> Apparently the Israeli government treats this information as
> confidential, but I've seen mention of a net loss due to emigration.
I have no idea how it nets out, but qualitatively I bet there's a kind of unequal, osmotic exchange going on -- capable, intelligent people coming from there to here, and chiliastic nutters going from here to there.
I know a lot of former Israelis -- partly because I work in a technical field, and partly because I live in New York. They range from very amiable to quite odious, but what they nearly all have in common is a certain cynical, this-worldly realism. That's the mindset that's coming here. The Meir Kahane types that we breed in our hothouse outer-borough yeshivas, and send there, are a very different story. What is it about America -- even the Jews go bonkers, and G-d help the goyim.
Then there were all those Russian Jews who went to Israel in the 70s and 80s -- a pretty chip-on-the-shoulder bunch, and judging by the Russian Jews I know who came here, deeply racist about anybody with darker skin than theirs. At the risk of making a grossly offensive ethnic generalization, this seems to be more of a Russian thing than a Jewish or even Russian-Jewish thing.
On a more cheerful note, the Russia-to-Israel population transfer was a one-time singularity and is unlikely to be repeated. The trickle of fanatics from Brooklyn to the West Bank, however, is ongoing -- though I have no idea of its scale. Does anybody else have any numbers?
-- --Michael J. Smith --mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org