Nearly a quarter of a million Israelis have left the country since 2023, amounting to close to three percent of the population. Many are doctors, engineers, academics, high-tech workers and holders of advanced degrees.
Israel is not simply losing citizens. It is losing the educated, productive and secular-liberal population that built much of its scientific, medical and cultural power. A year ago, when I argued that this was part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political strategy, people laughed. I argued that the despair spreading through Israel’s secular and liberal public was not merely an unfortunate consequence of the government’s conduct after October 7. It was politically useful to Netanyahu, and therefore deliberately encouraged.
Today, the strategy is becoming increasingly obvious.
The Israelis who left were exhausted by a government that refused to accept responsibility for October 7, failed to reach a decisive conclusion in Gaza and continued transferring public resources to coalition sectors that do not share the economic or civic burden equally. They watched reservists repeatedly return to combat while the government protected exemption from military service. They watched public money flow toward political allies while hospitals, universities, schools and middle-class families were asked to sacrifice more. They saw a government that was ineffective: revolutionary in rhetoric, amateurish in administration and incapable of delivering either security or competent government. Eventually, many concluded that there was no future for them here.
That was the intended result.
Netanyahu understood that most of these people would never vote for him. They were potential voters for Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Lapid, the Democrats or another centrist and liberal alternative. They represented an electoral bloc that could remove him from power.
A quarter of a million Israelis may amount to approximately six Knesset seats (5% of seats). They would not all have voted for one party, but their departure disproportionately damages the opposition.
Eisenkot and the political center did not merely fail to win those votes. Israel physically lost many of the voters themselves. This is how Netanyahu changes the country without winning an ideological argument. He does not need to persuade liberal Israelis. He needs to make their lives intolerable enough that they leave. Once abroad, they face another obstacle: Israel generally requires citizens to return physically in order to vote. A doctor in Boston, an engineer in Berlin or an academic in London cannot simply cast a ballot from the nearest Israeli embassy.
They must buy a ticket, interrupt their work and return to Israel.
Now, as the election approaches, opposition figures are warning that Israelis who left may have difficulty returning in time to vote. What I recognized several years ago has therefore become impossible to ignore: Netanyahu did not merely accept the departure of opposition voters. He wanted them gone. The strategy is brutally simple. Create a state in which secular professionals feel politically powerless, economically exploited and culturally unwanted. Continue funding sectors loyal to the coalition while imposing the principal military and financial burden on those who oppose it. Allow institutions important to the liberal middle class to deteriorate. Then watch as the people most capable of leaving do exactly that. Even better - once they left, call them traitors.
The country loses talent, but Netanyahu loses political opponents.
From the narrow perspective of coalition survival, this is a rational exchange.
Netanyahu’s preferred Israel is more religious, more dependent on state allocations and more loyal to traditional political blocs. A smaller secular-liberal class means weaker universities, weaker independent institutions and fewer organized opponents capable of challenging his rule.
It also means fewer votes for Eisenkot.
The cost, however, is catastrophic for Israel.
A country with Israel’s size and security challenges cannot afford to lose its physicians, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, artists and researchers. Israel has no natural resources capable of replacing its human capital. Its strength has always depended upon knowledge, creativity, education and technological excellence. Netanyahu has sacrificed these assets for political survival.
The damage will not be measured only in election results. It will appear in longer hospital waiting times, declining universities, weaker research institutions, fewer technological breakthroughs and a diminished cultural life. The tragedy is that the strategy may work. By driving away the citizens most likely to oppose him, Netanyahu can weaken the opposition.
This is not conventional voter suppression. It is demographic voter suppression through emigration. Netanyahu did not defeat Israel’s liberal and educated public politically, he persuaded it that the country no longer belonged to it.
And while that may help him remain in power, the victory comes at the price of Israel’s future.
Netanyahu keeps the government.
Israel loses the people who made it successful.
