in the number of Israelis leaving, while at the same time, fewer are coming back to Israel. So, if you take both trends … Israel is losing Israelis.”
“When we look at who is leaving and who is not returning, we see a depressing sign that many are high human-capital individuals,” he says, bemoaning the indicators of brain drain.
Roots in Oct. 7 attack
Historically, Israelis who moved abroad were largely driven by the desire for professional advancement or economic opportunity. This current exodus, however, appears to be fueled by the collective trauma rooted in the devastating Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, when Hamas militants breached the southern border fence, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages into the Gaza Strip.
For Sharon Tal, a nonprofit director from Tel Aviv who relocated to Spain last year “for now,” daily life in Israel had become untenable. She tends to feel everything very deeply, she says on a recent visit to Tel Aviv, and that “is very difficult here, because life and death is in front of you constantly.”
Before departing, she and her husband, a technology worker, were fixtures in the massive pro-democracy street protests triggered by the government’s proposed judicial overhaul, and later, in the demonstrations demanding a deal with Hamas for the release of hostages.
“My children get one childhood, and right now, this is not the childhood I want to offer them,” she says of her three school-age sons. “This is a high-stress country and a violent country, and I wanted them to have a more innocent childhood. And I wanted us to just live life, not just survive it by blocking things out.”
Professor Ater notes that within his own social and professional circles are a growing number of academics who have moved abroad with their families.
“They are not happy that they left. They are not proud of it,” he says, acknowledging the enduring social stigma that burdens those who choose to depart. While leaving the country carries less taboo than it once did, a sentiment lingers that doing so amounts to abandoning the collective project of nation-building.
Residents sit in a bomb shelter during an air-raid siren that warns of incoming Iranian missile strikes, in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 3, 2026.
“They are concerned. They love Israel. They care about Israel,” he says. But they are deeply unhappy about the many “crazy” things that happened over the past four years, he says, and they express the widely held sentiment on the center-left that the government serves only narrow sectoral interests.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to hold his far-right government together despite facing fierce political criticism for being in charge during the gravest security debacle in Israel’s history.
Critics frequently accuse Mr. Netanyahu of catering to narrow political bases, specifically West Bank settlers and the ultra-Orthodox parties whose leaders serve as senior ministers. Ultra-Orthodox leaders’ refusal to allow their young men to be conscripted — a stark exception to the service required of other Jewish citizens at age 18 — has triggered profound societal rifts, particularly as the military faces a severe wartime staffing shortage.
“A frightening situation”
A mother of two teenagers, who prefers to be identified only as Dafna because of the social pressure related to leaving, spent early August packing up her central Israel home ahead of moving to the United States.
“The government is leading the country to extremes while the power of liberal thought is weakening,” she says. “And [we on the left] are called all sorts of names by our own leaders. It’s a frightening situation.”
“I don’t know that I trust government decisions concerning my kids’ lives once they are in the army,” she confides. She says her move is not intended to be permanent, but she is asking herself for the first time what she’s willing to sacrifice to stay in today’s Israel.
Some, like Iris and Hagai Agmon-Snir, emphasize they made their decision on ideological grounds. Israel’s state TV news recently documented their departure from a Jerusalem suburb to Italy after decades of civic engagement that tried to forge social change.
“I am leaving for moral reasons. I cannot be part of what is happening here,” Mr. Agmon said on TV, referring to both political strife and the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 70,000 have been killed, both civilians and combatants. “The hardest thing for me is that the fascist strain of society has become so mainstream.”
A man gestures as Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house, which was carried out after the Israeli military warned residents to evacuate the area, at al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Aug. 24, 2026.
Netta, a retired psychologist who, for privacy, asked to be identified by her first name, grew up on a kibbutz that was attacked on Oct. 7. She attributes the death soon after of her father, a Holocaust survivor, to its devastation, though he managed to survive the attack by hiding.
She personally knew many hostages and their families and fought for their return in the street protests. Her children lost friends at the music festival that also became a massacre site.
All she could see was “destruction and ruin” across Israeli society, “the dismantling of democracy; the racism and the religious fanaticism; the corruption; the feeling that no one cares about the citizens.”
“Everything was coming at us from all directions. And we just couldn’t take it anymore,” she says. “We left the country.”
It was 2024 and they moved to Evia, a Greek island, where they had bought property as a safety hatch after the government unveiled its judicial overhaul agenda. She calls their new setting “paradise” and enjoys friendships with locals and other Israelis living there.
Her two adult children, who have European passports through their spouses, still live in Israel. If things become as dark as she fears they will, even if upcoming elections bring new leadership, she says, they are also prepared that they, too, might have to leave.
