A couple of weeks ago, there was an early morning fire near a major kosher supermarket in London’s Golders Green. Many feared that this was yet another assault on the Jewish community. It coincided with the breaking news that the pro-Iranian Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq had been behind 18 attacks in Europe. The group was aligned with Iran’s Quds Force – the overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guards. It had operated a Telegram social media network of 22 channels to facilitate its campaign against Jews. Was this fire the latest episode in the campaign against British Jews?
It turned out that the cause of the fire was an electrical fault but it did underline the sense of nervousness and almost expectation of further antisemitic incidents.
Commentators in the mainstream media were quick to speculate whether this would lead to a wholesale exodus of Jews from the UK, seeking safety elsewhere in a dangerous world. Social media chatter added simple-minded answers to a complex scenario.
At the end of April, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) in London had published its report, Time to leave the UK? It stated that 742 British citizens had emigrated to Israel in 2025. The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics reported that in the past three years – the period of the judicial reform protests, the October 7 attacks, the war in Gaza, the conflict in Lebanon and the military confrontation with Iran – an annual average of 566 British emigrants had left for Israel. This was close to the annual average rate of emigration during the past two decades.
The JPR report noted that 1.27 Jews on average per 1,000 Jews emigrated to Israel between 2006 and 2025. By the beginning of 2026, this has increased to 2.36 Jews per 1000 Jews, but did not take into account the later attack on the Hatzolah ambulances in March.
It further pointed out that there may well have been additional factors in addition to a sense of increasing antisemitism that have contributed to such figures. The JPR surveyed a huge number of British Jews – some 4,822 people – in a relatively small community.
It is, of course, one thing to consider leaving and another to actually do it. Clearly, at the moment over 97 per cent of British Jews are staying put. The JPR report notes that it is “younger people, orthodox Jews and those most affected by antisemitism” who are most likely to say that they are considering a move to Israel in the next five years.
It is also significant that the report notes that it is overwhelmingly the “strictly Orthodox” who are considering moving during the next five years. Some adherents would condemn Zionism and the vision of “a new Jew” but still move to a location where they could safely continue to live a religious lifestyle.
It would mean moving to Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) rather than to Medinat Israel (the State of Israel). Some may be attracted by the significant financial inducements which have been introduced by Netanyahu’s government. It recently announced a five-year income tax exemption to new immigrants and returning residents during 2026.
The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics reports that a similar, if more general, pattern of behaviour has been apparent in the English-speaking world from Canada, Australia, South Africa and the USA. In North America, the increase in immigrating to Israel has been from 3,500 (2022) to 4,150 (2025).
Even so, each country has its peculiarities and difficulties, which include illiberalism and growing authoritarianism as well as antisemitism. The Islamist attack on the Hypercacher supermarket in January 2015 caused a subsequent wave of emigration from France. The war in Ukraine in 2022 has produced an influx of Ukrainian Jews into Israel.
In Russia itself, emigration to Israel had fallen away during the first two decades of the 21st century. However, Putin’s attempt to turn the clock back to the good old days of the Soviet Union has clearly dismayed many Russian Jews. In 2021, 7,700 Jews left Russia for Israel. A year later, the figure had risen to 45,000.
It is also clear that for Russian and Ukrainian Jews, Israel was simply a stopover en route to other countries. Sergio Della Pergola, one of Israel’s leading demographers, suggests that several Russian emigrants with non-Jewish partners left Israel because they could not find their place in the Jewish state.
In South Africa, there is an ongoing discussion about the Jewish future, fashioned by a broken African National Congress (ANC) administration, which has positioned itself as a leader of the Global South. In 2010, South Africa joined the BRICS economic grouping (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
In contrast, President Trump has bellowed cries of “a white genocide” in South Africa in order to attract white South Africans to come to the US. However, immigrants from other African countries have been partially or fully banned from entering the US during Trump’s second term in office. Last week Trump increased the refugee admission rate for white South African immigrants. This will mean a probable total of 17,500 white South African immigrants for the fiscal year of 2026 at a cost of an extra $100 million.
It is also clear that the policies of the Netanyahu government have pushed some of the brightest and the best to leave Israel for other lands. The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics recorded that in 2023, 39 per cent of those leaving Israel came from well-to-do areas of the country such as the metropolis of Tel Aviv. Only 13 per cent came from Jerusalem and 5 per cent from the West Bank.
Young people on the verge of conscription and those with citizenship of European countries have been amongst those leaving. It has been estimated that well over 200,000 Israelis have left since the Netanyahu coalition took power in November 2022. Last year was the second year running that more people moved from Israel than to Israel.
From 2009-21, an average of 36,000 left Israel on an annual basis. In 2024, 82,700 left. This was balanced by new immigrants and Israelis returning home after a prolonged period abroad. Even so, in 2023, 47,013 came to Israel. In 2024, it was 32,281.
While over 10 million people now live in Israel, the Central Bureau pointed out that the rate of growth in the population in 2025 was the same as the year before – and this was the slowest rate of growth for many years.
All of these findings, backed up by first-class research, do not make pleasant reading. One comment to Israeli sociologist Lilach Lev Ari in her research was that Israel was no longer a country which embraced Zionism. To paraphrase one of the founding fathers of Zionism, Aḥad Ha’am: is a Jewish state being transformed into a mere state of the Jews – just like any other state?
Can Israel therefore find the path back to its former self? The coming election in Israel presents an opportunity to put Netanyahu and his acolytes out to pasture and to allow a new leadership to restore Israel’s values. It remains to be seen whether the damage done during the past couple of years is permanent.
Jewish Independent 9 June 2026