In an interview with the Israel Hayom newspaper, which will be published in full tomorrow, the head of the Jewish Agency Yitzhak Herzog expressed his hopes that the current global crisis would spur up to a quarter of a million Jews to immigrate to Israel in the next three to five years.
According to Herzog, however, due to the lack of a government plan for integrating new immigrants into society and the workforce, this historic opportunity could well turn into a historic missed opportunity of tragic proportions.
"This may sound strange considering the economic, social, and political scene right now," he admitted, "but I really think that immigration might turn out to be one of the things that gets us out of this crisis."
"From our experience, every wave of immigration holds within it the potentialities of economic recovery and growth. This is a tremendous opportunity for Israel, in both social and economic terms," he concluded.