indeed we can be and are content living here so our new life we dont need to do in our graves from the olah vatika

Just childishly mean

to do this.

heal if it ever does. Look at the Kush Gatif people who left Gaza. They cannot get past it, being forced to leave their homes and start over. It is the same for Israelis who feel forced to leave Israel for various reasons. It is painful and scarring and they need help to not relive the past disappointments they did not have the strength or will to overcome and stay in Israel. People who are not Jews in their hearts do not have the connection to Elohim to endure all things and remain where He wants them to be. Don't worry, they will return since the wolves and hounds of Satan will drive them back.

It's too pathetic the way some people react to what is, after all, the right of free speech. People have left not because they hate the place, but because they feel there is no future here. Unemployment is rising, pay is dropping, costs are ludicrously high, corruption has become a way of life, work conditions in most places are frequently ghastly and the politics are about as filthy as politics can go. They want a future, they deserve more than paying 60% of their earnings for a roof over their heads? Why shouldn't they want a future, too, without having to pay 500% more for a tube of toothpaste, 1200% more (that's for real) for a headache tablet and 9 shekels for a single leek for the soup? As the author rather weirdly puts it at the end - it's envy for those who've managed to "escape" and as for starting "a new life in our graves", we don't even get a choice in Israel about that! It's the money grubbing rabbinate on the family's back for more as soon as you've taken your last breath.

You have one life and expectations some do have children and duty to provide them conditions for better start than they had ,...

Raanan Shaked is talking about the bombardment of articles and reports in the Israeli press in the last few weeks about (usually) young Israelis who moved (usually) to Berlin because of the high cost of living in Israel and who encourage other young Israelis to follow them and leave Israel and who don't stop complaining about how terrible the situation in Israel is. These are disgusting articles not because the cost of living in Israel is not high, but because I think people should stay here and fight from within to make a change and not leave Israel (certainly not for Germany!), encourage others to leave and childishly think that by this they protest against the high cost of living in Israel. Once they leave Israel they have no right to lecture and accuse and blame. As Raanan Shaked wrote - you left - good for you, now leave us alone already! Stop with the bashing.

well said dikla . some people of the me me me generation just can't shut up . they are such cry babies that after giving up and quiting they go on crying.

so what the hell is he banging on about? he survives by belittling his country every day

..and tell us about it earn't trying to rub our noses in it, they are trying to help us to wake up to the fact that the higher powers in this country are trying to wear us down financially. Wake up you guys and smell the coffee. The system as it is today is only working for the well of. We need boots on the streets in order to change the status quo!

I have lived in Israel, sometimes for years and months at a time, as a virtually volunteer surgeon and university professor, since 1986. One of of my sons was born there and, not for that particular reason, is un-dyingly loyal to Israel as he is to Hashem, first, and to me, second. I admit that it is often hard living in Israel. But, morally and in many other ways, not as hard as living in some more physically comfortable place, like grossly mis-named "G-d's Own" New Zealand; my birthplace, where thinly veiled anti-semitism and blatant anti-Israelism are rife. I make Aliyah next month, to continue being part of the solution, not part of the problem that some comfort-seekers and money-lovers who abandon Israel perpetuate by their embittering actions and words, and with those slander Eretz Israel and her people and her human and humane benificence worldwide.

Why does Israel not issue passports to Israeli's living abroad for many years. All they get is a Laissez Passe? Really? and were called Yordim as if that is a curse. It's not. What about making conditions better so that young families can afford to buy homes anywhere in Israel? What about making it more pleasant. I do believe if peace were made some (not all) of these problems would change.