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The Myth of Exodus: Media Bias and Israel’s Growing Population
Some 300 new immigrants from France arrive on a special “Aliyah Flight” organized by the Jewish Agency, at Ben-Gurion Airport in central Israel on July 23, 2018. More French Jews are expected to arrive. Photo: Miriam Alster/Flash90.
A false narrative of mass departures from Israel has gained traction in international media, painting a misleading picture of a nation in retreat.
New data shows Israel’s population reached a historic milestone of 10 million citizens in 2024. While a record 82,700 people emigrated last year, net migration was 26,100 (-0.261 percent) when accounting for the 32,800 new immigrants and the 23,800 Israelis who returned home despite the war, a testament to the nation’s enduring appeal.
In its 2024 estimates of rates of net migration, the CIA World Factbook listed 50 countries ahead of Israel. And yet the media seem relatively oblivious to people fleeing countries like Indonesia, Qatar, Mexico, Peru, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, and many other countries at a vastly higher clip.
Investigating how the “flight-from-Israel” story gets told today serves as a case study in confirmation bias and of the power of preconceived narratives against Israel.
In the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, atrocities and South Africa’s genocide allegations at the International Court of Justice, media outlets predicted gloom for Israel’s population.
The Guardian spoke, in December 2023, of a “mass exodus.” Less than two months after Hamas’ depredations into Israel, Reuters highlighted “Israelis seeking refuge abroad.” Just two weeks ago, the Associated Press reported how “information points to a surge of Israelis leaving.” This creates an image of a nation in inexorable decline. Yet the nuanced data tells a markedly different story.
Immigration to Israel (aliyah) actually increased by 25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023. Roughly 35,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel since the October 7th massacres. A third of the new immigrants to Israel have been aged 18 to 35 years old. The Jewish Agency’s latest figures show robust immigration from diverse regions: 75,000 from North America, 45,000 from Europe, 35,000 from the former Soviet Union, and 15,000 from Latin America in 2023 alone.
The data reveals what Israeli cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky called confirmation bias; in this case, observers interpret information to confirm their preexisting beliefs about Israel’s inexorable demise. Also on display is the availability heuristic, where dramatic stories of departure receive outsized attention compared to a stream of present or future arrivals.
Another bias in this narrative is the hasty generalization bias, an insidious form of inductive fallacy where isolated instances of emigration are extrapolated to misrepresent future trends.
This fallacy intensified following South Africa’s genocide libel against Israel, as media narratives amplified the unending departure myth despite evidence of increased solidarity and aliyah among South African Jews. Immigration from South Africa to Israel boomed by 20 percent after October 7, 2023.
This media narrative pattern isn’t new. Historical data reveals similar misconceptions during past challenges faced by Israel.
In the 1970s, economic instability was supposed to trigger ballooning departures, yet immigration from the USSR outpaced emigration. During the 1980s, the Lebanon War and intifadas allegedly sparked an exodus, but temporary emigration was offset by returnees and new immigrants. The 2000s saw predictions of a brain drain from Israel amid the tech bubble burst, only for the tech sector to rebound and attract global Jewish talent.
Israel’s latest Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) data puts these narratives in perspective. Israel’s population grew by 1.1 percent (129,600 people) in 2024. Although increased emigration and casualties from the Hamas war lent some credence to a temporary departure narrative, the fundamental trend remains positive, and the future is wondrous. The Jewish population stands at 7.7 million (76.9 percent), with 2.1 million Arabs (21 percent) and 210,000 others (two percent).
This persistent gap between perception and reality may reflect motivated reasoning, where emotional or ideological preferences shape how information is processed. In other words, what Kahneman and Tversky called confirmation bias intensifies in the media.
Reporters, sometimes influenced by an ingrained animus toward Israel’s sustainability, repeatedly fall into the trap of catastrophizing temporary challenges to Israel, while overlooking the nation’s proven resilience.
The phenomenon also demonstrates the bandwagon fallacy, sometimes called the “appeal to common belief,” where the repetition of a narrative across multiple outlets creates the illusion of validity.
Each outlet citing others’ similar reports creates an echo chamber that can drown out contradictory data.
As Israel begins 2025 with its largest population ever, it is worth examining how these cognitive biases shape international discourse. The story of Israel’s population growth in the face of pummeling adversity doesn’t fit neatly into preconceived storylines of fragility and exodus.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ adage applies to exposing any false narrative that diminishes Israel’s future: “Wrestle with it, refusing to let it go until it blesses you, until you emerge stronger, better or wiser than you were before. To be a Jew is not to accept defeat. That is the meaning of faith.”
Neil Seeman is a Senior Fellow at Massey College in the University of Toronto. His latest book is Accelerated Minds: Unlocking the Fascinating, Inspiring, and Often Destructive Impulses that Drive the Entrepreneurial Brain.
The post The Myth of Exodus: Media Bias and Israel’s Growing Population first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Military Expert: Doha Strike Was Backed by US and Qatar Coup, Will Bring Hostage Deal Closer
A damaged building, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders, according to an Israeli official, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Israel’s unprecedented strike on Hamas leaders in Doha this week was not a rogue act of military aggression, but rather the outcome of quiet coordination between Qatar and the US that could bring a hostage deal closer, Israeli intelligence expert Eyal Pinko said on Wednesday.
The strike, which officials have said was planned months ago, came a day after 10 Israelis were killed by Hamas in Gaza and Jerusalem. Four were soldiers who died in an attack on an Israeli tank in northern Gaza. The separate shooting attack in Jerusalem, in which six Israelis were killed and several more wounded, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” Pinko, a national security expert who served in Israeli intelligence for more than three decades, said in a press briefing.
Pinko contended that while Qatar publicly condemned the attacks, it also enabled them. “I am sure they were involved and the attack was coordinated with the [Qataris],” Pinko later told The Algemeiner.
The most recent round of negotiations to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal were nothing more than a “deception” by the US and Israel designed to gather Hamas leaders in one place “in order to set the timing to eliminate them,” he said.
Pinko said the strike should also be seen in light of US President Donald Trump’s impatience with the stalled hostage talks, arguing it showed Trump was on board with assassinations of Hamas leaders despite public declarations that he was “very unhappy” with the attack. He also pointed to Trump’s comments from last month, in which the US president predicted the Gaza conflict would reach a “conclusive ending” within two or three weeks.
Qatar, which has long hosted Hamas’s exiled leadership, benefits strategically from replacing the terrorist group’s leaders loyal to Iran with figures it can trust, Pinko maintained. Doha holds billions of dollars belonging to Hamas officials and has no interest in letting Ankara or Tehran displace it as the group’s patron. The timing of the attack is also significant, Pinko said, coming in the wake of Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program over the summer. “Iran is in a very bad situation. Qatar can easily overcome Iran,” he said.
Pinko further argued that the strike may serve to bring forward the release of the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza since Hamas itself was no longer a coherent negotiating partner. The terrorist group operating in Gaza had become fragmented, “divided into five families that are fighting each other” and sometimes giving the impression that “they hate each other more than they hate Israel,” Pinko said. Recent talks proved “there was no longer a decisionmaker in Hamas,” and this disarray had allowed Hamas leaders to drag out the process with unrealistic demands. Removing those figures, he argued, would leave room for Qatar to install leaders who could cut a deal. “This will make the negotiation process much faster,” he said.
Pinko’s assessment stands in stark contrast to the fears of some of the families of the remaining 48 hostages held in Gaza, who said in a statement they had “grave fear” the Doha strike could sabotage the chances of bringing their loved ones home.
He placed the operation in a wider context, linking it to the revival of the Abraham Accords and US efforts to build a trade corridor from India through the Gulf to Israel and Europe as a counterweight to China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative, ending with Gaza as a key trade hub. “Trump is very serious in making the northern part of the Gaza Strip as [having] US autonomy. That will be the end of the American belt and road initiative to compete with the Chinese,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called on Qatar, which “gives safe haven [and] harbors terrorists,” to expel them or bring them to justice, adding that if they don’t, “we will.”
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, for his part said his country would retaliate over the strike, and accused Netanyahu of “wasting” Qatar’s time in negotiations and “leading the Middle East to chaos.”
Pinko called out Doha for its “duplicity” in pretending to be a peacemaker on the one hand, while “fueling Hamas and hatred” in the US and Europe, on the other.
“They are against Israel in their DNA. They don’t want Israel to exist,” he said. “So Gaza and Hamas are a very important asset for them.”
Some critics have denounced the Doha strike as a violation of international law, but international law experts note that Article 51 of the UN Charter recognizes a state’s inherent right to self-defense and that this right is not confined by geography if attacks are directed from outside its borders. The so-called “unwilling or unable” doctrine holds that if a host country does not act against militants on its soil, the victim state may use proportionate force.
The US relied on this doctrine when it killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in a 2011 operation that was widely hailed by Western governments and the UN, whose then secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said at the time that he was “very much relieved by news that justice has been done” and called it “a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism.”
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Germany Presses Main Mosque Network to Distance Itself From Erdogan Ally Over Antisemitism
Ali Erbas, president of Diyanet, speaks at a press conference following an August 2025 gathering in Istanbul, where 150 Islamic scholars called for armed resistance and a boycott against Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Amid a rising wave of anti-Jewish hate crimes, the German government is pressing the country’s main mosque association over its close ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urging it to publicly distance itself from his antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.
According to local reports, German authorities have told the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) — the country’s largest mosque network — to formally break with Erdogan’s hateful statements or risk losing government support and cooperation.
“We expect the federal government’s cooperation partners to clearly distance themselves from organizations and individuals who spread antisemitic messages or promote Islamist agendas,” a spokesperson for Germany’s Federal Ministry of Interior said in a statement to German media.
For years, the German government has supported DITIB in training imams, as well as helping to foster community programs and religious initiatives.
In 2023, then-Interior Minister Nancy Faeser signed an agreement with the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) and DITIB for a new imam training program.
By sending imams from Turkey and paying their salaries, the Diyanet oversees DITIB and its hundreds of communities across Germany, shaping the ideological direction of more than 900 mosques and influencing the training of their imams.
Under a new program, however, the Diyanet no longer sends imams directly from Turkey. Instead, Turkish students are trained in Germany in cooperation with the German Islam Conference (IKD).
Since March 1 of this year, the Interior Ministry has designated €465,000 in support for the program, according to the German newspaper Die Welt.
With this new agreement, imams live permanently in German communities and have no formal ties to the Turkish government. Still, experts doubt that this alone would curb the Diyanet’s political influence.
In the past, DITIB has faced multiple controversies, with some members making antisemitic remarks and spreading hateful messages.
“The continuation of measures adopted for this purpose, such as the training initiative, will largely depend on DITIB’s conduct and the success of the process,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
The German government’s latest warning came after a conference in Istanbul last month, where 150 Islamic scholars called for armed resistance against Israel, a boycott against the country, and “global jihad.”
Among those attending was Ali Erbas, president of Diyanet, with whom the German government signed the new agreement in 2023.
Erbas has repeatedly made public antisemitic statements, defended the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct.7, 2023, and called for the mobilization of “all forms of jihad.”
“The Zionist regime is committing outright genocide in Gaza. We believe it is haram, or forbidden, to remain silent in the face of oppression. Therefore, everyone can take action. The boycott of Zionist occupiers’ goods must continue,” Erbas reportedly said during the conference.
“We firmly affirm that the Palestinian people have all legitimate forms of resistance against the Zionist occupation, including armed resistance. We also consider it necessary to mobilize the Ummah [Islamic community] for all forms of jihad in the way of Allah,” he continued.
“Bir avuç azgın topluluk, tüm dünyayı felakete sürüklüyor”https://t.co/ieip8gNvkt pic.twitter.com/jZn5Tgc1Ah
— Diyanet (@diyanetbasin) August 29, 2025
The German government strongly condemned Erbas’s comments, questioning DITIB’s relationship with a public figure whose statements and antisemitic ideology contradict their cooperation agreement.
“These events underscore, once again, the problematic structural and personal links between DITIB and the Turkish religious authority,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
“Cooperation with DITIB requires a clear commitment to the values of the Basic Law, to international understanding, to Israel’s right to exist, and to a firm opposition to both Islamism and antisemitism,” the statement read.
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EU Targets Israel With Sanctions and Partial Trade Suspension, Von der Leyen Calls for Ceasefire Amid Gaza War
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers the State of the European Union address to the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
The executive body of the European Union will propose sanctions against certain Israeli ministers and partially suspend the EU’s association agreement with Israel, in one of its latest efforts to pressure Jerusalem over the war in Gaza.
On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled new measures targeting the 25-year-old pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with Israel, in one of the latest attempts to curb the Jewish state’s defensive campaign against Hamas.
“What is happening in Gaza has shaken the conscience of the world,” von der Leyen said in a State of the Union speech to the European Parliament in France.
“People killed while begging for food. Mothers holding lifeless babies,” she continued. “Man-made famine can never be a weapon of war. For the sake of the children, for the sake of humanity. This must stop.”
This latest move is part of an increasingly hostile campaign by some European countries against the Jewish state, building on previous efforts to undermine Israel internationally.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced von der Leyen’s comments as “regrettable,” adding that some of her remarks were “tainted by echoing the false propaganda of Hamas and its partners.”
“Israel, the world’s only Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East, is fighting a war of existence against extremist enemies working to eliminate it. The international community must back Israel in this struggle,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.
“Once again, Europe conveys the wrong message that strengthens Hamas and the radical axis in the Middle East,” he continued. “Anyone who seeks an end to the war knows very well how to end it: the release of the hostages, the disarmament of Hamas, a new future for Gaza.”
Saar added, “Hurting Israel will not bring this about; on the contrary, it entrenches Hamas and Israel’s enemies in their refusal.”
The President of the European Commission’s comments this morning are regrettable. Some of them are also tainted by echoing the false propaganda of Hamas and its partners.
Once again, Europe conveys the wrong message that strengthens Hamas and the radical axis in the Middle East.…— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) September 10, 2025
Von der Leyen’s announcement came just a day after Jerusalem carried out strikes against Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar, which has supported the Palestinian terrorist group for years.
In her speech, von der Leyen denounced Israel’s actions, accusing the country of causing starvation in the war-torn enclave of Gaza and undermining ceasefire negotiations.
She also condemned the expansion of settlements in parts of the West Bank and denounced comments from some government ministers that she said incite violence.
“All of this points to a clear attempt to undermine the two-state solution, to undermine the vision of a viable Palestinian state. And we must not let this happen,” von der Leyen said.
Israel has vehemently denied any accusations of causing starvation in Gaza, noting that it has provided and facilitated significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout much of the war.
Israeli officials have also said much of the aid that flows into Gaza is stolen by Hamas, which uses it for terrorist operations and sells the rest at high prices to Gazan civilians. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.
Jerusalem has also argued it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Under the new proposed measures, the EU would partially suspend its trade pact with Israel, removing preferential treatment for Israeli goods that make up nearly a third of the country’s total international trade.
Von der Leyen also announced that the EU will suspend its bilateral support for Israel, while maintaining engagement with Israeli civil society and Yad Vashem, the country’s main Holocaust memorial center.
In addition, the European Commission “will propose sanctions on the extremist ministers and on violent settlers” and plans to set up a “Palestine donor group” next month, with a dedicated mechanism to support Gaza’s reconstruction following the war.
At the end of her speech, von der Leyen called for the release of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas, the “unrestrained” entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and “an immediate ceasefire.”
“There can never be any place for Hamas, neither now nor in future because they are terrorists who want to destroy Israel,” the European Commission head said.
“They are also inflicting terror on their own people, keeping their future hostage.”