Since 2023, Israel has been losing graduates at a pace the country has never seen before. A study by economist Itai Ater of Tel Aviv University's Coller School of Management, based on government data, counts 50,000 departures a year - for the most part doctors or engineers, with 80 percent under 40 and on high incomes. The finding triggered a controversy when published in February 2026, and it lands weeks before an election many describe as a decision point for their own futures.

A brain drain driven by politics

Ater, who makes no secret of his staunch opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, traces the start of the wave to the summer of 2023 - before October 7. In his view, the departure of graduates began with the judicial overhaul Netanyahu introduced in January 2023, and the sharp rise in departures that summer preceded the massacre.

The economist is categorical that economics is not the cause: the brain drain is not driven by economic factors or by cuts in funding for public services, research or innovation, he said, but is primarily a reaction to the political situation. Surveying the events of the past four years - October 7, the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, the reservists' draft, Iran - he called the picture crazy, no matter how you look at it.

He also pointed to the government allocating huge sums to ultra-Orthodox Jews, while secular Israelis do military service and pay taxes. Academics, he said, suffer from a lot of boycotts, and some research collaborations are terminated because the researchers are from Israel as the country's image deteriorates.

The stakes, in his analysis, are structural: the Israeli economy depends heavily on human capital because the country has no natural resources, unlike Venezuela or Iran. In total, 150,000 graduates have already packed their bags since 2023, and Ater believes a victory by the right and the ultra-nationalist far right on October 27 could push more to leave. His wish, he said, is simple: "As a citizen and as an economist, I want Israel to become a sane country again – a normal country".

Tamar: 'I don't recognise the country I grew up in anymore'

Tamar, 32, a product manager at a company specialising in AI, is one of those weighing the question. If the ruling coalition is re-elected, she said, she would seriously consider leaving the country with her husband and their one-year-old son.

• •The "endless wars", the influence of Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and "Benjamin Netanyahu's lies" have become unbearable, she said
• •Her husband has served more than 400 days of reserve duty over the past three years, and she said the war keeps her from sleeping
• •She is angry at the government for allowing the ultra-Orthodox to avoid military service
• •She is looking into her company's offices in Europe and the United States, and said the government has destroyed Israel's relationships with countries worldwide

"I don't recognise the country I grew up in anymore – even though my mother's side of my family has lived in Jerusalem for 14 generations," she said.

Tamar said she has family living in New Jersey who are now afraid to say they're Jewish. Her biggest fear is raising her son in Israel, where she sees no liberal values and where a small number of religious fanatics control everything. In today's Israel, she said, "saying you're on the left has become a bad word. I want to live in a democratic state". On October 27, she will vote for Gadi Eisenkot, the main opponent to Netanyahu, or for former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Maya: a doctor who feels violence creeping in

Maya, a 42-year-old general practitioner in Tel Aviv whose husband works in tech, has three young children - the last nearly born in a shelter during a strike. With the mobilisation of reservists, she said, healthcare, education and early-childhood sectors are shortstaffed, and "I feel violence creeping in everywhere".

She places responsibility for society's polarisation on Netanyahu, who was already in power when she was in sixth grade. She fears for her parents' safety: her 73-year-old mother, a lawyer, has joined every anti-Netanyahu protest for four years, was knocked down by a police officer on horseback, and had her photo posted on social media because she defended Palestinians from the West Bank in her work. "I think this campaign was orchestrated by very powerful people," Maya said.

Her husband wants to leave because he worries the election results will trigger violence in Israel, and she thinks he is right; she has started looking into where she could work abroad. After the elections, the family will visit friends who moved to Portugal, and they are also thinking about Athens, where many Israelis moved after October 7.

Her convictions make staying complicated. "I feel that, in my name and with money from my taxes, horrible war crimes are being committed," she said of Gaza. She is not ready, she added, to stop treating people like human beings because of the place they were born in or the language they speak. Of men returning from reserve duty, she said they are traumatised, become violent and are desperate because their professional activity is crumbling.

A fractured country goes to the polls

The departures unfold against a society still traumatised by Hamas's unprecedented attacks of October 7, 2023, where dialogue has fractured between demands for revenge and calls to understand the failure. The tension broke into the open at this year's commemorations, when Yinon Magal, a journalist from Channel 14 - a channel that very aggressively supports Netanyahu's government - caused a scandal by asking loved ones of former Israeli hostages to apologise to the government.

The journalist's target was the group behind a 2024 collective volume, "Mr. Abandonment: the legacy of the man who forsook the hostages", written by relatives of hostages and critical of how Netanyahu managed the hostage crisis. Magal called the authors "the most despicable people who live in the State of Israel".

One relative pushed back: Yarden Bibas's sister - Bibas is one of the former hostages whose wife and two children died in captivity - described the remarks as a deliberate campaign to incite hatred and sow division. Its sole purpose, she said, was to keep in power a leader who refuses to take responsibility for the greatest failure the country has experienced.

The October 27 vote, Israel's first since October 7, divides the country on several fronts:

• •military service exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox
• •Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to create a commission of inquiry into the massacre committed by Hamas
• •whether Arab parties should be in a future opposition coalition

For those counting 50,000 departures a year, the result may settle more than the next government: Ater believes a right-wing victory could drive more graduates out, and Tamar and Maya are among those waiting on the outcome before deciding where their families will live.