General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Peter

From todays Sunday Times

Battle for soul of Israel drives middle class exodus
Tens of thousands of Israelis are emigrating or considering doing so in the wake of an overhaul that curbs the Supreme Court
Protesters blocked Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv last week
Protesters blocked Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv last week
CORINNA KERN/REUTERS
Inna Lazareva, Tel Aviv
Sunday July 30 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Share




In 2019 Oded, a man in his late thirties leading a comfortable life in Canada, boarded a plane with his husband and two young children to return to his native Israel for good — or so he thought.

Next week the family are flying back to Canada, having reversed their life plans as a result of the political situation in Israel, which culminated last week in new legislation that had reignited mass protests around the country, with people chaining themselves to the roads and reservist soldiers declaring that they would no longer show up for active duty.

“We lived through what we considered some very bad governments in the past,” said Oded, who did not want to disclose his last name for professional reasons, “but it never felt like this — the political situation never scared us before as much as it does now.”

They are among tens of thousands of Israelis who are either emigrating or considering doing so in the wake of a radical judicial overhaul pushed through by the most right-wing government in their country’s history in defiance of eight months of unprecedented nationwide protests.

Aside from the security concerns raised by the reservists’ stance, the consequences of the stand-off for Israel’s economy and society are potentially seismic.

Israel’s economy relies heavily on the hi-tech industry, which for a decade has been the country’s fastest growing sector, accounting for 14 per cent of jobs and almost a fifth of GDP. Its vitality had previously been one of the proudest achievements of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. Now many of the secular, middle class Israelis who have made the country a world leader in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and other fields are protesting in the streets and thinking about moving abroad.

Start-up funding for the sector dropped by nearly 70 per cent in the first half of the year, after the reform proposals were made public.

Last week, despite mass nationwide protests, which have been going on for almost eight months, the government ratified new legislation curbing the powers of the Supreme Court, which many say will make Israel less democratic.

The architect of the reforms, Yariv Levin, the justice minister, promised that this was only the initial reform of many. Religious nationalist parties have key roles in Netanyahu’s coalition and many secular Israelis fear that the judicial overhaul will pave the way to a greater crackdown on personal freedoms and other rights.

A poll by Israel’s television channel 13 this week said that more than a quarter (28 per cent) of Israelis were considering leaving the country, with many already possessing a foreign passport.

How serious those intentions are for many people remains unclear, but Ocean Relocation, a firm that assists people with both immigration and emigration, said that since January this year it had received an unprecedented rate of queries to leave Israel.

“After the government passed its law this week, there was again a huge spike in demand,” said Shay Obazanek, director of the international relocation centre at Ocean Group. Whereas last year, the rate of queries the firm received had been equally spread between those wishing to move to and those wishing to move away from Israel, this year about 90 per cent of the queries concerned emigration. “The basic reason that I hear from the people is the fear for their freedom, human rights and the current quality of life in Israel”.

According to figures from the Jewish Agency for Israel, a non-profit organisation that encourages people to move to Israel, in the first quarter of 2023 dropped from almost every country except Russia compared with the first three months of 2022. The drop was attributed to the cost of living as well as the concerns surrounding the government’s planned overhaul of the judiciary, first announced in early January 2023.
Executives from the hi-tech industry have been some of the most vocal protestors against the judicial changes. A survey by the Israel Innovation Authority found that 80 per cent of start-ups established so far this year were opened outside Israel. Many companies also intendeded to register their future intellectual property overseas, a move that would significantly hurt Israel’s tax revenues.

Israeli doctors have also been vocal critics of the proposed overhaul: the Israel Medical Association, which represents nearly all the country’s doctors, held a nationwide 24-hour strike on 25 July, with only emergency and critical care in operation.

Dr Oren Zimhony, an expert in infectious diseases said that the ruling endangered the medical profession “because it will give unrestricted authority for the minister [of health] to appoint and fire anyone he wants, and it also gives him freedom to obtain any medical data without any limitations”.

WhatsApp groups for doctors looking to relocate have opened up. “At present, the groups have around 3,000 doctors – that’s out of 30,000 registered practising doctors in the country,” said Dr Ofri Don Tofield, a GP in central Israel, who is part of one of the groups. “There’s a dentist group, a medical students group, doctors with foreign licences group – so many people are considering leaving.”

Tofield has mixed feelings when considering whether to leave. “It’s an emotional rollercoaster, people do not sleep at night — it’s not that life is not pleasant — this is so much bigger, it’s about giving up something my grandparents fought for, they were Holocaust survivors and they built this country literally from scratch. It’s not something you take lightly,” she added.

“But as things are progressing now, this country is on course to become non-democratic, and non-liberal, ruled by people willing to jeopardise every single moral right and ideal just to get to power. It is difficult to stay.”

Jonathan Rosenblum, an orthodox rabbi from Har Nof, Jerusalem who supports the judicial reforms hoped the threats to leave the country are just an exaggeration. “What has changed here? Did someone outlaw hi-tech? Did someone come and try imposing stricter laws that people have to work around?” he asked, mockingly.
To talk about leaving now is hysteria, but it’s worse than hysteria. It’s so dangerous to Israel when they talk about this.”

One consequence had been Moody’s credit agency’s downgrade of Israel’s outlook in April, he said, which was reinforced last week when the agency released a new report announcing that “ significant risk that political and social tensions over the [judicial reform] issue will continue, with negative consequences for Israel’s economy and security situation.” He added: “People pulling money out of the hi-tech industry is another. It’s simply not playing by the rules of the game.”

Others on the opposite side of the political divide are also alarmed by the threat posed by a loss of confidence in the economy.

“I think leaving the country is terrible,” said Tal Dagan, former general manager of Vimeo Israel and a protestor. “That’s giving up, it’s damaging the country — whenever someone discusses this with me, I try to convince people to stay here and fight for the country. If the good people leave — the best engineers, fighters, and doctors — this will create huge damage. I really hope that people will stay and fight.”

For Oded and his family, leaving behind friends, family, and secure jobs for a new beginning is daunting but they feel there is no other option. “We always believed we could change things even though we felt that politically and ideologically we were a very small minority among Israeli Jews.

“It’s not like we suddenly saw the light,” he said, adding that the family had planned to leave the country even before the new government was elected, partly because of the political turmoil at the time. Events since the turn of the year had erased any doubts about their decision. “We feel that with the judicial reform and the new government, we are in a whole new phase,” he said.

“We really feel unsafe — as a same-sex couple with children, our whole family structure must be fought over in courts, for example for the state’s recognition of our parental rights for both kids. This all hinges on court decisions, and with these reforms, these are things that can be overturned,” he added.