Any Israeli politician urging Jews overseas to come should be asked: “What are you doing to make that process easier?”

It’s so precise and metronomic, you have to wonder if the calls for aliyah are pre-programmed. Every time there’s a terror attack abroad, Israeli politicians respond with calls to depart given (mostly-European) country and come home. As news broke of the open season on Israelis/Jews in Amsterdam two weeks ago, it was former defense and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s turn: “I call upon the Jews of Europe not to delay like they did before the Holocaust,” he posted. “Leave everything and immigrate to Israel.”

Lieberman has form on the subject — he issued the same call after the recent French elections — but it’s a well-worn road, dotted with similar statements by Netanyahu, Bennett, and others.

To be clear: No one is betting on a long-term European future for Jews. European politicians mouth platitudes like “Europe without Jews isn’t Europe,” but they won’t act on the number one threat — the rising thuggery of the pro-Hamas mob.

That said, any Israeli politician urging Jews overseas to come should be asked: “What are you doing to make that process easier?” Chazal say Eretz Yisrael is acquired with yissurim — but some of those difficulties are directly caused by the actions, or lack of them, of those selfsame politicians.

Among the biggest deterrents to moving to Israel is the extraordinary cost of living, especially that of housing. The math simply doesn’t make sense. The average house price in 2024 is 2.2 million shekels, or $606,000 — about $110,000 more expensive than in the US. Meanwhile, the average monthly salary — $3,200 — is 35 percent lower than the monthly pay in the US.

That figure alone explains the immense financial pressure that Israelis live with. Phrases like “finishing the month” are a commonplace of conversation in a way that they aren’t elsewhere.

Israel’s absurd house prices have to be seen to be believed. A while ago I was in Nof Hagalil. That’s the new name for Upper Nazareth, a Jewish town next door to its more well-known Arab neighbor, regular Nazareth. I found myself outside an apartment block so decrepit that I thought it had been emptied for demolition. I was wrong — the place was inhabited, and a three-room apartment cost some $200,000. In other words, even the back of beyond is unaffordable.

Everyone loves the picture of an incoming Nefesh B’Nefesh flight, but yeridah is its embarrassing cousin — the family member no one likes to talk about. The reality is that on every outbound plane there are Israelis who have no intention of coming back. Speak to the vast number of yordim who live in places like Miami or London, and there’s a common theme: financial pressure. “There’s simply no way that we could make it,” they’ll tell you.

That’s a tragedy, both for the country that experiences brain drain and for the Jewish people as a whole. Overseas, these yordim are prey for assimilation in far higher numbers than back home.

Speak to the politicians about this incredible burden, and they’ll point to Israel’s unusually high defense expenditures. Even prewar, the country spent 4.5 percent of GDP on the military — far higher than the US, which spends only three percent. In the middle of a major war, spending has obviously risen, and is set to cost each household a further $1,000 annually.

But that’s only a partial excuse: The cost of housing has risen remorselessly since the early 2000s, through war, peace, and Covid. It’s not as if house prices are subject to some mysterious, anti-gravity forces that governments are utterly incapable of contending with. It’s plain supply-and-demand.

Yet the last election that housing was on the ballot was in 2015, when Moshe Kahlon’s party stood on a cost-of-housing ticket. Since then, normal politics has been subsumed by Israel’s culture wars, turned into an insane Yes-Bibi-No-Bibi choice that’s about identity, not kitchen table issues.

Housing is obviously not the only reason that many don’t get on a flight to Israel; there are things that the Israeli government can’t be asked to deal with, such as the low communal priority for living in Eretz Yisrael in some quarters. Or the undeniable fact that parts of “chutz l’Aretz” (that amazingly capacious term for 99.99 percent of the planet) offer a higher standard of living than in Israel.

But there are many areas where the government — and only the government — can act effectively. Things such as the travesty that overseas qualifications aren’t recognized in Israel, forcing foreign-born teachers to be dishwashers, and dentists to jump through hoops in order to raise their first drill. Or when it comes to the housing problem, taking on the bureaucratic beasts that control the supply of land, cutting through environmental and planning red tape to dramatically expand the housing stock.

There’s no question that when there’s sufficient political will, governments can act decisively to address giant problems. Look no further than the MAGA movement. As I wrote in a post-election take, Donald Trump is a transformer. He came into office in 2016 promising to rewrite the rules of international trade, using tariffs as a blunt weapon. That created a tremendous backlash, but Trump reset the American consensus on free trade.

Likewise, he promised to slash illegal immigration. He failed to build his promised wall and make Mexico pay for it, but having created a political consensus is now poised to make good on his second mandate by a program of mass deportations.

In the Israeli context, a dose of that political determination would go a long way. The words of Maseches Avos connecting yegiyah and metziyah are as valid for daunting national projects as they are for any context: Where there’s a political will, there’s often a legislative way.

Why is this column appearing in the pages of Mishpacha? What good will it do if it’s read in Flatbush or the Five Towns? Because Israeli politicians of all types love a good photo op with the numerous delegations who come to Israel; they love being able to rub shoulders overseas with the reliably-supportive Orthodox community.

At those meetings, one item should come up as standard: aliyah. “What are you doing to ensure that our children and grandchildren — who come to study in Israel and who hope to stay — are able to buy a house?” those politicians should be asked. “What have you done since we last spoke so that my neighbor who made aliyah can practice his profession without mind-numbing bureaucracy?”

With anti-Semitism now a fact of Western life once again, no one needs an Israeli politician to lecture them to come home. It’s time for policy, not pontification. If what is required to make Israel affordable is a dose of slash-and-burn of the country’s unreformed housing and labor markets, so be it. There’s a MAGA playbook to Make Aliyah Great Again.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1037)