The flow of Jews turning away from Israel, once called "the land flowing with milk and honey," has not stopped. After two years of war with Hamas, crushing prices and high taxes, and the hard-right government's runaway policies, highly educated professionals are leaving Israel one after another.
On the 30th (local time), Times of Israel (TOI), a local media outlet, reported that more than 3,000 people gathered from 4 a.m. the previous dawn in front of the Portuguese Embassy in central Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city. On a dark street before sunrise, people who spent the night sitting on fishing chairs and wrapped in blankets stared into the camera with expressions that revealed not fatigue, but a certain desperation.
They are not asylum seekers from the developing world. Most were professional workers such as doctors, lawyers, and IT developers, considered the so-called high-income class in Israel. All converged here to obtain Portuguese citizenship or renew their passports. The odd scene unfolded after the Portuguese Embassy, citing a malfunction of its online reservation system, announced it would accept walk-in applications for one day on a first-come, first-served basis.
According to data from the Knesset Immigration and Absorption Committee, the net number of emigrants who left Israel and did not return (the number of departures minus the number of returns) from 2022 through August this year reached about 125,000. This is the largest outflow of personnel over a short period in Israel's history since its founding.
In 2023 alone, when the war with Hamas broke out, 82,800 people packed up and left. Another 50,000 left Israel through August 2024. During the same period, the number of people returning to Israel did not reach even half of those who left.
Backlash against the hard-right coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also driven people to leave. The Guardian, citing experts, said "silent departure among Israel's elite is becoming more frequent." Rather than protesting or raising their voices, they are expressing no confidence in the government by quietly packing up and leaving the country.
Sergio DellaPergola, a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in a recent column for the Jewish Policy Research (JPR) that "Israel has, since its founding, overwhelmingly seen more inflows than outflows, but between 2023 and 2024 it very unusually recorded negative net migration," adding, "It is the first such occurrence since the economic crisis of the 1980s and is the result of a combination of security and political factors, not just a simple economic downturn."
The talent drain is shaking the foundations of Israel's economy. Israel is a quintessential small country lacking natural resources. Human capital, especially IT capability, is the core of national competitiveness. Fifty-three percent of total exports come from high-tech industries, and although workers in the sector make up only 11% of all employees, they shoulder one-third of total income tax.
According to the 2025 high-tech employment report published by the Israel Innovation Authority, 8,300 workers in the sector emigrated overseas during the year from October 2023, when the war with Hamas broke out, through July last year. In less than a year, 2.1% of the entire high-tech workforce left the country.
The Innovation Authority's report said, "As emigration increases, Start - Up formation in Israel is plunging, and research and development (R&D) centers are relocating overseas, threatening the industrial ecosystem."
In fact, the number of high-tech workers in Israel turned to decline last year (-1.2%) for the first time in a decade. Dan Ben-David, head of the Shoresh Institution, said in an interview with Times of Israel, "Israel's innovation sector, the engine of the economy, is driven by a tiny elite within the overall population," adding, "We are now losing the country's most important asset, 'brains.' If tens of thousands of them leave, the national economy will suffer irreparable damage."
Portugal is a particularly popular destination for emigrants from Israel. In 2015, Portugal enacted the Sephardic return law, granting citizenship to descendants of Jews expelled during the 16th-century Inquisition.
In the beginning, many Jews used the system to restore historical rights, but recently, obtaining Portuguese nationality has increasingly become a way to secure an emergency exit for survival. With Portuguese citizenship, people can live and work anywhere in the European Union (EU). Free movement is guaranteed under the Schengen Agreement. Children can study at European universities with low tuition. Parents are especially eager to leave Israel, which has conscription, to secure their children's future.
The economic incentives are also strong. Tel Aviv, Israel, ranked No. 1 in the world's most expensive cities in 2021, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). By contrast, even the cost of living in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, is only about half that of Tel Aviv. Middle East Monitor (MEMO) said, "Israelis seek Portuguese citizenship for freedom of movement within the EU, lower living costs, and opportunities to attend European universities," adding, "In particular, since October 2023, as security threats have intensified, demand for a second passport has surged."
As the number of Israelis seeking Portuguese nationality has recently surged, the Portuguese government tightened the criteria for granting Sephardic citizenship. Going forward, to obtain Portuguese nationality through this system, people must reside locally for more than three years. The reason Israelis lined up in front of the embassy from the pre-dawn hours on the 29th was their desperate attempt to obtain nationality before the immigration threshold rose further.
A software engineer in his 40s said in a TOI interview that "the despair that the country will not be the same even after the war ends is scarier than the fear that we do not know when the war will end," adding, "I want to put a European passport, not a uniform, in my children's hands."