Reasons For Leaving Israel

Welcome to another episode of the List Building Lifestyle. Today I’m sharing a deeply personal story that hits close to home. I’ll be discussing my journey from Israel to Canada, driven by concerns over safety, and the future amidst ongoing conflicts. I’ll talk about the challenges my family and I faced, the adjustments we made in our new home and how these experiences have shaped not only our lives, but also my approach to business and list building. This episode is about resilience, adaptation, and the quest for a better life. Let’s get into it.

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I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, the List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now, it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

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The reason I got out of Israel had everything to do with where I felt the country was going. And that was a big deal. Me and my closest friends, we all shared this narrative, we all shared that the country is going bankrupt. We shared that the country has been outnumbered by the whole conflict with Palestine and there’s like a whole Arab settlement and between the different cities in Israel. Because I mean, the night my daughter was born. And that was like 11 years, almost 11 years ago. Now, that night, there were, I believe a total of 60 or so kids born in that hospital that night, with roughly 40 kids being non-Jewish kids, basically, you know, kids from Arab settlements, and like in the area, right? So this is the crazy part because they make so many babies, and so we could quickly become outnumbered. So by the time I left, it was very difficult as a situation. 

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And again, it’s not like I hate all Arabs, not at all. I have one of my close friends actually, since moving to Canada is a guy from Pakistan, right? Who was Muslim. So I’m totally cool with that. Like, it’s more about ideology than it is about religion for me. It’s more about like, we just didn’t feel safe. In fact, we had a tradition, kind of like a ritual where me, my wife, and my best friend and his wife were going to see moving and grab some sushi every Saturday night. And there was one time when we were like, on the way to the sushi place walking, and a car drove by with loud Arab music, like a very typical, you know, Middle Eastern kind of music, right? Those sort of vibes, and my wife all of a sudden breaks down in tears and experiences the most horrific panic attack that I’ve ever seen her ever experience. And she does not have a history of panic attacks. 

This was completely new to me. And, you know, it took her like 20 minutes to calm down. And eventually she said, what happened? And she says, Well, I thought they’re going to stop, get out of the car and shoot us. Now, she wasn’t being unreasonable. Because those things happen in Israel all the time. If you read local media, Israeli media and not the BBC media, you will see that these things happen all the time people are eating in a restaurant, all of a sudden somebody stands up and starts shooting. And it’s being done specifically on the basis of religious ideology, and not necessarily the same way it’s being done in America. What’s happening in America is a little bit different. 

And I don’t really have an opinion on the whole gun situation over there. But over here, it’s like specifically, somebody who has been influenced by the likes of ISIS and, and Hezbollah, right, who has just been programmed, who lives in a settlement nearby, goes to a restaurant, sits down, order something then pulls out a gun or a knife and starts stabbing, killing people. Like it’s normal. It’s like day to day normal stuff over there. So that’s why we moved. There was no reason for us to stay there. I did not want my kids to grow up there even though there are quite a few things that I’m really grateful to Israel for because Israel saved my dad’s life. As you know, we moved to Israel six months later, my dad went into a double bypass, they saved his life and there’s been, you know, similar stories with my grandparents and some of my friends and their parents. 

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So there’s a lot to like about Israel, it’s just not seen as the base for me and my family like the baseline from which we can grow. That’s why we ended up moving to Canada that’s a lot safer. In fact, the first thing I noticed when I stepped on the Canadian soil When I stepped out of the Pearson Airport, about six years ago is how low key and low tension everything is, like in Israel, if any of you ever been to Israel, you know, like you land in the airport and you can sense the tension in the air. It’s not like that in Canada, it’s really not, it’s more like a relaxed atmosphere. And it took me about two years to sort of tour my tension baseline to drop to the normal Canadian baseline where I could actually be at home and not close my door, you know, be like, not have to shut it on multiple locks and stuff, where I could walk outside and not have to look over my shoulder, where I could go pee in a shopping mall. And, you know, not have to do this as I pee at the urinal. 

I know, it’s not an image you want to see. But like, I know, I was always like, checking behind my shoulder just in case, anyone wanted to attack me. You know, so I could maybe react in some way. Or at least pee on them, you know, just so they feel bad. So the Canadian experience has been very different. But you see, there’s no perfect place, unfortunately. So, as I’ve spent more time in Canada, as things have developed and developed, now I’m starting to realize, okay, this is now having a bad influence on what I consider to be quality of life and the people who I think my kids should become. So we’re making a decision to move again. And that’s the decision. But you know, what’s interesting is that you might say, well, you wasted time, then, you know, you made a bad decision, and you move to Canada, when in reality Canada turned out to be bad for you. Well, I don’t see it that way. I don’t look at the last six years as Oh, I wasted another six years before finding my perfect place. 

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I really don’t look like that. Because in order for me to appreciate what I wanted next in my life, I had to go through a stage where I got out of Israel and moved to Canada. And you know, the first four or five years in Canada were great, I got exactly what I wanted. I wanted more safety, I got it, I wanted better, you know, access to material wealth, I got it, you know, my house is like 10 times the size of what I had in Israel and the cars are better and everything else. I wanted my kids to be fluent in English. I wanted them to be more sophisticated, you know, in the sense of social behavior and the social norms that happened. I wanted for them to have certain types of values, that happened. So now it’s just the next stage. So in the same way, by the way that I look at things like in my business, for example, let’s say invest a year into a project and it doesn’t pan out. Well, I take the lessons I learned from that year, and then move on to the next stage. I don’t look at these past 12 months as wasted because they will be wasted if I did not take on lessons that I can now use in the future. That’s how you waste time. If you learn from your experience and you actually make the right conclusions, then you’re not wasting. 

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Thank you for listening to the List Building Lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at the listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package.