In former years, they would have been called traitors. Now they only cause profound soul-searching. One of the two had left Israel because the highly-regarded Weizmann Institute did not offer him a professorship. Why did we let him go? What about all the others?
Actually, this is not a specifically Israeli problem. Brain-flight is taking place all over the world. An ambitious scientist longs for the best of laboratories, the most prestigious university. Young minds from all over the world flock to the US. Israelis are no exception.
We have good universities. Three of them figure somewhere on the list of the world's hundred best. But who can resist the temptations of Harvard or MIT?
THE SUDDEN disillusion caused Israelis to take a hard look at Israeli academia. It appears that our standards are slipping all along the line. Our universities are under-funded by the government, the number of professors and their quality decreasing. High-school students are slipping in their exams.
Why?
Immense funds are swallowed by the army, whose demands grow from year to year, though our security situation is improving all the time.
Our eternal occupation of the Palestinian territories is a drain on our meager resources. So are the settlements, of course. Our government invests in them huge sums of money. The exact amounts are a state secret.
In the long run, a small country with limited resources cannot sustain a huge army, as well as an occupation regime and hundreds of settlements, without depriving everything else. One single fighter plane costs more than a school or a hospital or a laboratory.
BUT MY worry about emigration is not limited to material considerations.
People do not leave for material reasons only. They may think that they are emigrating because life in Berlin is cheaper than in Tel Aviv, apartments easier to find, salaries higher. But it is not only the strength of the attraction of foreign lands that counts -- it is also the strength or weakness of the bond to the homeland.
In the years when "descenders" were considered trash, we were proud of being Israeli. During the fifties and sixties, whenever I presented my Israeli passport at any border control, I felt good. Israel was viewed with admiration throughout the world, not least by our enemies.
I believe that it is a basic human right to be proud of one's society, one's country. People belong to nations. Even in today's global village, most people need the sense of belonging to a certain place, a certain people. No one wants to be ashamed of them.
Today, when presenting his passport, an Israeli feels no such pride. He may feel a sense of contrariness ("us against the whole world"), but he or she is conscious of his country being considered by many as an apartheid state, oppressing another people. Every person abroad has seen countless photos of heavily armed Israel soldiers confronting Palestinian women and children. Nothing to be proud of.
This is not a subject anyone ever speaks of. But it is there. And it is bound to get worse.
Jewish Israelis are already a minority in the country ruled by Israel, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. The majority of subjects deprived of all rights is growing by the year. Oppression will necessarily grow. The image of Israel throughout the world will get worse. Pride in Israel will fade.
ONE EFFECT is already becoming obvious.
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