Record number of Israelis emigrating abroad, 1.25 lakh left in 2 years

Official data showed a “sharp jump” in the number of people emigrating from Israel, reaching record levels in recent years, while only a small minority have returned. More than 125,000 Israeli citizens moved abroad between early 2022 and mid-2024, according to a report presented on Monday to the Knesset’s Immigration and Absorption Committee. The report found that most emigrants are educated young adults between the ages of 20 and 39, including some who had previously immigrated to Israel but left shortly after.“This is not a wave of emigration, it’s a tsunami of Israelis choosing to leave the country,” said committee chairman MK Gilad Kariv. He noted that Israel’s government does not currently have a plan to address the problem of Israelis leaving, and said his committee would work to tackle the issue in the future.
The report found that a series of factors, including the nation’s war with Hamas in Gaza, political unrest that culminated in mass protests against the government’s judicial overhaul plan in 2023, and the ripple effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war caused the number of Israelis leaving the country permanently to skyrocket during those years.The trend is believed to have continued through 2025, as the war in Gaza stretched on.
According to data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics cited in the report, an average of about 36,000 Israelis left the country each year between 2009 and 2021. Starting in 2022, the report added, emigration spiked sharply, with 55,000 Israelis leaving that year, a 46% increase from 2021. The figure rose again in 2023, when about 82,700 Israelis left, marking another 50% increase. Meanwhile, the number of Israelis returning after extended stays abroad remained low, averaging around 24,000 annually, according to the report. Roughly 40% of those who left and 38% of those who returned in 2022 were between 20 and 39 years old, a higher share than their proportion in the general population, which stands at 27%.
The National Insurance Institute can begin to terminate one’s residency in Israel after five years of residence abroad, although citizens can take the initiative to cancel their residency themselves, attorney Danny Zaken of the NII noted. Such requests have more than tripled from an average of 2,500 before 2021 to 8,400 in 2024, he noted. The report’s calculation of a negative migration of 125,200 did not include new immigrants. Israel received more than 74,000 new citizens in 2022, 46,000 in 2023, and about 24,000 in the first eight months of 2024, according to CBS figures.
In 2025, immigration from Western countries rose from the past year, driven in large part by rising antisemitism abroad and a resurgence in excitement for the Zionist cause since the Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, aliyah advocates have noted.  However, immigration levels from the US, France, UK, Canada and other countries are still low compared to a decade ago.