Two of the three Nobel laureates for chemistry this year are Israelis. But they are working at American universities. According to a poll conducted by Television Channel Ten, fifty-one percent of Israelis have, at one time or another, considered leaving the country. There must be as many reasons for this as there are Israelis – eight million by now, twice as many as there were at the beginning of the state of Israel sixty-five years ago. Before there could be any brain drain there had to be a brain gain.
Yair Lapid, Minister of Finance in the Israeli government, who himself spent a few years in the United States, made a speech the other day deploring this exodus of Jews from the only land in the world which belonged to them. Of course, he knew that seventeen thousand Israelis – mostly young and creative people – went to Berlin, of all places, mainly, so the minister said, because it is easier to live there than it is to live in Israel. (He did not say easier – and more amusing). One can buy an apartment in Berlin for the equivalent of sixty-seven months’ income, whereas in Tel Aviv a similar apartment would cost the equivalent of one hundred and seventy months’ income.
This is acutely painful for those who stay behind. But they were recently comforted by Andreas Michaelis, the German ambassador in Israel, who pointed out that most of the Israelis now in Berlin will return home – “inspired”. He spoke of a partnership between Israel and Germany, and said that of fifteen thousand people who leave Israel (not just for Germany) every year, ten thousand will come back.
The founding father of Israel, Theodor Herzl, could not have imagined any of this. But he lived in the dark days before the invention of globalization.
Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 12
