A flight path from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles. The flight became a common refuge for Israeli emigrants after October 7, 2023. (Graphic by Matthew Royer, using FlightMapper.io)

By Matthew Royer

April 21, 2025

Yossi Levy has spent the past 500-plus days away from the community he knows best.

He, his wife Maor, and their three children uprooted their lives from Eilon Kibbutz on the northern border of Israel and made the journey to Los Angeles.

It wasn’t by choice. It wasn’t for financial reasons. It wasn’t for political reasons either. They were, they are, evacuees.

"Here, I’m uprooted," Levy said. "I don't have my friends, I don't have my community, I don't have my family. Everything that is normal life for you is the opposite for me."

The Levy Family (left to right) – Maor, 13-year-old Ziv, 14-year-old Yahav, 12-year-old Amitay, and Yossi – moved from Israel to Los Angeles after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Yossi Levy)

Shortly after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, the northern border of Israel became a battleground. Israeli officials told families to evacuate and find refuge elsewhere. Some families escaped south toward cities, while others, like the Levys, chose to go farther, leaving Israel for North America or Europe.

While the choice to leave Israel had everything to do with safety, the option to remain in America has been one of more consideration. Like Levy, many Israelis have reckoned with the choice of leaving the Jewish homeland in favor of other countries, oceans and continents apart.

The war that started on October 7, 2023, exposed a harsh reality for Israelis.

Nearly 83,000 people made the decision to leave Israel last year in Oct. 7's aftermath. For some, it was the cost of living or the restructuring of the technology job market. For others, it was the political instability shepherded by a prime minister under a corruption trial while guiding a war effort described by human rights experts as unjust and inhumane. The remaining detractors consider the fears related to the country's mandatory military service in a war with no clear end as their sons and daughters inch closer to their report dates.

Levy plans to return, maybe even this year, but for now, he is secure in his decision.

"People would have been happy to replace me," Levy said when asked if there was a stigma behind his decision to move his family to LA. "100%."

The Levy family in 2023 after ariving in Los Angeles. (Photo courtesy of Yossi Levy)

Alongside his wife and children, Levy has documented his journey in the United States and the help they have received from different communities nationwide. In an Instagram account titled "Levys on the Road," he highlights different life experiences and events from the perspective of an evacuated Israeli in America. These posts can differ from sending his 12-, 13-, and 14-year-olds to a Jewish sleepaway summer camp for the first time, to a live reaction to seeing Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah shell his community with rockets 7,500 miles away, to dealing with grief as Levy mourned the loss of his grandfather in February.

"We just thought we have a platform to share," Levy said.

However, as the days go on and months pass without a light at the end of the tunnel for their journey, Levy said it gets less motivating to share with his community.

"At some point, it becomes too much for us."

A choice of exile

The journey and choice to leave Israel for the United States or another country is not new, but it has become exacerbated by Hamas's attack on Israel and the retaliatory war ongoing in Gaza, said Ori Yehudai, associate professor at Ohio State University and its Schottenstein Chair in Israel Studies. Yehudai researched the phenomenon and published a book on the topic titled "Leaving Zion: Jewish Emigration from Palestine and Israel after World War II."

Listen to Ori Yehudai explain how Israeli emigration has changed over the past 70+ years. (Photo courtesy of Ohio State University)

Israel underwent its first significant wave of emigration in the 1950s as people decided to leave, usually for the United States. Yehudai said this was primarily due to personal considerations and economic hardships people faced in Israel after the state began to stabilize in the region. Back then, issues of employment, housing, and health conditions drove the leading waves of emigration, he said.

After the 1973 war between Israel, Egypt and Syria – where Israel was surprise attacked on Yom Kippur – thousands of Israelis chose safety and left Israel.

The most recent wave, which began after the Oct. 7 attack, is a culmination of all of these past factors rolled into one, Yehudai said, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims to power have only complicated how extreme emigration has become.

"Emigration already increased in response to the policies of the government regarding the judicial system and the attempt of government to weaken Israeli democracy, but then immigration also increased more following Oct. 7," he said.

According to data published by the Israeli government, 82,700 Israelis left the country last year. For comparison, the average number of emigrants from Israel during 2009 to 2021 was 36,000 per year – marking an over 100% increase. The Knesset – Israel's parliament – Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs, credits the population decline to "the complex security situation." While business leaders like ‎Irit Touitou‎, founder of the Tech for Israel forum, pointed to a "decline in the number of investors in the Israeli economy."

From the '50s through the '70s, the stigma behind leaving Israel was one of significant damage to social and cultural life, Yehudai said. If someone decided to leave, they were often slanted for helping "weaken the Zionist project," he said, as Zionism – the ideology behind the establishment of a Jewish state – does not succeed if people leave.

Today, the discussion is more nuanced, he said. While the decision can still be at odds with Zionism as a concept, more people understand the choice to leave, Yehudai said.

"On the one hand, there is a change in the sense that it's considered a normal phenomenon," Yehudai said. "But there is this notion that emigration is sort of a violation of Zionist values and that emigrants should justify their decision."

"You can also see a sense of continuity that people still feel that they have to – they need to – explain their decision, to justify, to leave Israel. There's still an expectation that immigrants would return."

Helping with justifying the move is something Michal Harel deals with every day.

At your service

Shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Harel started to hear from anxious families back in Israel, where she once lived north of Tel Aviv.

They wanted to know how they could move to Canada.

BlueSky, the relocation service founded by Michal Harel, has helped relocate Israelis and reunite families after October 7, 2023. (Photo courtesy of BlueSky Relocation Services)

"They feel there's no future for the family there," Harel said.

Harel and her husband moved from Israel to the Greater Toronto area in 2019 for business opportunities but decided to stay in Canada due to the political instability in Israel. Using their experience moving and integrating into Canadian society, Harel and her husband set up a website, Ovrim to Canada, to help Israelis find resources and arrange their move to Canada. She started a relocation service in November 2023 called BlueSky (unrelated to the social media network of the same name), which offers services to navigate the legal and governmental challenges in moving to Canada from Israel.

What began as a call to help families in need has become a full-time operation. Harel said after the Oct. 7 attack, she would hear from at least 50 families a day looking to move. While the numbers have slowed in recent months, she said she still hears from around 20 a day. Harel said more than 7,000 families have contacted her since the war began.

However, the choice is still a tough decision for many families. The cost for a family to move to Canada from Israel can reach upward of $150,000 for travel tickets, housing and vehicles, as Israeli emigrants don't have sufficient credit history, not to mention the calculation of how one’s personal life will change after the move, she said.

Michal Harel and her husband Avital Epstein show the website they set up to help Israelis navigate a move to Canada in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Rob Gillies)

"It's a lot of money you need to have," Harel said. "But first of all, they don't want anyone to know that they're considering moving to Canada because they want to keep it a secret."

Harel said families would call it a "temporary relocation" and mention their eventual return to Israel. But most of the time, families end up remaining in Canada after making the move, she added.

While war was the catalyst for the initial batches of emigrants to Canada, Harel said she now hears from others with economic and political concerns.

Ovrim to Canada helps Israelis with the process of immigration, Canadian bureaucracy, work, health and community life, including meeting other Israelis, Michal Harel said. (Photo courtesy of Ovrim to Canada)

"They don't want their kids to go to the army," Harel said. "It's sad to reiterate. The political situation in Israel bothers them. They're afraid that Israel is not a democracy anymore."

Harel added that it's most worrying for her to see elderly clients or families making decisions for their parents or grandparents, some of whom will go back to Poland, Austria or Germany, countries that grant European Union passports for descendants of victims of the Holocaust.

"It's this kind of decision we just couldn't imagine," she said. "That we will have to do it again after the Holocaust."

Heading home?

Levy said he plans to return to Israel in May, but his decision is not as final as it once seemed when he temporarily relocated to the United States.

Thinking back more than 500 days for Levy requires thinking about a world and community he said he knows he cannot return to. While he is grateful for the opportunity to return home, Levy said he holds deep skepticism for the country he once embraced and defended as a member of the Israeli Defense Forces.

"Everything prior to Oct. 7 ahead just rose again," Levy said. "We have a very, very problematic leadership and government, and people see where this country is going and how it's heading, and that's my personal debate. I will go back, but I'll be much more open-minded to leave Israel."

He notes the financial and military inequality that has stifled Israeli society for years now, but without political movement to create change in the system. Levy said he begins to become nervous when thinking about his youngest kid, who is four years away from mandatory enlistment in the IDF, something both he and his wife participated in.

"Is this a government that I trust will return my kids home and will take care of them?" Levy asked. "These are legitimate questions that people ask themselves and never asked before, and honestly, you can't blame me. I served my country for 20 years. I worked for the Israeli security agencies. I put my life on the line for Israel so many times."

"Something has changed."