October 7 prompted some Jews to leave Israel. For others, the country offers shelter from rising global antisemitism

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN

(CNN) — On November 22, 2023, Chantal and Nicky Young closed their front door in London for the final time and boarded a flight to Israel.

Family members were waiting at arrivals in Tel Aviv with a sign saying, “Welcome home Grandma and Grandpa.” One person who wasn’t there, however, was the youngest of their five children: Nathanel.

The 20-year-old was murdered by Hamas on October 7. Two years previously he’d made Aliyah – the term for Jewish immigration to Israel, which translates as “ascendance” – and was serving with the Israel Defense Forces on the Gaza border.

“Nathanel’s dream had been for us to make Aliyah. He’d been looking for a property for us,” his French-born mother Chantal told CNN.

The Youngs were planning their move when Nathanel was killed. “We were in shock,” said 62-year-old Chantal, who oversaw catering at a Jewish school before she emigrated. “For a long time, I wouldn’t say that my son passed away, I’d say ‘he’s gone on a trip,’ because it was very difficult for me to accept.”

Nathanel’s grieving parents soon decided to realize his dream by bringing their move date forward, despite the war.

The Youngs are among thousands of Jewish people who have made Aliyah in the two years since the brutal Hamas-led attacks. Some have been motivated by a need to stand in solidarity with Israel, others by a desire to find a refuge from rising antisemitism in their home countries.

But the flow is not just in one direction. As Jews from around the world have moved to Israel, many Israelis have left the country to settle elsewhere, finding themselves unable to live amid the ongoing conflict, economic challenges and in an increasingly polarized society.

The result, according to Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer and emeritus professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who has spent his career studying migration to and from Israel, is a net migration deficit that speaks to a wider disorientation in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks.

“Israel has always been fundamentally an immigration country,” he told CNN. But in 2023, official statistics revealed a rarely seen “negative migration balance,” he said of the data from the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). About 80,000 Israelis left, with that October alone accounting for 15,000. Around 25,000 have since returned to Israel, while the country welcomed 30,000 new immigrants. The result is a net deficit of 25,000, said DellaPergola.

While these may not sound like huge numbers, Israel is a small country with an overall population of just over 10 million, 7.2 million of whom are Jewish, according to DellaPergola.

The CBS has just released further data relating to migration to and from Israel up to September 2025, which he says paints a similar picture to 2024.

‘We feel it’s our country’

“The worst that could have happened had already happened so I wasn’t scared,” said Chantal of leaving life in Britain for a country at war nearly two years ago. “Every country has its problems and it’s not the perfect country but we feel it’s our country.”

Nicky, 65, who worked in customer services for many years, admitted he had been “more apprehensive,” but added: “It’s incredible the support we’ve had as a bereaved family in Israel and we still get right up to now.”

Yocheved Ruttenberg, 24, was living in Texas and working in construction sales on October 7 when she heard the news of the attacks. “I just couldn’t function,” she told CNN. “I was like, ‘I need to be in Israel.’”

She flew to Israel two weeks later with 23 huge duffel bags of supplies for those affected by the attacks, bought with funds she and a friend had raised.

“Three days before my return flight, I called my job and quit,” she said. “I had a whole life in Texas but I couldn’t leave. I saw this huge need to match volunteer opportunities to people around the world. Everybody wanted to help and nobody knew what to do.”

Today, Ruttenberg lives in Tel Aviv and runs a thriving organization that has a community of 45,000 people interested in volunteering opportunities in Israel. She still travels back to the United States but says she has noticed a shift in the mood there.

“I was very aware that the atmosphere has changed drastically getting off the flight,” she said of a recent trip. “I was wearing a big Star of David on my sweater and was suddenly very aware I wasn’t surrounded by people who support Israel.”

‘Impossible’ political situation

Over the centuries, there have been waves of Jewish migration, largely driven by persecution. While the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 might have been regarded as an end to the wandering, some there are now questioning whether the Jewish homeland is the best place for them.

In the past two years, thousands of Israelis have opted to relocate to places where air raid sirens, terrorist attacks, mandatory military service and anti-government protests no longer feature in their daily lives.

But while many Israeli emigrants have embarked on new lives in Cyprus, Canada and Thailand, according to DellaPergola’s analysis, few are prepared to speak publicly, citing a mistrust of the media and fear of anti-Israel sentiment.

An exception, however, was Noy Katsman, an Israeli student who was on an internship in Leipzig, Germany, when Hamas attacked. Among those killed was Katsman’s brother Hayim, an academic and peace activist murdered on kibbutz Holit, near Gaza.

Katsman, 29, who is nonbinary, has now applied for citizenship in Germany – a country their grandmother fled in the 1930s.

“I didn’t want to leave but the political situation is impossible and there’s more and more discrimination against leftists, activists and of course Palestinians,” Katsman told CNN.

“There were a lot of articles about my brother being a peace activist and then all of the comments were very nasty, saying he deserved it and was naive,” said Katsman, who has repeatedly spoken out against the war in the international media, including on CNN.

“It’s obvious that the Israeli state is using our grief to create more grief and I don’t want this. I think it’s terrible. Someone wrote to me saying ‘you don’t sound like someone whose brother was killed on October 7.’ They want to own our narrative.”

Nonetheless, Katsman’s ties with home endure, as they regularly visit and are studying for a masters in culture and gender studies at Israel’s Open University.

“If there’s peace I’d go back tomorrow,” said Katsman. “If there’s an end to the conflict and people get justice and human rights, of course I’d love to go back. I love the land, I love the people, I love the culture – but I don’t love the state.”

Seeking safety in Israel

For others, seeing incidents of antisemitism on the rise in Europe and elsewhere, Israel feels like a safe haven. German Jewish journalist and writer Mirna Funk, 44, applied to make Aliyah with her daughter two months after October 7. She told CNN she’d long been warning about rising antisemitism in the German media, but things dramatically worsened.

“I had been observing this shift and monitoring it for about 10 years so I understood immediately after October 7 what I had witnessed and that things would only get worse,” she said.

“I was getting death threats on a weekly level and did not feel safe. I didn’t want (my daughter) to be isolated in a Jewish school but it had become clear that she could not go to public school anymore.”

While she still works in the German media, Funk now lives in Jaffa, a city with a mixed Jewish and Arab population, and her daughter studies at a “coexistence school,” where children from both backgrounds study alongside each other. “Life is much freer,” she said.

Speaking to CNN, DellaPergola, the Hebrew University demographer, stressed that the situation is “very complicated,” not least because Israel was riven by social divisions prior to October 7, as illustrated by months of massive protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, and its policies.

“You need to look at the present in a longer-term vision and understand migration movements to and from Israel,” he said.

“The general image is that Aliyah is fundamentally an ideological choice – people wishing to rejoin their people, their religion and thinking of the future of their children, as well as the pressure of antisemitism.”

While this is true in some cases, he said, his studies have led him to conclude that economic considerations are usually more important. “The dominant engine of migration to Israel has been shown to be the economic situation in the countries of origin. If the situation in Israel is better, Israel is more attractive. If not, it’s less attractive,” he said.

Yigal Palmor, head of international relations at the Jewish Agency for Israel, which facilitates Aliyah, told CNN: “People have many motivations for coming to Israel. Antisemitism is one of them, but it’s certainly not the only motivation.” Palmor confirmed the drop in Aliyah but said he had expected it to be “more marked.”

“Many people are reluctant to come at this time, but others feel the need to stand by us, become Israelis and contribute to the country when it needs it most.”

DellaPergola sees the changing migration picture as part of a wider uncertainty being felt by Jewish people around the world.

“Everybody’s unsatisfied and fearful and thinks there’s a better pasture somewhere else but it’s not true. There’s no reserve duty in the West, no missiles, no alarms. On the other hand, you read about unbelievable antisemitic aggressions in Western countries,” he said.

“Jewish people are feeling very disorientated.”

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