JTA — When Iris Meiri-Snir moved from Israel to northern Italy last month, she gave up a job she loved, proximity to her children and grandchildren, and the social and professional ties she had built over a lifetime.

She and her husband, Hagai Agmon-Snir, left their home in Mevaseret Zion, an explicitly ideological choice that places them among a growing number of Israelis building their lives elsewhere.

Meiri-Snir was vice principal at a leading Jerusalem high school, while Agmon-Snir, a neuroscientist, spent decades working on coexistence initiatives involving Palestinians, Haredim, LGBTQ Israelis and other communities. As the country pushed rightward, they found themselves increasingly on the fringe.

“Leaving is our way of expressing our opposition,” Agmon-Snir said, adding that he would encourage others who felt the same way to do likewise.

For years, the couple belonged to the optimistic camp that believed Israeli society could still return to the liberal values they upheld. By the time they decided to move to Arona, a town on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, that conviction had disappeared. Despite their comfortable lives in Israel, they no longer felt they could justify staying.

They have been public about their journey out of their homeland, speaking with JTA and Israel’s Channel 11. “If I ignore all the political and social crap happening around me, what do I have to complain about here?” he told the Kan public broadcaster in an interview filmed before the couple left Israel. “We’ve got it pretty good.”

“But it’s no longer possible to be part of what’s happening here,” he added, arguing that a “fascist current” in Israel had moved into the mainstream.

The Snirs are not alone. A Tel Aviv University study showed that Israeli immigration has remained at record levels, with an estimated 40,000 and 50,000 citizens exiting for at least a year in each of the past three years, a record run of emigration that began amid the political upheaval of 2023. It continued through the wars that followed the bloody October 7 Hamas-led onslaught that year.

The authors of the study said the current numbers do not yet pose a significant economic or security risk, but warned that could change if emigration continues to rise. They pointed to what they called a “dangerous” increase in the so-called brain drain, or the departure of highly educated, high-earning Israelis. A separate Israel Tax Authority study found that emigrants’ incomes before leaving were about 50% higher than the national average, with doctors and engineers disproportionately represented.

The movement, however, is not all in one direction. More than........

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