The Next 'Exodus?' Jews Moving Out of France, Italy, Belgium To Israel At Large Rates

Jewish people have been immigrating from a handful of European countries at an extraordinary rate, a new study has found. The report, titled “Are Jews Leaving Europe?" and published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research on Thursday, found that Italy, Belgium and France had the highest number of Jews moving to Israel.

Six countries – Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom – were analyzed in the report, mainly because they held around 70 percent of Europe’s Jewish population and are a part of Western Europe.

The countries with the lowest rate of Jews leaving for Israel were the U.K., Sweden and Germany. The study gave several reasons for why Israel might seem like an appealing area to move to amidst Jews experiencing anti-Semitism or suffering from peaks of unemployment in their residing Western countries.

“[Israel] is considered a ‘safe haven’ for Jews coming from precarious situations; it is economically developed relative to many countries, and it provides opportunities for a meaningful and accessible Jewish religious and national life,” the report stated.

Despite the attractiveness of the Middle Eastern country, the study said it was not entirely desirable: "Israel’s challenging security situation would be considered as a push factor by many, as well as its level of economic development which is inferior to certain Western European countries," the report said.

While anti-Semitism could be a driving factor for the migration of Jews out of Western countries into Israel, the study could not conclusively determine that it was a reason.

“The project could not uncover direct and unambiguous evidence in support of this claim,” the study said. “However, it failed to reject the hypothesis either.”

In the conclusion, the study's author attempted to answer the question of whether an "exodus" out of Europe to Israel was an accurate description of recent migration trends.

"When compared with historical examples of mass out-migration of Jews in well documented settings with established causality – either due to persecution or rapid and menacing political developments – the scale of the current Jewish migration from France, Belgium and Italy (the countries with the highest desertion levels) to Israel is far smaller and cannot meaningfully be termed an ‘exodus,'" Dr. Daniel Staetsky wrote.