People wave Israeli flags following the release of hostages who were seized during the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and held in the Gaza Strip, in Ofakim, Israel, Nov. 30, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

I was born and raised in Canada, an affluent country, rich in natural resources. An old joke tells us that when Moses was leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, he actually meant to bring them to Canada, but since he stuttered, it came out of his mouth as Canaan.

For Jews trying to escape Nazi Europe before, during and even after World War II, Canada was not a welcoming place. However, in recent decades, Canada has become a haven for hundreds of thousands of immigrants and refugees from all parts of the globe.

Yet, according to a recent report, a record number of Canadians are leaving the country. In 2024, emigration from Canada reached its highest level since 2017, with 81,601 people packing their bags and heading for the exits.

If it was up to me, after a lifetime of traveling to many places, I would be tempted to designate New Zealand as the Promised Land — a land of plenty, a land with a wonderfully temperate climate, and, perhaps most importantly, a land located in a quiet neighborhood. Yet, New Zealand is experiencing a period of stagnating population growth as, emigration-soars.

Why am I bringing this up? Because of a recent flurry of apocalyptic articles, in news sources such as Neue Zurcher Zeiting, a Swiss daily newspaper, which reported that Israel’s emigration rates surged, rekindling old fears, when population growth was a major worry for the Jewish State.

Another article, in the Middle East Monitor, a pro-Palestinian news source, gleefully reported on Israel’s growing emigration — stating that half a million Israelis have fled and predicting dire consequences for the Jewish State.

Does this mean that someone should put up a sign at Ben Gurion Airport telling the last Israeli leaving the country to turn off the lights?

Not at all. Here are the facts: Israel is today a country of nearly 10 million people, three quarters of whom are Jews. Yes, it is true, in the year 2024, 82,000 Israelis emigrated, a higher number than usual, but not unheard of. There have been other periods, particularly during the 1980s, when emigration exceeded immigration. Moreover, 24,000 Israelis returned from abroad and 33,000 new immigrants arrived, mostly from Russia, but also from Western countries.

Israel’s population actually grew in 2024, because of its high birth rate, by far the highest in the 38 member OECD. The average Israeli woman gives birth to nearly three children, about double the OECD average. (It went up in 2023/2024 during the war with Hamas and Hezbollah.) The higher fertility numbers are true for both secular and religious Jews.

Israelis live in a free democratic society. They are free to come and go, and emigrating Israelis (yordim, as opposed to immigrants, those who make aliyah) have existed since before the state was established. What is different today is that the number of Israelis living abroad (expatriates) has become substantial.

In fact, nearly a million Israelis live abroad, more than 600,000 who emigrated, plus about 300,000 children born to Israelis living outside Israel. This means roughly one in ten Israelis live outside the country. Is this demographic situation unusual? Not at all. About the same percentage of Canadians live outside Canada due to high costs within the country. The number for New Zealand is even higher, almost 22%.

About 80% of the expatriate Israelis are Jewish, and they now form a growing proportion of the diaspora Jewish community. Roughly one third live in Europe, where, to some extent, they have replenished declining Jewish populations. The rest are in North America. It remains to be seen how this shift in the makeup of the Diaspora plays out. I wonder whether the recent post-October 7 rise in antisemitism in much of the Western world will lead to an increase in the number of expatriate Jewish Israelis who return to Israel.

Predictions about the demise of the Jewish State are not new. My favorite is one by William Eddy, former special assistant to the US Secretary of State, who toured the Middle East in 1947, just before the UN voted on the partition of the Palestinian mandate. He reported, “When partition comes, the Arabs will throw the Jews out … They will have no difficulty at all.”

Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.