As tens of thousands of Israelis continue to join weekly protests over the government’s highly controversial plans to change the justice system, as many as one in three citizens are thinking of leaving the country, according to a poll.
Professor Chen Hofmann is one of them. Together with his wife and their children, they start the Jewish Sabbath with a meal together every Friday evening. Nowadays they end it at a huge anti-government rally.
“It’s not our ritual to go and protest in the streets but we’re forced to because we’re losing our country, that’s how we feel,” says the doctor at the weekly Saturday night demonstration in central Tel Aviv.
The top Israeli radiologist is now moving to a hospital in the UK and is trying to persuade other members of his family, who all have European passports, to consider leaving.
“I’m going to London for a sabbatical, and this will be my laboratory to see if I can live outside Israel,” he explains. “If the situation will be so bad, and it’s worsening every day, we’ll find a new place to live.”