A new group has emerged in Israel calling on citizens to emigrate from the country, amid fears of policies that the next right-wing government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu may implement.
The group called “Let’s leave the country together” is active on social media, with a campaign aimed at persuading 10,000 Israeli citizens to immigrate abroad.
In a post on his Facebook account, Yaniv Goralik, who leads the group, said: “Given what is happening in the country, unfortunately we have to prepare an option in case we have to move abroad, the country is important to me but we see what is happening, we see what government will be formed and what they will”.
Hundreds of Israelis joined the campaign’s Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Telegram accounts, without it being clear whether citizens actually immigrated outside the country.
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The local media dealt with the new immigration campaign, but officials in the parties that will form the next government did not comment on it.
Netanyahu has until December 21 to form a government, after he agreed with religious and extremist right-wing parties to form it, which was condemned by local and international voices.
On the Telegram platform, Goralik wrote: “After changing the regimes and the nature of the country for the worse and life is not the same, we decided to organize a group to leave the country, initially the first part will be 10,000 people and it will be expanded later.”
According to the Anatolian correspondent, it is clear from the comments on social media accounts that the supporters of this group are secular people who fear the application of Jewish religious laws.
On Twitter, independent journalist Or Lee Bar Lev wrote: “The laws planned by the effectively formed coalition will change the type of regime in Israel. They will crush democracy and the state institutions that protect it and establish an oppressive dictatorship that works against the citizens.”
Supporters of this group are also active in protests organized in Israeli cities against the government under formation.
“Thousands of concerned and determined citizens demonstrated this evening (last Saturday) against plans to form a coalition to crush the justice system and end democracy,” Barlev said on Saturday evening.
Secular and left-wing Israelis fear the influence of the religious and right-wing nationalist parties after they join the new government.
And last week, Netanyahu said that “every person lives according to his faith, and there will not be a Sharia state here, but a state in which we take care of all the citizens of Israel without any exception.”
“We have been elected to lead the national right and the liberal right, and that is what we will do,” he added.
Among the supporters of the group calling for emigration outside the country, the American Jewish businessman Mordechai Kahane.
On Twitter, Kahane wrote: “After years of smuggling Jews from war zones in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Ukraine to Israel, I decided to help Israelis immigrate to the United States.”
The Jewish businessman did not provide more about his initiative, but Kahane’s name emerged years ago in helping Jews in conflict areas to immigrate to Israel.
Kahane asked, “Will Zionism end with the formation of Netanyahu’s new government?”
For his part, Zvika Klein, a commentator in the Israeli newspaper “The Jerusalem Post”, pointed out that an American Jew offered to receive immigrants in a kibbutz on his land in New Jersey in the United States.
In a tweet on Twitter, Klein said, “A new movement is trying to mobilize 10,000 Israelis to leave the country together after the election results and shift the country in a more conservative direction.”