Haaretz Podcast

Leaders of far-right parties running in the Israeli elections are openly campaigning on platforms that advocate expelling Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. On the Haaretz Podcast, senior analyst Esther Solomon and correspondent Linda Dayan discussed the platforms of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and ex-general Ofer Winter, both of whom are wooing voters by attacking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government from the right. Ben-Gvir in particular is proudly “promoting a platform for ‘voluntarily‘ expelling Palestinians from every single part from Gaza and the West Bank,” Solomon said. Winter included his longtime support for “voluntary emigration” from Gaza in the platform of his new Amcha Israel party, in an effort Solomon described as being designed to appeal to far-right voters dissatisfied with Netanyahu, but “who are a little bit disgusted by some of the crude ways that Ben-Gvir operates. They like their candidates to look a bit nicer.” Dayan, who recently attended a Winter…

The decision by Israel’s top generals and intelligence chiefs not to put the IDF on high alert in the hours before October 7 was “the worst gamble in Israeli military history,” according to senior defense analyst Amos Harel, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast on the third anniversary of the attack by Hamas on southern Israel. “They terribly, tragically underestimated both Hamas’ capabilities and its actual intentions that night,” Harel said. Harel is the author of “6:29: Anatomy of a Failure,” the first and most complete account of the chain of mistakes by the country’s top military and political echelons leading up to the devastating events of that day. On the podcast, Harel recounts the military and political mistakes that were made, pinning them on “arrogance” and a “condescending” misreading of Hamas’ capabilities and determination – and how their failures have shaken Israeli citizen’s belief that they are “in safe hands.” “We have the best air force in the region, one of the best in the world. We have the…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu handling of the crisis after the Flydubai attack demonstrated his “facility at dominating the news cycle and setting the agenda of the debate” in the crucial weeks ahead of the October 27 Israeli election, said Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer, speaking on the Haaretz Election Podcast. Netanyahu skillfully and quickly took the spotlight, basking in the reflected glory of the heroic pilot and passengers who saved the plane, while evading responsibility for the security failures as he did post-October 7. By doing so, he put his election rivals in a lose-lose position, Leifer noted. If his rivals for power publicly acknowledged that “we're living in a dangerous neighborhood and we have to step things up, then you know they end up backing him,” Leifer said. “But if the opposition comes out and starts blaming Netanyahu” for the oversights and negligence that led to the near-disaster, “they come out looking like they’re spoiling the party and they’re not loyal.” Leifer’s fellow…

The most recent attempt at a show of unity by the Jewish Zionist parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was only partially successful. With the election less than a month away, their leaders may have agreed not to campaign against each other and save their fire for Netanyahu – but they failed to explicitly commit to backing whichever party leader garners the most votes to head the bloc, said Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz, speaking on the Haaretz Election Podcast. "For most of the people who support the parties in the opposition bloc, it was a big disappointment that they couldn't say what seems so obvious to most people," Maltz said of the meeting between the four major parties opposed to Netanyahu. "There was a lot of hope that they would emerge ... and say, 'We have a leader. It will be Eisenkot against Netanyahu,' but they could not reach an agreement on that." Maltz was joined on the podcast by fellow Haaretz journalist Linda Dayan and host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the fallout of…

On the eve of the New York premiere of their film, "NAZA," co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor sat with Haaretz U.S. senior writer Etan Nechin to talk about the journalistic investigations behind the film, the unprecedented criticism of them in Israel – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat to strip them of their citizenship – and why it’s important to them to come back home and engage with Israelis. In this episode of the Haaretz podcast, you can listen to Abraham discuss what he thought of Netanyahu likening the documentary to “dozens of missiles” being fired at Israel; the Trump administration's material support of the Gaza war and U.S. debate about arms sales to Israel; the film’s title and thematic association with Nazi Germany; why so many specific details were taken out of the film; and his plan to return to Israel and continue his work. “I don't want to be an exile,” he said, declaring that “there are no grounds” to revoke his or Szor’s citizenship. “We're journalists. We're…

After rapper Macklemore cried "Free Palestine!" as he took the stage as the opening act for music superstar Ed Sheeran, opened a Pandora's box of controversy over free speech and the place of politics at a music concert "that is not dying down any time soon," said Philissa Cramer on the Haaretz Podcast. Cramer, recently appointed senior Jewish Life correspondent for Haaretz, recounted on the podcast how, when Gillette Stadium and New England Patriots billionaire owner Robert Kraft refused to have Macklemore at his venue later in the Sheeran tour, and the rapper was removed as an opening act for Sheeran, the incident "turned from a story about was Macklemore doing something that his audience found objectionable - to a story about cancel culture." In addition to telling the story of the war of words and promises of donations, Cramer discussed with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer whether the episode carried lessons for the embattled organized U.S. Jewish community as the list of prominent celebrities…

The violence of extremist settlers on the West Bank as they systematically terrorize, attack and even displace Palestinian communities is a “perversion of Judaism” and a desecration of God’s name,” said Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast in the week between the Jewish New Year and its Day of Atonement. Joining Weiman-Kelman on the podcast is Loui Ridi, a Palestinian American who flew from Ohio back to his home in the West Bank village of Qusra, after settlers laid siege to his neighborhood and the IDF declared a closed military zone. Ridi has been unable to leave his house for a month due to the order, and says the closure has been selectively enforced against Palestinians, while the army refuses to remove the settlers. Ridi is flying the American flag on his house, he said, “as a message to the U.S. government, to the U.S. officials, that I need protection and I need help.” Weiman-Kelman, a former president of Rabbis for Human Rights and retired spiritual leader of Kol HaNeshama, a…

The intensifying Israeli election campaign encompasses a long list of issues, but at its heart, the results of the vote on October 27 will be “about the transition out of the Netanyahu era,” contended Anshel Pfeffer, Israel correspondent for The Economist, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast. Pfeffer said that many have done their best “to be the next Netanyahu,” attempting to project his confidence, authority and leadership, while consciously or unconsciously replicating the current prime minister’s style. The front-runner, former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, he noted, has a “big advantage is that he’s the first ‘wannabe Bibi’ who is not a ‘wannabe Bibi’” in looks and behavior. Pfeffer returned to Haaretz for the podcast, where he worked as a correspondent and columnist for over 25 years and continues to contribute, for a reunion with columnist Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin, with whom he co-hosted the “Election Overdose” podcast during the run-up to the 2022 elections. In the first Haaretz Election Podcast since…

The stunning triumph of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in a German state election represents a true “challenge to democracy” and has shaken the country’s Jewish community, said author and activist Dr. Ofer Waldman, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast “It's the first time that a right‑extremist party has had such a landslide victory in Germany,” said Waldman, who heads the Heinrich Boll Foundation office in Tel Aviv. Haaretz writer and editor David Issacharoff, who joined Waldman on the podcast for a discussion of the election results, said that state of Saxony-Anhalt, which gave 44 percent of its vote to the controversial AfD party, is populated by voters who “feel abandoned, forgotten, and very isolated,” blaming the state and mainstream parties for their situation and channeling their resentment in an extremist political direction. This is worsened, both Waldman and Issacharoff said, by the fact that East Germany was not part of the post-Holocaust democracy education push in the West.…

A last-minute scramble before the party lists for Israel’s elections are finalized on September 8 has led to the disappearance of small parties, politicians switching parties and the dismissal of veteran ultra-Orthodox Knesset members by leaders who want to “refresh” their party lists. On the Haaretz Election Podcast, correspondents Linda Dayan and Etan Nechin reviewed the week’s big changes – along the return of October 7 conspiracy theories and the intermingling of U.S. and Israeli political campaigning with host Allison Kaplan Sommer. Dayan noted the leap by controversial Likud MK Tally Gotliv to the extremist Otzma Yehudit party led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, pointed out that the move “shows how much Likud has absorbed toxic far-right populism.” The drastic shrinking of Yesh Atid as its leader Yair Lapid has played second fiddle to more popular center-right figures like Benny Gantz, Naftali Bennett and Gadi Eisenkot, Nechin said, “represents the limitations of liberal Jewish Israeli society. ... There’s a…

Vice President JD Vance’s charm offensive failed to completely win over skeptical GOP donors who gathered this week in Las Vegas at the Republican Jewish Coalition National Leadership Summit, Haaretz’s Washington D.C. correspondent Arno Rosenfeld told the Haaretz Podcast. There were mixed reactions to Vance’s speech to the crowd of 1,000, meant to be off the record, but leaked publicly, in which the vice president attempted to reassure those attending that, despite his isolationist leanings and association with media figures who regularly peddle antisemitic tropes, that he believed in the “mutually beneficial” relationship between the U.S. and Israel, that he was not “abandoning” the Jewish state and appreciated “American Jewish contributions to the United States.” Vance’s words were a bit more “weird and convoluted” in a strange discussion of “blood guilt” – a term popularized by right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson, as a variation of the term “blood libel” with a slightly different meaning. “It was quite…

Nothing is helping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current coalition boost its standing in the polls, and it is clear that the premier is “panicking,” said Haaretz columnist Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin, speaking on the Haaretz Election Podcast. Scheindlin joins Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz and host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the entrance of a new right-wing party led by ex-general Ofer Winter into the race, joining the plethora of “pop-up” right-wing parties that are causing Netanyahu’s alarm at the possibility that one or more will fall under the electoral threshold, and the precious votes in his camp will be wasted. "Netanyahu is begging the right wing not to fragment the parties. He's warning the right wing: If you do the wrong thing, the entire world explodes," Scheindlin said, ahead of the September 8 deadline for merging with other parties and submitting final lists. On the podcast, Maltz shares what she’s found as she visits cities and towns around Israel taking the pulse of voters. Kiryat…

Israel's controversial strike on an airbase in northern Syria close to Turkey was "first and foremost a message to the United States" that Turkish military penetration deeper into Syrian territory "can be turned into a real and total war," and any U.S. policy that tolerates it is "not sustainable," according to Dr. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast. The attack has been criticized as an election ploy by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While Yanarocak said such considerations may have played a role in its timing, he stressed that Turkey's ambitions in post-Assad Syria are a legitimate source of deep concern for Israel. Israel's military establishment sees them as a substantial threat and pushed for the attack after Turkey ignored warnings. The past three years of war have shifted the balance of power in Turkey's favor with the weakening of both Iran and the Gulf states, he explained in a conversation with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer. He discussed the bold ambitions of the…

The glut of new small parties throwing their hats in the ring is increasing the chances that after the voters have their say, there will not be a decisive win either for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition nor the opposition parties determined to topple him. "All of these new little parties are headed by individuals who are placing their ego above the political outcome. They can't possibly join an existing party – they have to try to start their own," said Haaretz columnist Dahlia Scheindlin on the Haaretz Election Podcast. As a result, the voters may not end up determining who will be prime minister, and instead a “little gang” of “six, seven or eight male party leaders” will meet and decide the make-up of the coalition, Scheindlin said. Scheindlin joined fellow columnist Esther Solomon and host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the results of the Likud primaries, opposition frontrunner Gadi Eisenkot’s declaration that there will be no Palestinian state on his watch, what appears to be a…

Longtime editor-in-chief of The New Yorker David Remnick joins the Haaretz podcast and guest host Joshua Leifer for a wide-ranging conversation about his more than three decades of reporting on Israel and Palestine, the role of the journalist in a populist age, and the future of U.S.-Israel relations. "The only way to tell this story is to try to tell it truthfully and to know that you will fail," Remnick wrote in his report on the aftermath of October 7, 2023, published just two weeks after the attacks. In this episode, Remnick recalls what it was like to walk through the ruins of Kibbutz Be'eri and what was then the great trepidation of the nature of Israel's impending response. Remnick returned to report on Israel and Palestine four more times over the last three years, and in July, The New Yorker published Remnick's profile of Gadi Eisenkot, currently the frontrunner among the candidates challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Remnick and Leifer discuss whether Eisenkot has what it takes, and what…

The battle over the Likud Party primaries this week was a clear example of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserting his dominance over his political kingdom, Haaretz senior analyst Esther Solomon told the Haaretz Election Podcast. Netanyahu had unsuccessfully tried to cancel the always robust Likud primaries altogether – ultimately compromising by pushing through a measure where he chose the candidates for nine key spots on the top of the list. He included a spot for Oren Dobronsky, an Israeli high-tech entrepreneur and hummus chain owner in Silicon Valley who has not lived in Israel for years, has no political experience and made headlines recently for calling U.S. President Donald Trump a “morally corrupt piece of shit” in the recent past. The prime minister’s message was clear, Solomon said: "This is no longer about the Likud party. This is about me." Solomon joined Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz and host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the top stories from the last week week, which included…

Nearly three years since Israel’s war in Gaza began, and despite a lengthy case brought before the High Court of Israel, journalists remain unable to enter the Strip to report independently on the widespread destruction, the ongoing humanitarian crisis and the IDF’s occupation of more than half of the Strip. Histadrut national union official Peter Lerner, who served as the IDF’s Spokesperson to International Media until 2024, says the IDF’s reluctance to allow journalists in is a symptom of the war being drawn out and Israel’s increasing isolation from the global community. “The time passed two years ago,” to let journalists enter Gaza, Lerner said. “I recommended it to my superiors, that holding out this long is not beneficial to Israel; it just superimposes the fact that people will say that you're hiding something. …The fact is that there will be negative stories about the negative consequences of war.” Lerner and host Amir Tibon also discussed the reasons why Israeli soldiers passively watch – or even…

While the polls in Israel have been relatively stagnant, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal standing has faltered. “The minute that Netanyahu's stock seems weak, people will start selling it, and that has begun to happen,” said Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast. Joining Leifer on the podcast, Haaretz correspondent Linda Dayan observed that in her conversations with mainstream Israelis who “don’t identify as leftists,” they see a real alternative leader in challenger Gadi Eisenkot. “People have said of Netanyahu in the past that there's no one who can replace him, who has the experience and the gravitas that we need. Now, for the first time in a very long time, people are saying it looks like there's someone who can actually do it.” The two panelists joined host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the debut of new right-wing parties who eschew Netanyahu and their “machinations” attempting to engineer a government coalition that would include the anti-Netanyahu…

Haaretz senior defense columnist Amos Harel joins the Haaretz Podcast to discuss Trump's latest U-turn on Iran, from threatening to bomb the country's infrastructure to once again negotiating with the Islamic Republic over reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Does the president have a plan, or is he just responding to pressure from different directions? How likely is a resumption of full-scale war between Tehran and Jerusalem? And is there truly a lack of interceptors protecting Israel from Iranian missiles? Amos answers all these questions, as we await the president's next step. Meanwhile in Gaza, a new agreement has been announced by the Board of Peace, the international body overseeing the coastal enclave's painfully slow recovery. On paper, it looks great: Hamas will voluntarily disarm, Israel will then withdraw from the areas it occupied after October 7, and reconstruction will move ahead at a faster pace. There's just one problem: No one believes the deal will actually be implemented, and the two sides are…

Gadi Eisenkot "hasn't finished his rise" in the polls after his party, Yashar, has overtaken Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party for several weeks in a row, while the potential coalition of opposition parties is soaring past that of the current government, said Haaretz columnist Dahlia Scheindlin, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast. Scheindlin, a veteran political strategist and analyst, noted that even the right-wing pollsters, who are heavily biased in favor of Netanyahu's coalition, are showing numbers that point to "a decline ever since the ceasefire and the war with Iran," reflecting perceptions among supporters who once "saw him as a great global statesperson." The podcast panel, including Haaretz correspondent Nagham Zbeedat and host Allison Kaplan Sommer, reviewed the noteworthy political events of the past week, most prominently the intriguing news that could shake up the coalition mathematics: the Arab Islamist Ra'am Party's plans to invite a former senior police officer and centrist…

On this week’s Haaretz Podcast, guest host Joshua Leifer talks to Pnina Pfeuffer, a liberal, feminist ultra-Orthodox social activist. The Jerusalem-based Pfeuffer, CEO of the New Haredim, recently petitioned against a Knesset bill that would permit gender-segregated study tracks for master's and doctoral degrees in Israeli academic institutions. Pfeuffer represents a growing minority inside the Israeli ultra-Orthodox public that is interested in “full citizenship, with full obligations and rights” in the Jewish State. This is a public that wants the Israeli government to enforce the military draft on Haredim and teach math and English in Haredi schools, instead of continuing the de facto Haredi autonomy in which many Israeli rules and norms are absent. According to Pfeuffer, the Haredi community reflects Israel as a whole, and younger Haredim - like their secular and religious Zionist counterparts - are radicalizing, and are more right wing than their parents. Some, as Leifer notes, are part of a “far-right…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on traveling to the White House three months before the Israeli election signals his desperation to boost his sinking fortunes at the polls, Haaretz senior columnist Esther Solomon told the Haaretz Election Podcast. Despite his unpopularity with major portions of both American political parties and his turbulent relationship with President Donald Trump regarding the ongoing conflict with Iran, the Israeli leader “does still think that a photo op with Trump is going to play well for him, even though it's not entirely clear if Trump is going to provide exactly the kind of celebratory hugs” he wishes for, Solomon said. But in his current political situation, the Israeli leader “has to pull out every single stop, and he is doing that across the board. Whether it's in terms of military operations, every kind of political manipulation or strategy that he has, in order to pull every last possible vote for the bloc of parties that would support him to be prime…

Both Israeli leaders and the Israeli public – lulled by both President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden’s backing of Israel – are utterly unprepared for the generational tsunami taking place when it comes to American support for the Jewish state, Haaretz’s opinions editor Amir Tibon told the Haaretz Podcast "Approximately 60 percent of Americans have a negative view of Israel, and the younger you go, the worse it gets – we're close to 80 percent," said Tibon, who previously served as Haaretz’s Washington and diplomatic correspondent. "Israelis are looking at the top line, which is what does Trump have to say about us? And they're ignoring the iceberg, which is hidden underneath the daily Trump noise, of negative views of the country." "We’re going to have a lot of problems once this older generation leaves the American political scene, and most Israelis don't understand it yet," he said. In his conversation with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Tibon also addressed the topic engaging most…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be even more unpopular than the current polling demonstrates, Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer said on this week’s edition of the Haaretz Election Podcast. “I have begun to think the polling is not telling the whole story,” he said, in a discussion on how voters who believe Netanyahu is causing irreversible damage to Israeli democracy and want him removed are currently ping-ponging between “optimism and apocalyptic thinking.” The “apocalyptic thinking,” Leifer said, involves speculation as to whether Netanyahu, anticipating defeat, somehow uses the precarious security situation to prevent free and fair elections on the scheduled date. "After everything we've experienced over the last four years, can we rule out that apocalyptic scenario? We can't rule it out, sadly," he said. Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz, who joined Leifer and host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the weekly podcast panel, said she observed much of this disquiet with the country’s leader as she travels the…

In his first interview with an Israeli media outlet since his confrontation with armed settlers and Israeli soldiers in the southern West Bank last week, Representative Ro Khanna spoke with Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer in a wide-ranging conversation about the now-famous incident, the “cruelty” he witnessed in his visit to the West Bank, and how Israel’s “disproportionate and inhumane” behavior in the Gaza war has changed his policy positions and the way that both he – and Americans at large – view the Jewish state. "Israel has lost Americans under 50 – not just Democrats but Republicans," he said. “It is one of the most foolish strategies to have antagonized an entire American generation, and that's what Bibi Netanyahu has accomplished." In the interview, Khanna recounted how Israeli settlers mocked and antagonized his delegation, and parked their vehicle in front of his to block the road to Khirbet Zanuta, a Bedouin village in the South Hebron Hills that has been forcibly displaced by settler…

With Israeli elections set for October 27, Iran is increasingly pairing its military actions with aggressive online campaigns designed to sow chaos and conflict – alongside ongoing efforts to recruit Israelis as spies, Haaretz cyber and disinformation correspondent Omer Benjakob warned on the Haaretz Election Podcast, in a roundtable with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer and correspondent Linda Dayan. “We’ve let the digital arena fester,” Benjakob said, in a stinging critique of the way in which Israel’s vaunted security services have dropped the ball in online foreign influence that has now been “supercharged” by AI. One of the reasons the phenomenon has been difficult to combat is because “nine times out of 10, you can’t differentiate between a pro‑Iranian campaign and a pro‑Netanyahu campaign,” he added, noting that Israel’s prime minister and his far-right ruling coalition and the country’s enemies, he noted, have a stake in maximizing extremism and division in the months leading up to Election Day. In…

The far-right religious Netanyahu government is doing its best to “push away” liberal non-Orthodox American Jews from Israel, said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, leader of the U.S. Reform movement, on the Haaretz Podcast. “We’re not going away. We’re actually leaning in,” he said. “You can’t trade in non‑Orthodox Jews for evangelical Christians. We’re stuck, you’re stuck with us, we’re stuck with you – we’re the Jewish people.” During the era of negotiations over the 2016 historic compromise between non-Orthodox movements and the Israeli government over an egalitarian plaza at the Western Wall for mixed-gender prayer, Jacobs said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – and the premier’s close advisers – were in regular contact. Today, he said, “it has been years” since there has been a phone call – let alone a meeting – between the leader of the largest American Jewish membership organization and the Israeli leader – and, nearly a decade after the collapse of the compromise effort, the government is moving…

Unless something dramatic changes, the upcoming Israeli election will either end in a deadlock or a bold move to “get rid of the foolish self‑imposed arbitrary constraint of not forming coalitions with Arab parties,” political strategist and Haaretz columnist Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin said on the Haaretz Podcast. With neither the pro-Netanyahu bloc nor the opposition parties coming close to the 61 Knesset seats they would need to take power, Scheindlin said that the Jewish Zionist Israeli parties – likely in the opposition – will be pushed to do what she believes is the right thing. "Of course, there should be Arab parties in a governing coalition. They are 20 percent of the population. There should be no ban on parties that represent citizens of this country," Scheindlin said. In the roundtable discussion with Haaretz correspondent Linda Dayan and host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Scheindlin discussed the new iterations of veteran parties on the center right and the left, vying for the voters who would like to see…

Brad Lander said on the Haaretz Podcast that his resounding victory in the race for the Democratic nomination for Congress in a New York City district reflected a desire for a "reset in the U.S. relationship with Israel in the Democratic Party voting base – including in one of the most Jewish districts in the country." Lander won by more than 30 points in New York's 10th District, covering downtown Manhattan and western Brooklyn. His win over AIPAC-endorsed incumbent Dan Goldman was part of the primaries sweep by candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Like the other Mamdani-backed candidates, Lander campaigned on a platform opposing additional U.S. military aid to Israel and condemning AIPAC as being "dangerous." Lander said on the podcast that, once he is in Congress, he will support "steps I think will help shift away from what I see as a catastrophic 'hug Bibi' policy, which both Joe Biden and Donald Trump essentially adopted." At the same time, he told podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer that…

In the inaugural episode of Haaretz’s new Election Podcast, host Allison Kaplan Sommer welcomes the first weekly panel of Haaretz analysts who will be examining and explaining developments in the intensifying countdown to the fateful elections this fall. This week, senior analyst Esther Solomon and Palestinian affairs correspondent Nagham Zbeedat assess the state of a race in which neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his opposition currently have a path to victory according to the polls. At the moment, “Netanyahu is more or less maxed out on however many people will still be loyal to him,” Solomon said. “He cannot crack the numbers to get anywhere near a majority to form a coalition.” She discussed the ways in which Netanyahu visibly battled for political survival in a hastily called press conference Saturday night – from his reframing of the ongoing bloodshed in Lebanon to an invitation to his opponents to join him in a unity government. Netanyahu’s call for unity and vow to do “everything to…

For the Australian Jewish community, the date of December 14 carries as much gut-wrenching trauma as October 7 and September 11 does for Israelis and Americans, Daniel Hochberg, co-chair of the Union for Progressive Judaism's board, told the Haaretz Podcast. On the six-month anniversary of the terrorist shooting attack on 1,000 Jews celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach that killed 15 members of the tight-knit community, Hochberg and Haaretz editor Noa Levin reviewed the aftermath of the second most deadly attack in Australian history and its ongoing effect on the country’s politics and daily life for Australian Jews. “We don't feel safe as we did before,” Hochberg said, describing an increased “closing of spaces” to Jews who once felt part of progressive circles. “It has affected our sense of self-worth, our belief in our contribution to Australia is in question, and we are struggling with that. Our walls are being built higher and higher, so there's this feeling that the Jewish community, by almost default,…

In a special investigation on a "revolution" that has taken place over the past three years, Haaretz reporters Yarden Michaeli, Matan Golan and Yaniv Kubovich detailed the push to restore and drastically expand Israeli presence in the northern West Bank that was part of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan in 2005. On the Haaretz Podcast, Michaeli discusses how the settler movement and far-right politicians have spent the 20 years since the disengagement took place planning how to execute their "return" to four West Bank settlements located in the largest contiguous area of Palestinian population in the area. With the ascent of the most far-right government in history in 2022, members of the movement have used their power and influence in what is essentially "the settlers' government" to "return big time," Michaeli said. In the newly published Haaretz investigation, "Undoing History," Michaeli and his team reveal how 18 new settlements and eight new army bases are cutting through the…

As Israelis focused on the life-and-death issues around conflicts with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the Netanyahu government has slowly but steadily progressed in its campaign to eliminate the gatekeepers of liberal democracy in order to consolidate the power of elected politicians, constitutional law expert Prof. Adam Shinar told the Haaretz Podcast. The steps it has taken were “not exactly the package” of radical reforms it proposed in 2023 that brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets, Shinar said, but they are firmly marching Israel in the direction of a weakened judiciary, civil service and media, by putting more power in the hands of the ruling parties. Initially, after October 7, the push for a judicial coup ground to a halt. But as the war continued, explained Shinar, a professor at Reichman University, changes were still made – if not directly through legislation, then by the appointment of Netanyahu loyalists in key positions. "The government saw an opening. It said, 'Hey, we can do…

Israel is in a strategically weakened position – and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will take a hard political hit if reports on the details of U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding are accurate, Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer said on the Haaretz Podcast. Netanyahu had been “riding high,” planning to face Israel’s upcoming elections in the fall having compensated for his failures that led to October 7 by boldly “reconfiguring the map of the Middle East, and disassembling Iran's proxy network of Hezbollah and Hamas, and taking on the Iranian regime itself,” Leifer said. The Israeli leader thought “his legacy [would] be rehabilitated by those wars. Fast forward to where we are now, and that's not the case, and he’s having to confront that,” Leifer added. “Strategically, Israel's in a terrible place, where the Iranian regime is stronger than it was, and it is now able to enforce a new kind of equation where Israeli freedom of movement is limited by the potential threat of ballistic missiles from Iran –…

When Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to march in New York City’s Israel Day parade - the first mayor of the city to do so in over 60 years – “did not surprise” Rabbi Josh Weinberg, who participated in the parade. But the liberal Zionist Reform rabbi was surprised to discover that he was marching alongside far-right ministers like Bezalel Smotrich and members of the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit party. Had he known, said Weinberg, Vice President of the URJ for Israel and Reform Zionism, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast, he would’ve held a sign making it clear that “Smotrich’s Zionism does not reflect our ideology at all, and is in fact antithetical to who we are as Jews and Zionists, and even as Americans. His brand of racism, discrimination, xenophobia – everything that he stands for – we want to totally reject while still maintaining our love and support for Israel." Weinberg added that a statement by Smotrich that the New York event resembled the Jerusalem Day flag march – an event regularly marked by harassment and…

U.S. President Donald Trump has tired of the Israel-Iran conflict, but a solution remains elusive as missile fire renewed Sunday following an Israeli attack on Beirut that provoked the Iranian regime. “I think he's had enough of us,” said Haaretz senior defense analyst Amos Harel, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast. “He's fed up with this region. This is taking a lot longer than he thought, and it was less successful than he assumed. He’s paying a huge price at home domestically because of the economic effects, and he doesn't seem that tough anymore.” Joining Harel on the podcast is former Mossad official Sima Shine, an Iran expert at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, who said that Iran clearly has the advantage in negotiations with the United States towards a long-term cease-fire. While she said she doesn’t believe that Tehran wants to prolong the war, she said, they will only end the fighting “on their terms.” “They are much more determined, they are willing to pay the price and therefore,…

For B'Tselem executive director Yuli Novak, the firestorm around the New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof decrying sexual violence by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israeli prisons has had the wrong focus. Speaking on the Haaretz Podcast, Novak said the Israeli government’s "propaganda machine" and other critics focused on challenging the facts regarding the abuse described in the piece, which she says are backed up by "dozens of testimonies" collected by her organization. "I would say it's much less a question whether these things [sexual abuse of Palestinians] are happening or not happening, and much more about what it means for all of us, and first and foremost for the victims." In its report on prisons, based on testimonies from Palestinians detained and then released from 16 detention facilities after October 7, B’Tselem documented "ongoing torture, physical and mental" abuse and the use of starvation and denial of medical treatment "as a policy." B’Tselem’s conclusion: that…

The Gulf countries are spending “enormous amounts of money to try to mask the economic consequences of the Iran war from their population,” Gregg Carlstrom, The Economist’s Middle East correspondent, said on the Haaretz Podcast. Carlstrom, speaking from Dubai, explained that with the Strait of Hormuz blocked by Iran, Gulf states are flying in consumer goods, food and medicine normally imported by ship “at a huge expense” so their citizens don’t experience shortages or empty shelves in stores. However, he warned, by the end of the summer, if the security situation remains precarious and the Strait remains blocked – and especially if active warfare with Iran is renewed – the economic toll will be impossible to avoid, and these countries will worry about their many expat residents packing up and leaving. In a conversation with Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Carlstrom described a “roller coaster” of changing attitudes in the Gulf States regarding the ongoing U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict. Initially, in…

Both of Israel’s wars in Iran have been “strategic failures” and critically damaged the country’s deterrence, Danny Citrinowicz, a former top Iran expert in Israeli military intelligence, told the Haaretz Podcast. He cited a long list of missteps and misguided assumptions that led to the failure of the solo military operation in 2025 and the joint U.S. attack in February. “We overestimated air power and underestimated Iranian resilience,” Citrinowicz said, resulting in the “worst possible strategic reality, with a more extreme, decentralized regime in Tehran,” and heightened tensions with the U.S. – all while highlighting Israel’s dependence on the U.S. as a weakness. While Iran once feared an attack by Israel, he noted, its leaders have now learned that they can be attacked by the two strongest air forces in the world and emerge with its regime intact, as well as “the capacity to launch missiles and drones, and theoretically has the potential to move to a nuclear bomb.” Moreover, in a boomerang effect, he…

The first major primary battle in the 2026 U.S. midterm elections resulted in a significant victory for AIPAC and other pro-Israel megadonors, but Haaretz's Washington correspondent Ben Samuels warned that their celebrations could be premature. The defeat of Representative Thomas Massie – a rare Republican antagonist of U.S. President Donald Trump and harsh critic of Israel whom AIPAC "has wanted to take down for years" – happened after more than $30 million was spent to defeat him in what was the most expensive Congressional primary in American history. Massie was targeted by Trump and his supporters for his disloyalty to the U.S. leader. "They may have won the battle with Thomas Massie, but it's very clear that the ideology and the agenda and the vision that Thomas Massie embodies is not going anywhere – especially with younger voters and also with voters on the progressive left flank that found themselves to be weird ideological allies with this guy," Samuels told the Haaretz Podcast. Samuels also…

As Israel is fighting enemies on multiple fronts, it can't afford to lose any of its vital strategic assets. And according to Dr. Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis, a researcher at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies, it is in danger of losing one of those assets: the support of American Jews. "The loss of the special relationship between Israel and the US will force Israel to reconsider its security priorities and matter greatly to the security and foreign policy of the State of Israel," Sasson-Gordis told the Haaretz Podcast. "Within that, the Jewish community over the decades has been a major pillar of that support." A new report co-authored by Sasson-Gordis details the data behind the deterioration of support and explains the reasons for the dramatic drop – even as the Trump White House is offering "unprecedented levels of support" for Israel. The report is intended as a wake-up call for Israeli leaders and offers a list of policy recommendations designed to stave off the deterioration. Polls show…

U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed his desire not to "get stuck" in Middle East conflict and clearly wants to avoid a renewal of full-on war with Iran – but he may not have a choice, Haaretz senior analyst Amos Harel told the Haaretz Podcast. "The Iranians are not playing ball. They're not willing to make the concessions he's demanding," Harel said. "Under these circumstances, he may be pushed into a corner" and resume strikes on Iranian targets. It is a scenario that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly desires, Harel said, but it isn't clear whether Trump will include Israel directly in the offensive if it returns to striking Iran. The Israeli military is, he notes, on "high alert." On the podcast, Harel speaks to host Allison Kaplan Sommer about the "fake cease-fires" in Israel's multiple fronts – where agreements exist on paper, but attacks and drone strikes continue – in Gaza, between Iran and the Gulf states, and between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In Lebanon, he noted, the…

On a special edition of the Haaretz Podcast celebrating its 500th episode, host Allison Kaplan Sommer speaks to iconic Israeli musician David Broza – the composer of "Things Will Be Better," one of Israel’s best-known peace anthems – on performing in a time of war, chaos and despair in his country. “There’s no rationale to being Israeli,” Broza, 70, said on the podcast. "My mission is to exist as an artist and to be very much aware of where I come from and not just leave it behind and shy away from it." Broza describes himself as being “sad but hopeful,” adding that he “would have to stop singing if I wasn’t hopeful.” Having lived in Francoist Spain in his youth, he observed that how "in fascist governments, the artists are the first ones to be burnt, banned, thrown out... And yet you can't erase the art. We need strength now. We need songs. We need art." Broza’s music crosses cultures and genres – fusing Spanish guitar with contemporary rock and folk music, and emphasizing themes of peace and social…

Jews in the United Kingdom watched voters in their country gravitate to parties on the extreme right and left in the country’s local elections – following a campaign where antisemitism was used as a political football, and controversies over the government’s relationship with Israel, pro-Palestinian protests and free speech factored into voting. On the Haaretz Podcast, London-based correspondent Hagar Shezaf and senior analyst Esther Solomon discuss the impact of the results, which have been described as an “earthquake” for its rejection of the Labour Party led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. While covering the campaign, Shezaf said, she encountered a voter who told her “I voted for Labour my whole life. I won't be doing that anymore because of Gaza and Iran.” The surge in support for the far-right anti-immigrant Reform U.K. party, Solomon observed, “leaves Jews in a very, very difficult position” as the party and its leader, Brexit architect Nigel Farage, made multiple bids for Jewish support during the…

October 7 and the Gaza war radically changed the way many people around the world, including Diaspora Jews, viewed Israel. For Toronto-based journalist Jesse Brown, the turning point came not with Hamas' massacre itself, but with the domestic backlash that followed. “Canadians got angry with Jews after October 7, and the entire national discourse seemed to just turn against Jews in a way that I wouldn’t have imagined possible,” he told the Haaretz Podcast. Using police-reported hate crime statistics from Canada and the United States, Brown argues that a Jew in Canada is now about nine times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than a Jew in the United States. Ironically, he explained to podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, the progressive political atmosphere in Canada has made things worse for Jews, not better. Brown’s podcast series “What is Happening Here” documents the skyrocketing antisemitism targeting Jewish institutions and neighborhoods in Canada, including synagogues being shot at,…

War-weary Israelis have clearly tired of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, but it is still uncertain as to whether opposition forces will be able to put aside their wide ideological differences to defeat him in the October election, Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin told the Haaretz Podcast. Scheindlin, a veteran political analyst and strategist, said the recent announcement that Netanyahu challenger and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will join with Yair Lapid – also a former prime minister – is a harbinger of an opposition seeking to run in a united bloc. What is unclear is whether this push for a united opposition is “an extremely sophisticated political strategy based on mathematical calculations, or it's absolutely an arbitrary guess – a finger in the wind.” Lapid and Bennett are joining forces despite the fact that Bennett’s right-wing pro-occupation positions are firmly in line with Netanyahu’s, “minus the corruption and populism,” said Scheindlin, while Lapid supports a two-state solution.…

A diplomatic crisis over Israeli import of stolen grain from occupied Ukraine exploded this week following the publication of a Haaretz investigation that documents Ukrainian allegations that Russian ships were bringing the wheat and barley to Israeli ports. National Security and Cyber editor Avi Scharf and diplomatic correspondent Liza Rozovsky explain on the Haaretz Podcast how the investigation unfolded, the international fallout, its effect on Israel-Ukraine relations and the harsh war of words between the two countries. The story began in mid-April with Ukraine’s announcement that “they had warned the Israeli authorities about a ship arriving with stolen Ukrainian grain, and that they had asked Israel to take necessary actions to seize the ship,” Scharf said. “To their dismay, Israel did not adhere to the warnings and let the ship unload and leave Israel.” The incident led Scharf to revive an investigation into the import of stolen Ukrainian grain that he had begun in late 2023, but was put on hold…

The average American watched the Gaza war from afar as a "dramatic and gruesome humanitarian crisis that Israel was responsible for" – but the U.S.-Israel war in Iran is having a far greater impact on U.S. voters and politicians, Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer said, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast. "The perception is that this was a war that no one in America wanted," and "that America has been tricked into a war of choice, and that this is Israel’s fault." This, he said, has fueled the erosion of congressional support for continuing massive military aid to Israel – and in the Democratic Party, growing support for refusing to sell arms to Israel entirely. On the podcast, Leifer also discusses the state of the fragile cease-fire with Iran, and the "nightmare scenario" possibility of a prolonged period in which there will be no renewed fighting nor an agreement, leaving the region in dangerous limbo. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to suffer domestic political consequences for a failure to achieve…

Fighting antisemitism online was meant to be the focus of the Israeli government’s multimillion-dollar digital PR campaign run by President Donald Trump’s former digital guru, Brad Parscale. But instead, Haaretz disinformation and cyber correspondent Omer Benjakob said on the Haaretz Podcast, Parscale’s firm has built a network of pro-Israel websites targeting the U.S. evangelical right, stressing the contrast between Western and “Judeo-Christian” values while promoting negative messages regarding Palestinians and Islam. Among them is “praise for international calls to recognize settlements,” and “articles dedicated to why giving the Palestinian Authority control of Gaza is a terrible idea, and almost worse than letting Hamas take control." Repeatedly, he added, the websites reflect a “compulsive obsession with perception and narrative,” insisting that all negative content about Israel online is false and manipulated. On the podcast, Benjakob explained that the multiple new websites created by Parscale's…

The final moments of Vivian Silver’s life were a “pivotal turning point” for her son Yonatan Zeigen, who now dedicates his life to Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, following in the footsteps of his peace activist mother, who was slain in her home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7. Speaking on the eve of Israel’s Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers and terror victims, Zeigen recalled his final goodbyes with his mother with the gunshots of Hamas terrorists at her doorstep in the background, and the loss that he described as jolting him out of what he calls a “political coma” and moved him into full-time activism. Zeigen is a board member of The Parents Circle-Families Forum that co-sponsors the annual alternative joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony. He attended the ceremony in his youth together with his mother and immediately after her death, he knew that this would be the appropriate place to mourn her and continue her mission. He said on the podcast that the alternative ceremony represented “how…