CaHRIMS: A Civil and Human Rights Israeli Migration Seeker, is a person that lives in Israel and wishes to leave Israel due to circumstances surrounding civil or human rights abuse. These circumstances may either be domestic within Israel, or in relation to the occupied or besieged Palestinian territories. In some cases, the desire to leave Israel by an individual identifying as CaHRIMS is directly related to their personal civil and human rights. In many other cases, it is indirect, and may involve violation of rights of others, such as minority groups, economic injustice, distortions to democracy, and/or general acts of violence. In general, the desire of people that identify as CaHRIMS is to distance themselves from such injustices and seek a better future for them and their children.
In a sense, a CaHRIMS is an Israeli person that has legitimately “given up” on improving their state. Those that wish to identify as CaHRIMS are often willing to permanently detach from the Israeli state and its neo-Zionist flavours. While their Israeliness may stay, they are not interested in living in the state of Israel.
Migration: Migration is almost always a difficult process, especially in cases where it is dictated by external factors such as political unrest that is not in the direct control of any one individual. Up to recent times, little migration out of Israel was directly attributed to human or civil rights since many Israelis, including those unhappy with their political situation, shared the view that civil and human rights can be improved in their country through peaceful social action. For example, many Israelis that now identify as CaHRIMS are opposed to the unjust occupation of Palestinians and chose to stay in Israel with a view of helping to improve the situation. However, the unfolding events of early 2023 shuffled the cards. Nowadays, many hopeful Israelis have lost hope in creating a better society in Israel and are seeking to migrate abroad. Importantly, the number of those whom identify as CaHRIMS, is expected to grow in the coming months and years, also due to a steep expected degradation in civil and human rights.
Some fortunate people that identify as CaHRIMS have the means to migrate out of Israel independently since they hold non-Israeli passports, are financially capable, and/or may obtain sponsored migration for a job. However, there are many that identify as CaHRIMS, whom are not easily able to migrate because they do not have a sponsor country, are without immediate connections abroad, may be in difficult financial situations, and/or are in complicated family situations inside Israel that may require migration of groups.
Vision and goal: Our vision at CaHRIMS.org, is to ultimately help this cohort of departing Israelis with their migration journey. We aim to focus on destination countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We aim to provide an envelope which will support migration of CaHRIMS and engage local awareness in these countries for this. Specifically we aim to highlight the benefits of supporting migration of CaHRIMS to politicians and policy makers in host countries.
Mission: Our primary mission is to engage with legislators and government officials at these host countries. With this engagement, our mission is to enlighten policy makers about the benefits of opening up pathways for expanding immigration from Israel to those that choose to identify as CaHRIMS.
The idea of creating awareness at host countries about CaHRIMS is new because only recently many people have decided to identify as CaHRIMS. In fact, the definition of CaHRIMS is new.
First steps: As a first step, our initial goal is to collect some population profile of people that wish to identify as CaHRIMS. Obtaining an initial profile, with representative individuals may help us with our mission of public action in host countries in presenting the benefits of CaHRIMS migration.
If you believe that you identify as a CaHRIMS, we ask you to fill out a minimal initial questionnaire. We will then contact you to obtain further information with a more detailed questionnaire. Note that your initial questionnaire information and any other bits of information will not be shared with others without your consent. A formal consent form will be supplied with the detailed questionnaire.
Filling out a questionnaire does not promise you any help with migration to a host country. However, by registering with us, we will be able to share aggregate data with host country policy makers in due time, and with your consent, we may share personal stories as well. Importantly, by choosing to identify as a CaHRIMS, you will in due time be exposed to other CaHRIMS that share your beliefs and desires and perhaps get such help in your journey in migration out of Israel. Further, we will help you connect to communities of other CaHRIMS that have departed Israel in previous years for similar reasons.
To sign up, please fill out this initial questionnaire.
Volunteers: The CaHRIMS centre is now in pilot stage and is initially formed by Yoni Nazarathy, an Israeli living outside of Israel for the past 14 years. In his latter years in Israel, Yoni identified as a CaHRIMS. We could use more help from Israelis abroad that were also CaHRIMS. If you are interested in contributing contact Yoni via e-mail as found on the web or via social media.