- "I feel betrayed. I don't want to raise my children
in such a brutal society. My grandparents had such high ideals. What has
become of Israel makes me so sad and bitter."
-
- JERUSALEM -- Alarm over
emigration
levels is growing among Israel's political leadership as the country's
Jews seek to escape the violence of the Palestinian uprising and deepening
recession.
-
- The government wants to bring another million Jews to
Israel by 2010. Yet figures released by the ministry responsible for
helping
new immigrants show that an estimated 760,000 Israelis are living abroad,
up from 550,000 in 2000.
-
- Just 23,000 people are expected to move to Israel this
year, the lowest figure since 1989.
-
- Tzipi Livni, who heads the Ministry of Immigrant
Absorption,
has described immigration as being in a "tailspin."
-
- Christine Shalev, 36, who has a 3-year-old daughter,
made the decision to join the exodus when her best friend left for Canada
two months ago.
-
- "Israel is falling apart and enough is enough,"
said Ms. Shalev, who works for a delivery service in Tel Aviv. "I
feel trapped here but I hope in Canada I can find my freedom."
-
- Hard-line Israeli politicians are eager to boost the
Jewish population to underpin their claim for more land.
-
- Yet Interior Ministry figures show that a quarter of
the Americans who have come to Israel since 1989 have left.
-
- On Internet bulletin boards such as Janglo, aimed at
English speakers in Jerusalem, many emigrants are selling off possessions
before they leave the country.
-
- Demographers have warned that at the present rate, Jews
will become a minority in Israel and the occupied territories within 20
years.
-
- Michael Jankelowitz, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency,
a government body responsible for bringing Jews to Israel, admits the scale
of the challenge facing the government.
-
- "There is big concern about what is happening,"
he said. "This is why finding a peaceful resolution is so important.
At the moment people do not see a solution and this is the tragedy. The
insecurity drives them crazy. It's like Russian roulette ó you don't
know when it is going to hit you."
-
- Emigrants are reluctant to talk about their departure
because Jewish immigration to Israel is the cornerstone of Zionism, the
Jewish national movement.
-
- The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once described
Jews who emigrated as the "lowliest of parasites."
-
- Many families head for Canada. So far 6,000 Israelis
have moved there this year, double last year's total.
-
- One couple, who did not wish to be identified, are
leaving
even though they only returned to Israel in June after three years in New
York. Third-generation, university-educated Israelis, their grandparents
were pioneers in building the state.
-
- "I feel betrayed," said Hila, 37, whose
husband,
Dror, is also 37. "I don't want to raise my children in such a brutal
society. ... My grandparents had such high ideals. What has become of
Israel
makes me so sad and bitter."
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