According to him, this brain drain is not driven by economic factors or by cuts in funding for public services, research, or innovation, but is primarily a reaction to the political situation.

“You look at what has happened in Israel over the past four years and it’s crazy, no matter how you look at it: October 7, the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, the reservists’ draft, Iran,” he said. “And on top of that, you look at the government allocating huge sums to ultra-Orthodox Jews. So, if you’re secular, you do your military service, you pay taxes, and you look into the future and ask yourself, ‘do I want to raise my kids here in Israel?’”

Ater makes no secret of his left-wing political commitment and wants to warn the public of the consequences of this brain drain.

“The Israeli economy depends heavily on human capital. We don’t have natural resources, oil or things of the sort, unlike Venezuela or Iran … As a citizen and as an economist, I want Israel to become a sane country again – a normal country.”

He added that, as Israel’s image around the world deteriorates, academics “suffer from a lot of boycotts” and that some “research collaborations are terminated because we are from Israel”.

…

If the ruling coalition is re-elected, Tamar*, 32, a product manager at a company specialising in AI, said she would seriously consider leaving the country with her husband and her one-year-old son.

The “endless wars”, the influence of Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and “Benjamin Netanyahu’s lies” have become unbearable, she said.

Israel is conducting a GENOCIDE of Palestinians, not a war against them.

Notice here that Israel has one of the hallmarks of fascist societies that is all to often swept under the rug, the main political dichotomy and point of friction is centered between an ultraconservative religious element of society that is given institutional power to provoke the ultrarightwing non-religious element of society into believing that religion is the problem not rightwing beliefs which alienates the broader public from being able to truly get behind either side and forces a suffocation of empathy.

“Because of the war Genocide, I can’t sleep anymore,” she added. “My husband has served more than 400 days of reserve duty in the army for the past three years and I’m very angry at the government for allowing the ultra-Orthodox to avoid military service. I don’t recognise the country I grew up in anymore – even though my mother’s side of my family has lived in Jerusalem for 14 generations.”

You can see the people in this article cycling around and around this broken framing of the issue and finding no answers because of it, either they are religious and see the rise in atheism and its values as a threat against Judaism and a driver of violence or they are atheist/less conservatively religious and they think the real problem is religion in general. Both views are wrong, hateful and are conveniently focused entirely on the wrong thing.

As elections approach, Israelis are still traumatised by Hamas’ unprecedented attacks from October 7, 2023. Between those who constantly demand revenge and those who want to understand how such an attack could have happened, dialogue seems to have fractured. The right and the far right use a constant messianic and religious rhetoric to discredit anyone who opposes them.

Anybody who has a heart in Israel that still functions is smashed between a rightwing rock and a rightwing hard place…___