Israelis leave their land, forced out by a battered economy and years of v

[Classical_Liberal]

Israelis leave their land, forced out by a battered economy and years of violence
By Justin Huggler in Jerusalem

20 November 2003

Jean Max emigrated from Britain to Israel in 1970 as a committed Zionist. Her three children were born and grew up in Israel. But since they reached adulthood, all three have left for new lives in the United States.

And Ms Max, now divorced, is planning to follow them. Her American visa has arrived, she is going to Boston, where her daughter lives, to look for work. If she finds it, she is leaving Israel after 33 years.

Ms Max and her family are part of a growing phenomenon that has the Israeli political establishment worried. New figures from the Immigration and Absorption Ministry stunned the establishment. Those figures show 760,000 Israeli citizens now live abroad. The ministry says its figures are an informal estimate, based on research by Israeli embassies around the world.

Even so, for a country of just 6,600,000, it is a large number. But the big surprise was the growth in the number of Israelis living abroad: in 2000, it was 550,000. That increase has undoubtedly been fuelled by the suicide bombings and other attacks by Palestinian militants over the past three years, and by the severe recession into which the Israeli economy has been plunged......

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=465406

[Gimel]

1. It's a human right

People are within their rights to move to another country. Having children in the US, whe has the right to emigrate there. Most Isrelis would have much greater difficulty, not only with Visas but with language and culture.