(...) the largest sources of immigrants – France and Ukraine – stem from a combination of anti-Semitism and economic factors, Sharansky said that French Jews have a choice of where to move, and they have overwhelmingly chosen to come here.
Anti-Semitism may drive emigration from Europe, but other factors impel those who leave to come here, he said. “They have a choice, to stay in France, where there is the biggest welfare basket ever,” to travel to other European Union nations or to immigrate to Montreal, where there are few cultural adjustments to make and which was until recently their primary destination, he said. According to Sharansky, “the overwhelming majority” of Jewish émigrés from France, possibly up to 70 percent, choose to go to Israel. “So [Theodor] Herzl was right, Israel will be a magnet.”
“When the Jewish Agency emissaries ask them why they want to go to Israel, they say they want to live in a Jewish state. People don’t understand how the status of Israel is changing in the minds of people,” Sharansky said, adding that previously, when Jews had the choice, “overwhelmingly they didn’t go to Israel. The second and third aliya from Russia, for every Jew who went to Palestine, 20 Jews went to America.” (...)
Of some 600,000 French Jews, “hundreds of thousands” of them are now contemplating leaving the country, he added. “Right now, everyday the Jewish Agency is organizing two evening [meetings] for 200 people to give them basic information about aliya. A year ago we had one meeting a month, then we had one a week, and now we have two evenings every day. Fifty thousand people have asked for information this year, and I’m speaking about the area of Paris.”
According to a 2013 study of European Jewry by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, up to a third of the Jews in several countries are mulling emigration.
More: Jerusalem Post
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