The Two Million We Shouldn't Want

Gadi Eizenkot wants two million Jews to make aliyah by 2048. A million in the next decade, a million more after that. His party, Yisrael, has spent months building a policy paper on it - golden visas, “hybrid residency,” tax breaks for returning academics, a One-Stop-Shop to cut through the bureaucracy that’s driven away 208,000 Israelis since 2023, 80% of them working-age professionals.

On its face, it’s a serious, technocratic answer to a real problem: Israel is bleeding brains, and this is a great way to attract talent back to the country.

My first reaction was the obvious one. Two million more Jews in Israel is two million more scientists, soldiers, engineers, taxpayers, and grandchildren. More brainpower, more solutions, new ideas; it's an injection of not only human capital but actual capital into the country. It’s more weight behind the state, more depth on the bench, more of everything that makes a small country punch above its size (which we already do).

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized thisis not what we want, and this is why.