Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

France Is Largest Source of Immigration to Israel in 2014

Reaching a 25-year high, immigration to Israel from France has become the largest single source of newcomers to Israel so far this year.

Some 4,566 French immigrants arrived in Israel from January through Sept. 1, surpassing Russia, with 2,632 immigrants, and Ukraine, with 3,252 immigrants. The United States, whose Jewish population is more than 10 times that of France, has sent 2,218 new immigrants to Israel so far this year.

The figures were published on Sept. 1 by Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. The number of French immigrants in 2014 is the highest on record since 1989 and already has surpassed last year’s record-breaking number of 3,263 French newcomers. In 2004, another banner year for French aliyah, there were 2,948 French immigrants to Israel.

Between 1989 and 2013, an average of 1,943 French immigrants arrived in Israel per year.

Immigration from Ukraine — where government troops are fighting pro-Russian separatists in a conflict that has produced thousands of casualties and tens of thousands of displaced persons — also increased dramatically this year.

The 3,252 immigrants who came to Israel from Ukraine since January constituted a 61-percent increase over the 1,270 Ukrainian immigrants who arrived in Israel during the corresponding months last year.

Officials from the Jewish Agency for Israel, the quasi-governmental agency responsible for organizing Jewish immigration to Israel, said the increase in immigration from France is connected to rising levels of anti-Semitism in France, a stagnant French economy and strong levels of Zionist sentiment among French Jews.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.