GOA — Zionism required the creation of what its founders called the “New Jew” - a radical reengineering of Jewish identity severed from centuries of ethical, diasporic, and humanist traditions. Judaism, historically shaped by moral restraint, community life, and learning, was recast into a nationalist and militarized project. In this transformation, Jewish ethics were subordinated to the imperatives of conquest, settlement, and permanent war.

This ideological rupture did not merely reshape politics; it reshaped the Jewish self. The “New Israeli” was masculinized, armed, and disciplined through military service, with the Israeli military forces positioned as the primary moral institution of society. Zionism thus became not simply a political ideology but an identity regime - one that conflated Jewishness with loyalty to a settler-colonial project.

Following the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a growing body of scholars, activists, and dissident Jewish voices argue that any genuine decolonization of Palestine must go beyond land restitution. It must include the decolonization of Israeli consciousness itself - separating Judaism from Zionism and liberating Jewish identity from a project that has fused survival with domination.

One symptom of this deep crisis is the accelerating emigration from Israel itself.

A wave of departure

Since the events of October 7, 2023, and the devastating military assault on Gaza that followed, the Zionist entity has witnessed a sharp and unprecedented rise in outward migration. 

Officials and analysts within Israel have described this phenomenon as a “tsunami,” reflecting both its scale and its structural implications.

In the first seven months of 2024 alone, approximately 40,600 Israelis left for long-term stays abroad—an increase of nearly 60 percent compared to the same period in 2023. The total number of long-term departures in 2023 reached 82,800, up from 59,400 the previous year. For the first time in its history, Israel recorded a sustained negative migration balance: more people left than returned.

This is not a temporary fluctuation. Between 2020 and August 2024, net emigration reached nearly 146,000 residents. Surveys among Israelis currently living abroad show that nearly 80 percent have no intention of returning.

Those leaving are disproportionately drawn from highly educated, high-income sectors—particularly in technology, medicine, and academia. Many possess dual citizenship or are able to obtain it quietly, often choosing not to announce their departure due to the deep stigma attached to yerida—the Zionist term for emigration, literally meaning “descent.”

Germany, Canada, and several European states have reported marked increases in visa, residency, and citizenship applications from Israelis since late 2023. These are largely silent exits, reflecting not panic but calculation.

Fear, not guilt, drives the exodus

Contrary to some moralistic interpretations, this wave of emigration is not primarily driven by guilt over the destruction of Gaza or the historic dispossession of Palestinians. Rather, it is driven by fear—raw, existential fear - and by a profound collapse of faith in the Zionist promise of security.

October 7 shattered a core myth that the militarized state could guarantee safety. For many Israelis, particularly families with young children, the belief that permanent war could coexist with normal life has finally broken down. Continuous rocket fire, regional escalation, and the prospect of wider conflict have produced a pervasive sense of vulnerability.

Political disillusionment compounds this fear. Long before the Gaza genocide, Israeli society was riven by mass protests against judicial restructuring and authoritarian drift. Secular, liberal, and highly educated Israelis increasingly feel alienated in a political order dominated by religious nationalism, messianic settler ideology, and permanent emergency rule. 

Many now openly describe the regime as sliding toward theocracy or dictatorship.

Economic pressures further accelerate departure. The cost of living crisis, housing shortages, and declining public services - exacerbated by prolonged war - have made life increasingly untenable for young professionals. A sustained “brain drain” now threatens the economic base of the Zionist project itself.

For parents, the overriding question is the future of their children. Raising a generation in a society defined by militarization, trauma, and international isolation no longer appears viable.

The unspoken question of responsibility

While fear and instability are the primary drivers, guilt operates in more complex and indirect ways. Some Israeli psychologists and social analysts argue that Israeli society carries an unacknowledged collective trauma linked to the Nakba—the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948—and the ongoing occupation.

A small number of left-leaning emigrants have articulated this more explicitly, stating that remaining within Israel forces complicity in violence they morally oppose. Others express guilt of a different kind: guilt for leaving during a crisis, shaped by decades of Zionist indoctrination that framed emigration as betrayal.

Yet these moral tensions remain marginal. The dominant motivation remains personal survival and future security, not ethical reckoning.

International isolation and collapsing legitimacy

As emigration accelerates, Israel’s international standing continues to deteriorate. Public opinion across Western Europe has reached historic lows. Recent YouGov EuroTrack surveys conducted in Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, and Spain show that only 13 to 21 percent of respondents hold a favorable view of Israel, while 63 to 70 percent express unfavorable opinions.

Approval of Israel’s military actions in Gaza has collapsed. In most surveyed countries, fewer than one in six respondents believe the assault has been proportionate or justified. Even among traditional allies, the Zionist entity is increasingly perceived as a destabilizing and lawless force.

This erosion of legitimacy carries material consequences: growing calls for sanctions, arms embargoes, legal accountability, and diplomatic isolation. The image of Israel as a moral refuge for Jews has been replaced by that of a pariah regime.

Structural crises within the Zionist project

Mainstream analysts within Israel and abroad acknowledge multiple converging crises. Militarily, Israel faces sustained resistance from non-state actors and the risk of regional escalation. Internally, political polarization, the privileging of ultra-Orthodox communities, and the permanent mobilization of society have hollowed out civic life.

Demographically, maintaining a Jewish majority through settlement and displacement grows ever more untenable. 

Internationally, reliance on unconditional Western backing appears increasingly fragile. Historically, Zionism positioned Israel as a solution to European antisemitism—a Western problem exported to the Middle East. That framing now lies in ruins.

What critical voices are saying

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has repeatedly warned that Israeli society is undergoing a moral collapse. Writing from within, he describes a culture of cruelty, denial, and dehumanization, in which Palestinian suffering is erased and dissent is criminalized. Levy argues that permanent occupation has destroyed the ethical foundations of Israeli society and rendered any two-state solution impossible.

Historian Ilan Pappé goes further, describing the current phase as “neo-Zionism”—more aggressive, more explicit, and more ruthless than earlier iterations. In his view, this is not renewal but terminal acceleration: an attempt to achieve through extreme violence what earlier Zionists sought gradually. Such projects, Pappé argues, ultimately implode.

Among younger Jewish generations, particularly in the diaspora, disillusionment is growing. Many no longer identify with a project aligned with Islamophobia, ethnonationalism, and authoritarian politics. The intergenerational rupture is widening, and it is irreversible.

Beyond Zionism

Israeli society today appears increasingly fragmented, exhausted, and incapable of sustaining its current trajectory. 
Scholars speak of an emerging post-Zionist horizon—not as a utopia, but as a necessity. Such a future would require abandoning the colonial framework altogether and imagining shared political life rooted in equality rather than supremacy.

-Four forces now converge against Zionism:
-Escalating violence and repression
-Shifting global public opinion
-Moral and political exhaustion

Growing Jewish disengagement from Zionist ideology

The current emigration wave is not merely demographic. It is ideological. It signals a profound loss of belief in the founding myth itself.

Decolonizing Palestine will not be achieved through borders alone. It will require dismantling the structures - material, psychological, and ideological—that made permanent domination appear normal. The new exodus of Israelis is not an accident of war; it is a symptom of a settler project reaching its limits.

Dr. Ranjan Solomon is a veteran social justice activist and writer who has long supported global movements, particularly those advocating for Palestinian freedom.

(The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of the Tehran Times.)