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Almost 29,000 Jews moved to Israel in 2017

February 28, 2018 at 9:01 am

A detailed report about Jewish migration to Israeli in 2017 shows that Russia and Ukraine were the largest providers of immigrants, Quds Press reported yesterday.

Prepared in partnership with the Israeli Ministry for Immigrant Absorption, the report revealed that 7,224 Russian Jews and 7,182 Ukrainian Jews made the decision to “make aliyah” by moving to Israel last year. Aliyah is regarded as “one of the most basic tenets of Zionism.”

A total of 28,598 Jewish immigrants were recorded by the Israeli authorities. After Russia and Ukraine, French Jews were the biggest group, with 4,224 migrants. There were also 3,000 US Jews who moved to the Zionist state.

The economic crisis and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine were the main reasons for the migration, said the report.

Israel has made a lot of effort to persuade Jews from Europe and the US to migrate to Israel in order to maintain the demographic superiority of Jewish citizens in the state. Although 20 per cent of the Israeli population are Palestinians, Israel has consistently denied those who were ethnically-cleansed from Palestine since 1948, along with their descendants, their legal right of return to their homeland.

Read: Recognition of Palestine is tethered to an absence of vision