Jerusalem has always been a city that prefers its arguments with a street address. Theology becomes stone. Politics becomes a neighborhood. Identity becomes a zoning fight.
This week, anxiety became Israeli real estate.
Channel 12 News reported that a US-based Jewish community had bought two residential towers in central Jerusalem, roughly 200 families in a single concentrated purchase, in a deal believed to exceed NIS 1 billion. The detail that stayed with me was not the price tag; Jerusalem has seen plenty of those. It was the structure. A coordinated act, collective and deliberate, like a community deciding it no longer wants to keep its future in the cloud.
In this city, a real estate transaction is rarely just a transaction. It is also a statement about belonging.
For years, Jerusalem has fought over “ghost apartments,” units purchased by overseas residents and left dark most of the year. The critique is understandable. Locals struggle with prices, and empty windows feel like an insult.
Policymakers have tried tools such as double arnona (municipal property tax) to discourage long-term vacancies. At the same time, researchers have noted how challenging it is even to define, let alone measure, what “empty” means.
Still, the argument often skips a quieter truth. Some of those dark apartments are not only a status symbol. They are an insurance policy, a contingency plan with keys attached.
That mindset used to live mostly in conversation. After October 7, it became something more practical. After the Sydney attack, it moved again, into something closer to a strategy.
Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke at a Hanukkah candle-lighting event in Rishon Lezion and delivered a message that Israeli leaders have offered in different tones for decades: Make aliyah (immigration to Israel). His list of communities, England, France, Australia, Canada, and Belgium, was not random. He framed it as a response to rising antisemitism and insufficient action by many governments, and asked why Jews should raise their children “in this atmosphere.” He spoke about Jews being hunted and used the language of homecoming.
'Do not say aliyah'
If you have covered Jewish communal life long enough, you develop muscle memory for the Diaspora reaction to that sort of speech. The response is usually a careful pushback, sometimes anxious, sometimes angry, always shaped by the same fear: Do not hand anyone an excuse to accuse Jews of dual loyalty. Do not complicate their lives more by suggesting they do not belong where they live.
I have been covering these conversations for almost two decades. I expected that reflex to return on schedule.
Instead, it faltered.
The message I kept hearing was not “do not say aliyah.” It was “fine, but do not make it a slogan.”
One community leader texted me something that has stuck precisely because it was not polished for public consumption:
“No, on the contrary. I said that it must be a concrete proposal. Jobs and housing may be the problems to solve. I personally believe that if played right, we could have 1 million Jews coming from Australia, UK, Canada, and the US in the next 10 years. This estimate does not even include the small countries in Europe.”
The grammar is messy. The meaning is not.
He was not rejecting Israel’s call. He was demanding that Israel build a ramp.
That shift, from managing optics to demanding execution, is one of the most consequential emotional changes in parts of the Jewish world since October 7. The question has moved from legitimacy to logistics. Not “Is aliyah an insult to our citizenship?” but “What would it take to make it possible?”
The towers story lands inside that change.
Channel 12 News linked the concentrated purchase to both rising antisemitism abroad and a desire among Diaspora Jews to strengthen their foothold in Israel. Nir Shmoul, CEO of Snir Real Estate Marketing, described it as unusually large, and noted that the buyers had organized as members of the same community rather than as a classic purchasing group. The report did not include full project documentation, but multiple public descriptions appeared to match two towers near the Mahaneh Yehuda area, in the Kiach (Alliance) complex and the adjacent Etz Hayim area, with timelines that stretch toward 2031.
That timeline matters. Panic looks for immediate rentals and one-way flights. A purchase tied to projects expected to be ready years from now reads differently. It seems like a long bet that the world will remain unstable enough for a key in Jerusalem to matter and that Israel, despite everything, will remain the one place where Jewish life is not conditional on permission.
In parallel, the state is beginning to speak the language that Diaspora Jewish leaders are asking for.
Last weekend, a separate report described the government advancing an emergency plan to boost aliyah and speed immigrant absorption amid a surge in antisemitic incidents worldwide and heightened fears following the Sydney attack. According to the report, the Aliyah and Integration Ministry presented the plan at a government meeting in Dimona, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed it under the name “Aliyat HaTekuma” (Revival Aliyah). The report said it had been drafted before the Sydney attack but was set to be fast-tracked.
Unlike speeches, this plan came with numbers and mechanisms. It set a national target of absorbing 30,000 immigrants in 2026 from countries experiencing rising antisemitism, including France, Britain, and Australia. This was priced at about NIS 600 million in its first year and about NIS 1.1 billion in its second, according to the report. It included shortening eligibility processing so applicants could receive approval within about a month. It proposed an automatic monthly absorption grant, without additional forms. It included expanded assistance in finding apartments and rent support in designated “absorbing cities,” with extra funding for local authorities based on the number of immigrant families they absorb.
The plan even touched a politically sensitive nerve: steering immigrants from specific communities to specific cities, including directing immigrants from parts of France and Britain to places such as Eilat, Nahariya, Ashkelon, Haifa, Beersheba, and Ma’aleh Adumim.
That is the unglamorous infrastructure of uprooting a life. This is precisely what Diaspora leaders are currently demanding when they refer to a “concrete proposal.” Jobs. Housing. Schools. Timelines.
Former MK Zvi Hauser, in a weekend opinion piece, argued that aliyah should be treated as a strategic national event led directly by the prime minister, managed through an emergency-level cabinet coordinating across security, economy, housing, education, employment, infrastructure, justice, and foreign affairs. He warned that antisemitism is entering the mainstream and that the Sydney attack should be read as a pattern, not an anomaly. He called for “the 11th million,” a push to bring a million Jews to Israel in the coming years, and cautioned that historical windows can close quietly when leadership hesitates.
What struck me is how closely Hauser’s language reflected what I was hearing privately from communal leaders abroad. The gap is narrowing between those who speak in terms of destiny and those who speak in terms of rent payments and professional licensing.
That narrowing is the story.
Because the real obstacle to large-scale aliyah was never only ideology, it was friction. It was the fear of professional downgrading, financial instability, and years of wrestling with systems that sometimes treat new olim (immigrants) like a file number. It was the sense that Israel’s invitation comes with a shrug.
This situation also means telling Israelis the truth. Aliyah is not only a Zionist victory lap. It is a national project that will strain housing, classrooms, and local infrastructure unless it is managed with intention. If Israel wants the strategic benefits of immigration, it has to pay the strategic costs, and do so in advance, not after the fact.