Hussein Aboubakr Mansour was born and raised in Egypt before fleeing to the United States and dedicating his life to understanding how the Arab world came to be defined by state failure, religious extremism and all the rest of the region's many crises. His conclusions, laid out in a recent essay in the magazine Mosaic, are an extraordinarily innovative new path. It isn't a crisis of internal Islamic failure, as conservative thinkers argue, nor a crisis forged and sustained purely by Western impe...
Jul 21, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 30
The clashes in Sweida in southern Syria this week focused world attention on the plight of the Druze and questions about the nature of the new Syrian government. Videos and claims of atrocities drove hundreds of Golan Druze to rush into Syria to the rescue of their brethren. Israeli strikes in Damascus against Syrian forces raised the stakes and led to questions, including in Israel itself, about how Israel can protect the Druze while not sacrificing an expansion of the Abraham Accords. Rania Fa...
Jul 17, 2025•56 min•Ep. 29
As hostage talks seem stalled and the war grinds on into its 22nd month, doubts about Netanyahu’s strategy and intentions have become ubiquitous. Netanyahu has given many reasons to distrust him, including his simple refusal to explain the strategy for removing Hamas and Israel’s vision for a post-Hamas Gaza. But it isn’t enough to criticize Netanyahu’s strategy or even to argue he doesn’t have one. To offer an effective critique, critics need to suggest a better strategy for removing Hamas and ...
Jul 14, 2025•45 min•Ep. 28
There are many ways to process and manage painful and difficult times. After the massacre of October 7 and the multi-front war that ensued, many Israelis turned to music, and often to the powerful ballads and melodies of singer-songwriter duo (and married couple) Aya Korem and Adam Ben Amitai. Aya and Adam join us in a special song-laden episode to take a look back at 21 months of pain, resilience, solidarity and, in the end, also hope. This episode was sponsored by Bennett and Robin Greenspan o...
Jul 07, 2025•56 min•Ep. 27
The Iranian regime has long claimed to be the bearers of Shia Islam's vision of messianic redemption. The Supreme Leader, who ruled under regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini's ideology of "wilayat al-faqih," or Guardianship of the Jurist, created a new model of a revolutionary conquering Shiism that was previously unknown in Shia Islam, at least in its Arab version. We are joined in this episode by Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a Shia Muslim writer and analyst in Washington DC and research fellow at FDD. ...
Jul 04, 2025•54 min•Ep. 26
A bombshell Haaretz report last Friday concluded that IDF soldiers were responsible for a great many of the deaths of Gazan civilians outside aid distribution centers in Gaza. What should we make of the report? How reliable is it? And what does it tell us about the army's handling of Gaza and the progress of the war? This episode was sponsored by an anonymous donor in memory of the seven IDF soldiers who were killed on June 24, 2025, during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip. Their names were: ...
Jul 01, 2025•48 min•Ep. 25
( Update: audio issues corrected ) Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel. I was an ally and vital trading partner for decades -- until the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the Islamist AKP party, who began pursuing a "neo-Ottomanist" foreign policy of Turkish influence and expansionism in the region, and specifically identified Israel as a long-term ideological enemy. Turkey is now forging alliances on all Israel's borders and looking to found an Islamic defense alliance a...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 24
There's now a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Who won the war? And what happens now? We offer some preliminary conclusions as the dust settles. This episode is sponsored by the Peters family, Tom, Shevi, Daniel, Ethan, Arielle, Yoni and David, in honor of BeLev Echad, an organization devoted to helping wounded Israeli veterans recover physically, medically and emotionally. To learn about how you too can help Israeli veterans recover, visit Belevechad.nyc. If you would like to sponsor an episo...
Jun 24, 2025•46 min•Ep. 23
The United States has struck the Iranian nuclear program, marking a watershed moment for the region. It will take days to determine the scale of the damage and many years to understand the implications of President Trump’s decision. But a few things are already clear. A new relationship was established between the US and its ally Israel that defined a new security architecture for the American-led alliance worldwide. Israel did the heavy lifting, suffered the blowback, and only because it was wi...
Jun 22, 2025•47 min•Ep. 22
Haredi Israelis make up some 13% of the population but have extremely low rates of workforce participation and military service. The growing welfare subsidies that sustain their communities have increasingly become a source of tensions and frustration for other Israelis, and the multi-front war that began on October 7 has now made their exemptions from military service a major political issue. Israel needs more workers, less welfare spending and many more soldiers to thrive in the future. Can th...
Jun 20, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 21
Twenty-four people have been killed in Israel since the outbreak of the direct Israel-Iran war. The Air Force is busy hunting launchers inside Iran to constrain Iran's ability to fire missiles at Israeli cities. Parts of Tehran are being evacuated as Israel continues to hunt down the IRGC leadership and demolish the country's nuclear program. But enormous questions remain unanswered. Can Israel actually destroy the nuclear program all by itself? If it can't, and America doesn't join the airstrik...
Jun 16, 2025•36 min•Ep. 20
The astonishing Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program was the inevitable result of October 7, a day that convinced Israelis they do not actually understand their Islamist foes, cannot deter these foes and therefore cannot allow them to develop the capacity to destroy the Jewish state, no matter the cost. Israel woke up on October 7. Its enemies had been telling it they plan to destroy it for generations; on October 8 it finally started to listen. And the Middle East will never be the same. Th...
Jun 13, 2025•36 min•Ep. 19
The Trump administration has been trying to hammer out a deal to dismantle Iran's nuclear program. In the last 24 hours, the rhetoric has ratcheted up on both sides, as both Iranian and US officials have warned about impending military action. A week ago, we recorded a conversation with Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, on the Iranian regime's strategy, its nuclear aspirations and what it would take to disrupt those aspirations diplomatically or, failing that, mili...
Jun 12, 2025•54 min•Ep. 18
Last month marked the 25th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon after an 18-year guerrilla war that presaged everything we now think of as 21st-century warfare. I spoke to Matti Friedman, veteran of Lebanon and bestselling author of a memoir from that long war, Pumpkinflowers, about the history, the lessons drawn from it and how we're seeing the continuing effects of that conflict in Gaza today. This episode is sponsored by Julie and Frank Cohen, who believe that this podcast is a ...
Jun 09, 2025•53 min•Ep. 17
Hamas's rule in Gaza is a theocratic dictatorship. But its roots lie in the 19th-century movement for Islamic reform that believes modernization, science and even political liberalization. How did the great liberalizing theologians of the late 19th century, from Al-Afghani to Abduh to Rida, become Hamas? Join us for a story that raises the startling possibility that the deradicalization of Gaza could come from within. This episode is sponsored by “the Frozen Chosen, Haviv's supportive community ...
May 30, 2025•56 min•Ep. 16
Jerusalem Day falls on May 25th this year. It is the day of Jerusalem's unification in the 1967 Six Day War, and so a symbol of both Jewish rescue from the genocidal plans of its enemies, a palpable experience of strength and redemption just two decades after Auschwitz, and also a symbol of the perils and moral problems of Jewish power, the day Israel found itself ruling another people. It is the day of the Jews' homecoming to their sacred places, but also of political grandstanding and ideologi...
May 26, 2025•20 min•Ep. 15
If the requirements of international law mean that Israel is effectively prohibited from defeating its enemies or protecting its borders, should Israelis turn their backs on international law? Why do we need "law?" Isn't it enough to just do our best to be as moral as possible? After all, the institutions of international law seem so unfair to Israel. Just this past year, Israel was made to stand in judgment, accused of genocide, before a judicial panel whose president hails from an enemy countr...
May 18, 2025•48 min•Ep. 14
After a delay (Haviv got a bad flu), we're happy to share a great panel with Haviv and Prof. John Spencer that took place at the Woodbury Jewish Center in Woodbury, New York on May 7.Thank you to Rabbi Jason Fruithandler and Rob Dwek for hosting, and to the Malin family for sponsoring the speaker series this event was part of. Haviv and John talked about whether victory was in the cards against Hamas, what it would require, and whether Israeli society would persevere; about claims of starvation ...
May 13, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 13
Qatar has just 330,000 citizens but controls vast wealth due to its plentiful natural gas. It has used that wealth to support radical and violent terrorist groups and regimes throughout the Middle East and to wield enormous influence in the West, including among American politicians and universities.In today's episode, I asked Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and host of its Morning Brief podcast, if Qatar really is as bad as Israelis think, ...
May 02, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 12
As the Trump administration tries to strike a deal curtailing Iran's nuclear program, I turned to Dr. Sharona Mazalian Levi, an Iran expert and proud Persian Jew, to try to take us past the headlines and political elites to the conditions and hopes of ordinary Iranians. Dr. Mazalian paints a dire picture. Desperate shortages of clean water, electricity and gas, a collapsed currency, a third of the population under the poverty line, an oppressive religious police, the highest rate of executions i...
Apr 28, 2025•51 min•Ep. 11
Palestinian advocates like to quip that the current war "didn't begin on October 7." That's true, of course, though unhelpful. It didn't begin in any one specific place. There are no singular first causes in history. When we choose the beginning of the story, we choose its framing and meaning.For most Israeli Jews, the story of the current war might be said to have begun in the fall of 2000, in the great collapse of Oslo that still casts its long shadow on the Israeli political psyche.This is th...
Apr 22, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 10
Passover is upon us, the seder is Saturday night.Freedom, the Sages teach, is not an end, it is a path; no mere escape from Pharaoh's tyranny but a becoming, filled with substance and responsibility and devotion; no one-off achievement but a ceaseless struggle to secure and deepen who and what we are.This bonus episode offers a few short thoughts that I teach my children at our seder each year about the meaning of this holiday, and thus the meaning of our peoplehood and freedom.This episode is s...
Apr 11, 2025•17 min
The Abraham Accords have the potential to transform the Middle East. The very fact that they survived the Gaza war proves their resilience. Indeed, trade between Israel and its Abraham Accords partners has risen dramatically and stayed high through the war.And now the “kit” of dozens of agreements drafted between Israel and the UAE, from the overarching peace agreement to treaties on cellphone network interoperability and double taxation, stands ready to be copied over to a Israeli-Saudi peace.B...
Apr 10, 2025•49 min•Ep. 9
Is Zionism colonialism? Are Jews an authentic people, or merely a religion? What about Palestinians? What are Zionism’s moral costs, and what are those of opposing Zionism? I asked one of my teachers, Hebrew University historian Prof. Alexander Yakobson, some of the great questions now being advanced in Western academic and progressive discourses about Israel. Alex has that special fearlessness of an intellectual who takes the other side's position seriously. It makes his answers all the more va...
Apr 03, 2025•53 min•Ep. 8
What if everybody is right on judicial reform? Israel's highest court is immensely and unreasonably powerful. But if it is weakened, what other checks stand in the way of the tyranny of the majority, that great Achilles' heel of democracy since the dawn of Western civilization? This question is especially urgent for Israel, whose politics are more Middle Eastern than Western, more tribal than ideological. It's not unreasonable to weaken the court, but it would be disastrous to do so without broa...
Mar 28, 2025•57 min•Ep. 7
Abandoning the Democrats is a losing strategy for Israel, says Rep. Ritchie Torres, perhaps the most outspoken supporter of Israel in the US House of Representatives. The fight over Israel inside American politics is a proxy for a much larger battle over the future of the Democratic Party and the character of America, he argues. Those who don't like Israel, he says, tend to take a dim view of the promise of America. And who is Clarence Jones, and why does Torres consider him "the greatest living...
Mar 25, 2025•41 min•Ep. 6
Warfighting has resumed in Gaza. Israel's message is clear: Gaza's future depends on Hamas releasing hostages and surrendering its control of the territory. But there is a larger pivot underway, a regional strategic realignment. Hamas once hoped its attack on Israel would trigger a broader regional war. In a sense, it succeeded, relegating Gaza to a marginal arena in the larger strategic struggle. That alone, gives Israel a freer hand to resume war whenever it wants. Hamas is now truly strategic...
Mar 19, 2025•25 min
This is a podcast about history, but also about this moment in history. Today's episode is a special one. Many of you asked about the hostages, about the activism of their families, about their shattering experiences on October 7 and how they have worked to piece their lives back together since. I can think of no better way to begin to answer these questions than by posing them to our good friend Shaked Haran. There's no one story of the hostage families. Their experiences vary, their opinions o...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 5
Israeli Jews are the last surviving remnant of dozens of devastated Jewish communities across three continents. How did this history shape them? What do they understand about the world that few others see? Join Haviv Rettig Gur for a deep dive into the historical experience that shaped this largest community of Jews ever. Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th. Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreo...
Mar 06, 2025•59 min•Ep. 4
In our first interview episode, Haviv Rettig Gur sits down (virtually) with Prof. John Spencer of West Point, one of the foremost experts in urban warfare who has made a special study of Israeli warfighting tactics and strategy. Many subscribers to this podcast have asked us why Israel doesn’t seem to have won this war, why Hamas is still standing after 17 months of fighting and why Israel must still negotiate for its hostages. For answers we turned to Prof. Spencer. We learned about the IDF’s a...
Feb 26, 2025•54 min•Ep. 3
