Despite the war, more Jews are flocking to live in Israel

Sales have been booming for Alejandro Benzaquen’s latest art installation. The Venezuela-born Jewish artist, now based in Miami, designed a striking blue acrylic box with the words “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS” printed in bold on the front.

Behind the emergency glass sits not a first-aid kit or prescription medicines, but an Israeli passport, signalling the enduring sense of security and refuge Israel has provided to Jewish people worldwide, especially amid a global rise in antisemitism.

Israel has been in a state of war for more than 600 days, triggered by the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, and exacerbated by a multi-front conflict with confrontations with Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.

Yet, despite the risks involved in visiting – let alone relocating to – a country at war in one of the world’s most turbulent regions, there has been a significant surge in aliyah, or immigration to Israel, in the past year. That’s in spite of a growing list of airlines, including British Airways, Delta, United airlines and EasyJet, curbing flights to and from Israel.

Daniel Elbaum, the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Head of North America, told the JC that the surprise Hamas attack united Israel and the Jewish people worldwide in ways not seen since the 1967 Six-Day War, which witnessed a similar post-war aliyah boom. “Since October 7, there’s been a 510 per cent increase in the opening of aliyah files in comparison with the same period last year,” he said.

The process for making aliyah remains fairly straightforward. Interested candidates are guided by Jewish Agency advisers or partner organizations like Nefesh B’Nefesh, to gather their paperwork. Once deemed eligible (by having at least one Jewish grandparent), prospective olim, or immigrants, receive a “mazal tov” email with a visa and complementary one-way ticket to Israel. Depending on the complexity of one’s case, processing times can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months.

According to the Jewish Agency for Israel, which assists Jewish people worldwide in their aliyah journey including from war-torn Ukraine, more than 35,000 people have made aliyah from around 100 different countries around the world since October 7, 2023 including at least 4,000 from North America and more than 800 from France. That number has also included at least 52 Holocaust survivors, who moved to Israel from Ukraine, France, the US, Germany, Venezuela, Brazil, Italy and Canada, according to Israel’s Aliyah and Absorption Ministry.

For Elbaum, the aliyah surge currently underway is extraordinary. “Since the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, after concerted rocket attacks from the Islamic Republic of Iran, a war in the north and now rockets from the Houthis, more than 35,000 Jews have decided to leave their homes and link their futures to the Jewish state,” he said. “This is the stuff of legends and should be memorialized in songs as we did with Israel’s early pioneers.”

A third of all immigrants who made aliyah in 2024, Elbaum added, are young adults between the ages of 18-35, with many enlisting in the Israeli Defence Forces upon arrival.

The JC interviewed recent emigrés from around the globe about their motivations for leaving their homelands for Israel in the past year, with most citing either an intense feeling of solidarity with the State of Israel or virulent antisemitism back home as key factors driving the move.

France has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe and third largest in the world after Israel and the United States, numbering approximately 500,000. In the last year, France alone has experienced an aliyah boom, recording a 400 per cent increase of people opening immigration case files against the yearly average. Part of the impulse to move is driven by a rise in antisemitism, with incidents of Jew-hatred near-quadrupling in France from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, according to a recent report published by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League.

A larger wave of French Jewish immigration took place in late 2024 in the wake of the July 7 legislative elections, which saw a rise of the country’s left-wing bloc that harbours antisemitic voices. The threat posed to Jews in France is so severe that mere weeks after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was gang-raped in June, the chief rabbi of the Grande Synagogue in Paris lamented that, “It is clear today that there is no future for Jews in France.”

Ariel Kandel, CEO of Qualita, the umbrella organisation for French immigrants in Israel, urges the Israeli government to do everything in its power to process and absorb as many French Jews as possible. “This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to boost immigration from France to Israel, to encourage many to take the next step to making their dream of aliyah a reality,” Kandel told the JC. “To capitalise on this, Israel must immediately develop and implement a special action plan for the immigration and absorption of French Jews. Failure to do so would be tantamount to abandoning them.”

Activist Rudy Rochman was born in France but never identified as a Frenchman. After enlisting in the Israeli army, he officially made aliyah to Jerusalem in 2019, but noted that the October 7 pogrom and antisemitism wave that followed was a wake-up call for many French Jews. “The overall reaction for many Jews in France has been that our time in France is limited,” he said. “We cannot stay here for a long time. We know that our children’s generation will have to leave and we need to start making moves to leave.”

Rudy Rochman in Jerusalem[Missing Credit]

Equally sceptical about the future of Jews in Europe is Ilana Granditer, a 31-year-old lawyer from London, who made aliyah last September. 2023 was the worst year for antisemitism in the United Kingdom since records began in 1984, according to the Community Security Trust. “I moved because I’m a massive Zionist and wanted a change of lifestyle,” she said. “After October 7, it became clear that the future of Jewish life in London would be somewhat limited both in time and in terms of expression – and I felt isolated at work as a result.”

In North America, more than 4,000 people have made aliyah since October 7, 2023 and there have been more than 10,000 requests to open aliyah files, a 76 per cent increase from the same period a year ago, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel. Aliyah to Jerusalem alone surged by 20 percent in 2024 compared to the year prior, with 1,725 North Americans moving there since October 7.

For Valerie Zundel, moving from Florida to Tel Aviv last June was an ordeal, one that involved leaving behind her family and long-term boyfriend, but it was also an ancestral calling too transformative to ignore. “My great-grandfather was a pioneer here,” she said. “He helped build the streets and fought against the British for this land to be the Jewish state, and I feel like he’s a voice inside me welcoming me to the land he fought for.”

Edward and Lianne Forman[Missing Credit]

The outbreak of war was the catalyst, not the deterrent, that prompted Edward Forman, his wife Lianne, as well as his daughter, son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters to move to Israel from Teaneck, New Jersey. “We had started our aliyah planning before October 7, but accelerated our plans once the war broke out,” Forman said. “Anecdotally, we sense that many more people are exploring and starting the immigration process – or are looking to buy an apartment in Israel.”

Jake Levin, who moved to Jerusalem from Atlanta last April, has been studying Hebrew with around 100 other recent emigrants. “All of them talk about the war and the consequent rise in antisemitism as a major factor [for moving to Israel],” he said.

Rampant antisemitism in Australia and a need for connection to Israel led to Jessica Nankin packing up her life in Melbourne for Tel Aviv last December. “My soul needed to do aliyah,” she said. “When the war started, I was almost desperate to be in Israel as I felt so disconnected in Australia, especially after all the antisemitism there.”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry recorded a 500 per cent spike in antisemitic incidents since last October, Jewish schools being vandalised with antisemitic language and the windows of a Jewish lawmaker being smashed.

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