Venezuela’s economic crisis is so severe that citizens must wait in lines for hours at grocery stores to buy basic staples, or pay exorbitant prices on the black market. Some have even died of basic illnesses because of a shortage of medical supplies.

Tens of thousands have left the country, including a growing number of Venezuelan Jews who have relocated to Israel.

The process is not easy because Israel and Venezuela do not have diplomatic ties. In 2009, following Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, then-President Hugo Chávez expelled the Israeli ambassador and his staff from Caracas. He aligned himself with the Palestinians, recognizing their right to statehood later that year, and developed relations with Iran, Israel’s nemesis.

Official Israeli government figures show that 111 Venezuelan Jews made “aliyah,” the Hebrew term for immigration meaning “ascending,” to Israel in 2015, more than double the number who arrived in 2012.