In another thread on this forum, there is a group of people who are really not interested in hearing the truth or speaking the truth. They are the fulfillment of ......especially lies that pertain to dispensational theology, the biblical nation of Israel, God's chosen people, the Jews, and God's promises and covenants to these "chosen" people and God's "Holy" land of Israel.
As the sands of time unfalteringly continue their flow, so is the history of the Jewish people. Week after week, year after year, century after century the people of Israel march on.
The people of Israel march on.
Bye, the beloved country - why almost 40 percent of Israelis are thinking of emigrating
link -> Bye, the beloved country - why almost 40 percent of Israelis are thinking of emigrating Israel News | Haaretz
According to a new survey, more than a third of Israelis would leave the country if they could, citing economic opportunities as the main reason. Who are the wannabe leavers, and what can be done to induce them to stay?
By Sivan Klingbail and Shanee Shiloh | Dec. 15, 2012 | 1:42 AM
Shirlee’s sons have not yet declared that they never intend to return, but she is afraid they will find it hard to come back. For her, it’s an ideological crisis. “We educated them that this is our home and our country, and that it’s wrong to give up your country. For us as parents, it is very difficult. We are left alone and it also involves a breakdown of values. This was not our dream.” In any event, Shirlee believes it’s the partner of each of her sons who will be the one to decide whether they return.
In her opinion,
Israel’s finest sons and daughters are the ones leaving the country. “They are good, high-quality people who can contribute -- from doctors and nurses to engineers. The emigration phenomenon here was once branded ‘a fallout of cowards’ [by Yitzhak Rabin], but these days the people who are leaving are talented. They stand out abroad. They are considered smart and successful compared to the Canadians. Many don’t come back.”
The primary reason the potential emigrants cite is the difficulty of getting ahead economically in Israel -- cited by 55 percent of those considering emigration. Raz terms this notion a “fantasy.” “We want to think we have a way out of here, but only 2 percent really intend to leave,” he explains.
Fantasy or reality,
the fact cannot be ignored that many Israelis want, at some level, to live elsewhere. The tendency to consider leaving is most prominent among voters for center and left-of-center parties; the 30-49 age group; secular, salaried individuals; as well as among inhabitants of the south of the country and the Greater Tel Aviv area.
It’s important to point out that
both the research for the article and the survey were carried out before Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip last month, though the military escalation in the south was already intensifying and the winds of a potential war against Iran were blowing strong.
Equally important, however, is the fact that, according to various data, most of those who are thinking of leaving are not motivated by the security situation -- in fact, it’s the exact opposite. When the security threat mounts, the Israeli public views leaving as treason, and few emigrate at such times. Indeed, according to the researchers, few Israelis leave for ideological reasons, such as the occupation, antidemocratic legislation or even the emergency call-up orders, which have been widespread in recent years.
“What’s happening today in Israel recalls the process undergone by
Jerusalem,” says Tomer Treves, a cofounder of URU (Wake Up), an association that promotes a civil agenda for the country. Jerusalem, he explains, “lives every possible conflict every day. Those who left the city over the years were people able to make a living, and the city grew poor.
Without state funding it would not be sustainable.”
Yes, it’s the economy. A graph published by Prof. Sergio DellaPergola, from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in the online journal Hagira (Migration) shows a rise in emigration from Israel in recent years. DellaPergola’s research was based on the data for departures from the country as compared with arrivals. His conclusion: in 2011, approximately 14,000 Israelis left the country and did not return.
Insurance policy
“It might not be politically correct to say this, but
the Ashkenazim have been transformed from being identified with the state into a segment of their own,” says Noam Manella, a strategic consultant and lecturer in Israel and abroad about the effects of Generation Y --people born from the early 1980s -- on organizations and society. “The Ashkenazim have become one more population sector, like the ultra-Orthodox, the Arabs and the Russians,” he says. “Many Ashkenazim like to say humorously, ‘We have become a negligible minority in Israel,’ and then go on to ask themselves, ‘What connects me to the country?’ People today are looking for belonging based on fields of interest and life values, not only national belonging. If I feel alienated, then it’s preferable to feel that way in a more comfortable location -- one that also offers me diverse and interesting possibilities for professional development. A young Israeli start-up person can feel more of a kinship with an American counterpart in Silicon Valley than with the neighbor across the hall.”
The solution, he says, entails a renewed sense of belonging, which he considers a national mission: “At one time, people were connected through large national symbols, but today the only thing that can create the connection is mutual commitment, and the state has to seize that -- equality in bearing the burden. The existential danger that once connected us is now separating us. That’s because the state has failed to generate compensation or a fair exchange for the existential problem in our region.
The classic mistake is to try to connect people to the state through patriotic symbols, when what they are looking for is mutual commitment,” he concludes.
Glass ceiling
Every society has a migrant profile, she explains. Israel follows the pattern of other developed countries:
the higher the education level, the greater the likelihood of migration. Holders of doctorates are more likely to leave than people with high school or lower education.
Earlier studies show that holders of academic degrees are twice as likely to migrate as high school graduates. “Generally speaking, the migrants will have a technological education and have a male-dominated occupation. The prospect of a woman engaged in a ‘male’ occupation migrating is twice as high as that of a woman who is in a ‘feminine’ or mixed occupation,” Sabah adds.
Lack of hope
None of this comes as a surprise to Sharon Eyny and Amit Noy Nevo. A year and a half ago, they founded a company in New York to assist Israelis who move to the city. The company, called Get it Done NY, helps new arrivals find housing and a school for their children -- in short, to acclimatize. Nevo and her husband moved to New York in 1997. “We really wanted to try New York,” she says. “We were here for our honeymoon, fell in love with the city and decided to give it a try. We didn’t plan on staying this long,” she adds.
Eyny went to New York at a far younger age. Her parents left Israel when she was eight. At 17 she decided to return to Israel, but after a few years moved back to New York. “We founded the company after we identified the need for a service like ours,” Nevo says. “We were both involved even before. We knew about people who were coming here and that the number was increasing. We understood that many of them need help.”
As a longtime New Yorker, Eyny says she discerns a change in the profile of the Israelis coming to the city. “In the past they were in the 18-30 age bracket. They didn’t have much and came to New York to try their luck. These days there are a lot more families. That also has to do with the fact that there are now more options for families. The feeling used to be that New York is far away, but now people feel that it is much more accessible. To hop aboard a plane and go to Israel is also no big deal anymore, and people have more courage to go in the knowledge that they can always go back to visit.”
From conversations with families they have worked with, Nevo says the main reason people move from Israel to New York is economic. “These are people who feel they can earn more here than in Israel, and that in Israel they have run the gamut.” She adds that another reason is higher education: many people leave, because overseas they can develop academically in a way that is not possible in Israel. In addition, many of the families that leave think the educational level in Israel is not up to par.
Ran Harnevo, a high-tech entrepreneur, is much more blunt. “I have a relatively good excuse for not living in Israel,” he says with a smile. “We established a start-up in Israel, and after we raised $5 million I went to New York to develop the business side and get to know the market. That was four and a half years ago. The company was sold to AOL in 2010, but it’s still an Israeli-American company, with 70 employees in Israel.”
Harnevo, 38, moved to the United States with his wife; they now have an American-born daughter. In the period in which they have been living in New York, the number of Israelis working in the Internet sphere has grown apace. These days they are known as the “Israeli mafia,” Harnevo laughs. “There is talk in the city about why there are so many Israelis here,” he says. “We feel the growing desire to move in the form of more relocation requests. These days, when I think about going back to Israel, the question that comes up is, What I could do there?
“The Internet has become one of the big, attractive professions,” he adds. “It is totally global. It can’t be managed from Israel. We would not have succeeded if we had tried to run the company [5min Media] from Israel.” There are other reasons, too. “The feeling is that there is economic and political distress in Israel. That the Israeli middle class -- of which I see myself a part -- faces two stumbling blocks: one is the difficulty of being unable to do well economically, due to an uncompetitive, cartel-driven market; and the other is a lack of hope.
Politically, the discourse is one of despair. It’s a fanatic, illiberal discourse. An educated secular individual in his thirties, who is part of the smart, successful Internet industry in Israel, understands that this same route makes it possible for him to leave Israel.”
The tendency by high-tech people to leave the country seems clear and natural, but they are not the only ones who are finding work abroad with comparative ease. Even though the fact that Europe and the United States are reeling under the impact of the economic crisis would appear to make immigration more difficult, in practice there are certain professions which are in high demand abroad. They belong to what has been called the “creative class.”
The term was coined by the American-born economist and social scientist Richard Florida, as part of a theory he developed about urban renewal and economic development in post-industrial cities. According to Florida, cities that are able to attract members of the “creative class” will enjoy economic prosperity.
Many theoreticians reject his approach, but mayors of many big cities have warmly adopted it. The result is that the members of professions that fit the “creative” category -- designers, architects, high-tech personnel and others -- are considered desirable and find it easier to obtain work and residence permits.
Tel Aviv is considered a city that the creative class is fond of. But, for example, the
architects who work for a salary in architectural firms will find it difficult to pay the city’s high rental fees. For Israelis, globalization -- which is nourishing the interest in the creative class -- has made the perennial question about the difficulty of living outside Israel almost anachronistic.
Harnevo hesitates for a moment when asked if it was hard for him to make the decision to live far from his native land. “I think there is something a little childish about the Israeli narrative,” he says. “The narrative insists that there is no place like Israel. It’s a powerful narrative and is implanted in you, but suddenly you discover that it’s not so. There are places like Israel and the skies do not fall when you leave. Those who go back do so not because there is no place like Israel, but because it’s their home and it really is hard to switch homes.”
Point of no return
Conversations about emigration from Israel often come down to the issue of the brain drain the country is experiencing. “The number of European university lecturers working in the 40 leading faculties in the United States is between 0.5 percent and 4 percent. In other words, for every 100 lecturers who work in Germany, 2.9 work in the United States. But for every 100 lecturers working in Israel, there are 25 working in the United States.” The speaker is the economist Prof. Dan Ben-David, who is the executive director of the Taub Center and teaches in the Department of Public Policy at Tel Aviv University.
Ben-David conducted a study of the brain-drain phenomenon five years ago. He explains that although the brain drain to the United States is not exclusively an Israeli phenomenon, there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world in terms of its proportions. “There are eight Israelis in the Computer Sciences Department of Stanford, which is almost a subdepartment,” he says with a half-smile. He is concerned not only about the future of the universities in Israel but about the country’s character and image as a whole. “I am apprehensive that we will reach a point of demographic no-return here.
“Demography refers not only births but also to those who remain here to live,” he explains. “At present, it is still possible to shift the country onto a sustainable track, but in another decade that will no longer be possible. Today, half the children in Israel receive a lower-level education than is the case in Third World countries, and that number is only increasing. That’s what the elections should be about.”
Does the brain drain exist in fields other than computing? According to a 2008 paper, written by Profs. Omer Moav and Eric Gould for the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, the educated public – those holding a B.A. and above – are more inclined to emigrate than those with a high school education or lower. The authors note that more than 2.6 percent of educated, married Jews in the 25-40 age group were categorized by the Central Bureau of Statistics as emigrants in 2002, as compared with 1.1 percent among those with lower education.
Moav and Gould analyzed the data of the 1995 population census combined with an indication of the status of emigration in 2002. They add that the percentage of educated young people leaving the country is significantly higher than their share in the general population. On the basis of their study, they conclude that Israel and Italy are the only two developed countries in which the number of educated people emigrating from the country exceeds the number of educated immigrants entering the country. This is a migration pattern that is found in poor countries.
Another interesting finding by Moav and Gould concerns the occupations of those who choose to leave. In first place are senior university faculty, with a 6.5 percent emigration rate. They are followed by physicians, at 4.8 percent, and then engineers and scientists (not from universities), whose emigration rate is slightly above 3 percent. The study found a correlation between level of education and emigration, primarily among males; and that holders of an M.A. (or its equivalent in the sciences) are more likely to emigrate than holders of a B.A. Academics and physicians head the list.
In general, the data on emigration from Israel are extremely difficult to analyze. Passport control does not ask each person where he is going, so it is difficult to determine who has left and for how long. Researchers therefore qualify their findings, and this is why we can talk confidently about a trend of leaving but less so about a phenomenon.
Poor everywhere
Sagi Balasha is the CEO of the Israeli Leadership Council, whose mission, according to its website, is “to build an active and giving Israeli-American community in order to strengthen the State of Israel, our next generation, and to provide a bridge to the Jewish-American community.” He, for one, feels that fewer Israelis have been coming to the United States in the past few years, because of the economic situation there as contrasted to Israel.
In fact, he says, the desire to move to America is the product of mythmaking. “In Israel we grew up with the perception that America is the height of ambitions, the land of possibilities, in contrast to the self-laceration in Israel. A whole generation was raised in that light. Israel is characterized by frenetic activity and has become a start-up nation, and the feeling is that America is sleeping.”
Nevertheless, Balasha says, there are many who view the United States as the next step in their career. He says he recently met a young Israeli who chose to leave a comfortable, well-paid career with good social conditions and even tenure, for the United States. “It’s likely he will have to compromise, so I asked him why he did it. He said he also wanted to try America. That is an illusion, and if you probe it you find that with the exception of a few Israelis who really did make it, the majority live at a middling level and most of them did not triumph.”
Balasha’s organization is trying to create an Israeli community and Israeli culture for the Israelis in Los Angeles. One of its activities is to distribute food to poor families from Israel. “Every week we distribute dozens of crates to Israelis who don’t have food to eat. You have the whole gamut here, from the poor to the upper class. The living standard is also very similar to what you have in Israel.”
There are 250,000 Israelis in the United States, Balasha says. That’s more than the population of Netivot, Ofakim, Beit She’an and Nesher put together. The large number of people translates into large differences in terms of success. Even though the statistics say that one in every five emigrants return, in practice even longtime emigrants find it difficult to admit -- even to themselves -- that they are not likely to go back.
