After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israeli society engaged in a deep and painful reckoning about its resilience and its future.
The war, a profound national rupture, raised countless questions about the continued existence of the State of Israel. Although it ended in a striking military victory, so much so that Egyptian forces pleaded for the Israel Defense Forces to halt before reaching the outskirts of Cairo, the sense of surprise, the high number of wounded and fallen, and above all the performance of the political leadership left a deep scar.
It was a victory without euphoria, a victory weighed down by grief. I remember how, in the middle of the night, two or three families from our neighborhood packed up and left.
At first it was strange. Friends from the neighborhood and from school simply did not show up. A glance at the windows of their apartments left no doubt. They were gone.
Back then it was called "Yerida," meaning emigration from Israel in hebrew, and the word carried an air of shame and guilt. I heard that some of them had gone to Australia, to Canada and to the US, distant and unfamiliar places that, to me as a child, existed only in the large atlas with its colorful maps.
My parents explained that we had no other place but Israel. Here we would be safe. This was our home. Here no one would call us a "dirty Jew." Here we could be Jews openly.
From time to time they also told me about what their families had endured in that war, the one whose name they did not even like to utter, their eyes always filling with tears. When my fear grew, I would rest my head on my grandmother's lap. She would stroke me gently and promise that by the time I grew up there would be no more army, and we would not have to enlist. This week, all those memories resurfaced, stirring difficult thoughts about what has happened to us over the 50 years since.
Amid the flood of year-end summaries, one figure appeared almost in passing, yet it was deeply unsettling. In 2025, Israel recorded exceptionally slow demographic growth, just about 1.1 percent, mainly due to negative net migration of roughly 20,000 people. Some 69,000 Israelis left the country, despite positive natural growth of about 182,000 births compared with around 50,000 deaths. These figures are not dry statistics. They are a social, economic and national warning sign.
Negative migration on this scale does not stem only from economic considerations, but from a deep crisis of confidence in personal security, in institutional stability and in a future that appears increasingly unclear. When tens of thousands of Israelis choose to leave precisely after moments of national rupture, it reflects a crack in the fundamental perception of Israel as an anchor and a home. This is not a fleeting "escape," but a cumulative process that weakens the social fabric, undermines national resilience and deepens the sense of uncertainty among those who remain.
The real question is not only who is leaving, but what we are doing to ensure that those who stay believe there is a future here. In another country, in a different reality, this figure would be setting off warning lights, raising red flags and forcing an emergency debate in the government and the Knesset.
Professor Ariel Feldstein is a historian in the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Ariel University.
