Immigrants at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv
From January to March 2015, 6,499 Jews arrived in Israel, the majority of whom came from Europe. However, according to an interim report prepared by the non-governmental organization «Jewish Agency for Israel» (Jewish Agency for Israel), the immigration rate rose sharply due to residents of Eastern Europe, as the number of immigrants from Western Europe remained virtually unchanged.
In the first three months of the year, 1,971 people moved to Israel from Ukraine – 215% more than in the same period of 2014, when the number of immigrants from Ukraine was 625. The number of immigrants from Russia increased by almost 50% to 1,515.
The number of immigrants from France – which in 2014 became the main source of immigrants to Israel for the first time and which was left by about 7,000 Jews – increased by 11% to 1,413. This is largely due to rising anti-Semitism, but the deteriorating state of the economy and a number of other factors also play a significant role. As journalist Anshel Pfeffer of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote, this «increase corresponds to the gradual rise in the level of immigration from France over the past four years» and is largely due to economic difficulties.
Reports of rising anti-Semitic sentiment in Western Europe and attacks on Jews in recent years have become the basis for forecasts of a record level of immigration in 2015. This is especially true for France, where in January four Jews were killed in a Paris supermarket after a terrorist attack on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo.
At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on European Jews to emigrate en masse to Israel, adding that he «will welcome them with open arms». Today, about half a million Jews live in France – the second largest Jewish diaspora after the American one.
In the first quarter of this year, the level of emigration from the United Kingdom to Israel increased by 43%. However, the actual number of Jews who left the UK was only 166. Considering that about 300,000 Jews currently live in that country, such a number of emigrants cannot be considered statistically significant.
The level of immigration from North America increased by 7%, and in the first three months of the year, only 478 people came to Israel from there.