The brutal crackdown on protesters killing tens of thousands has been a "sledgehammer" to Iranians everywhere, said Dr. Meir Javedanfar , an Israeli-Iranian expert on the government led by Ayatollah Ali Khameini. "The people of Iran have just gone through their own Babi Yar massacre," Javedanfar said on the Haaretz Podcast, referring to the largest single mass-killing during the Holocaust. "The Nazis killed 30,000 people in the space of two days. The Iranian regime – if we accept the 30,000 numb...
Jan 26, 2026•27 min•Season 1Ep. 472
Palestinians in Gaza view a future of rule by U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly inaugurated Board of Peace as representing “another form of occupation” said Haaretz correspondent Nagham Zbeedat , speaking on the Haaretz Podcast. Zbeedat, who covers Palestinian affairs and the Arab world, said that Trump’s vision of an American-led international stabilization force – intended to replace Hamas after it disarms – is likely to be problematic. American “complicity and cooperation with the Israeli a...
Jan 23, 2026•27 min•Season 1Ep. 471
California State Senator Scott Wiener , the frontrunner for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat, insisted on the Haaretz Podcast that his change of heart regarding whether Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide did not represent a political flip-flop. In early January, Wiener faced an angry audience at a candidate’s forum, in which he debated his two rivals in the California Democratic primary to replace retiring Representative Pelosi. In a lightning round question, Wi...
Jan 20, 2026•36 min•Season 1Ep. 470
Birthright Israel is celebrating 25 years of offering a free 10-day trip to Israel to every young Diaspora Jew with the hope of fighting assimilation. The celebrations include a $900 million fundraising campaign. But, as Haaretz Jewish World editor Judy Maltz told the Haaretz Podcast, their traditional mission and "fun in the sun" marketing campaign have become deeply problematic, given the battering of the image of the Jewish state in the eyes of many young people around the world. Instead of u...
Jan 16, 2026•28 min•Season 1Ep. 469
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a bombshell in a recent interview when he declared he had told U.S. President Donald Trump that Israel no longer needed a long-term commitment from the U.S. for military aid, and that he planned to “taper off” the $3.8 billion Israel now receives to “zero” within ten years. On the Haaretz Podcast, Washington correspondent Ben Samuels and senior defense analyst Amos Harel discuss the implications of Netanyahu’s announcement and the circumstances behind it...
Jan 14, 2026•32 min•Season 1Ep. 468
Once again, Iranians have taken to the streets. Starting in late December, the plummeting value of the national currency, along with the soaring cost of living, were the catalyst for a fresh wave of protest – and one that soon turned political. Although the government has been quick to crack down on the demonstrations, the regime has been dealt some heavy blows in the past year, and analysts are pondering whether this could be the movement that ends the ayatollahs’ reign for good. Haaretz report...
Jan 08, 2026•26 min•Season 1Ep. 467
It was a challenging year to be a Diaspora Jew. The war in Gaza and growing hostility to Israel had an undeniable impact on Jewish life across the world in 2025. Events in Israel became a focus in local and national politics around the world – and served as a catalyst in a global surge in antisemitism. The year was punctuated by horrific and deadly attacks against Jews from Washington D.C. to Manchester to Australia’s Bondi Beach. On this special episode of the Haaretz Podcast, we revisit episod...
Jan 02, 2026•44 min•Season 1Ep. 466
For Israel, 2025 was a year in which war turned the unimaginable into reality: from the terrifying exchange of missiles with Iran to the horrors of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, to the joy and relief when U.S. President Donald Trump secured a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas to bring the painful hostage ordeal to an end. This special year-end episode highlights the reporting and analysis on the Haaretz Podcast that accompanied the year's dramatic events: from the Gaza war, hostage crisis, ...
Dec 30, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 465
France’s ambassador to Israel Frédéric Journès said on the Haaretz Podcast that any postwar Gaza plan must acknowledge that completely disarming and ridding the Strip of Hamas militia members is not an achievable goal. “You're not going to eliminate all of those people, so you basically need to find them a job in local police, find them a little job in society and de-radicalize them to the greatest extent possible,” he contended. This is possible, he said, because over the course of the war, Isr...
Dec 24, 2025•50 min•Season 1Ep. 464
Before October 7th, Trump’s second term and the election of Zohran Mamdani rocked New York’s Jewish community, Manhattan’s famed 92nd Street Y – like most mainstream Jewish institutions – played it relatively safe when it came to programs about Israel. Susan Engel, executive producer of the 92nd St. Y Talks, tells the Haaretz Podcast that the famed Manhattan cultural center has undergone “a soul-searching since October 7 around our own Jewish identity and around who we are as a Jewish institutio...
Dec 23, 2025•24 min•Season 1Ep. 463
Over the past two years, many filmmakers have hesitated or refrained from bringing their films to Israeli film festivals as part of cultural boycott of Israel over the Gaza war. But for Joshua Zeman , the decision to bring his powerful new documentary “Checkpoint Zoo” to the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival was “merely part and parcel of the whole experience of making a film about something that's been politicized that shouldn’t be politicized.” Zeman’s film tells the dramatic story of the 2022 re...
Dec 18, 2025•22 min•Season 1Ep. 462
Australian Jews are “shocked but not surprised” by the “horrific” mass shooting on Bondi Beach, which turned a Hanukkah celebration into a tragic massacre, Australian Jewish leader Lynda Ben-Menashe said on the Haaretz Podcast. In the two years since the October 7 attack in Israel, the Australian Jewish community “begged” their government officials to enforce laws against incitement and hate speech, which has led to an unprecedented spike in antisemitic violence. But, she said, the government’s ...
Dec 15, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 461
When it comes to liberal American Jews and President Donald Trump, the “cognitive dissonance is real,” said award-winning journalist Dahlia Lithwick on the Haaretz Podcast. While Lithwick “doesn’t dispute for a minute" the fact that the U.S. president and his envoys “did yeoman’s work” negotiating a cease-fire deal, it is not enough for her to soften her perception of the level of danger that Trump represents. With democracy and rule of law being challenged, “You have to ask yourself, am I trans...
Dec 12, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 460
After Russian-Israeli academic Elizabeth Tsurkov was freed from captivity in Iraq in September following two and a half years of imprisonment and torture, she returned to a very different Israel, she said in a wide-ranging interview on the Haaretz Podcast. Israelis “have changed in very fundamental ways,” she said. “After October 7, the circle of people towards whom Israelis feel compassion shrunk very significantly.” As she returns to public life as a researcher and commentator on Middle East a...
Dec 09, 2025•56 min•Season 1Ep. 459
In his first interview since his release, former hostage Alon Ohel called the International Committee of the Red Cross a “disgraceful organization.” His anger reflects a general bitterness among Israelis who believe ICRC failed to ensure the Israeli hostages’ received humanitarian treatment in captivity and their silence in the face of Hamas’ refusal to grant them access. On the Haaretz Podcast, the head of ICRC’s Israel sub-delegation, Yuval Arie Nevo , admitted in an interview that the hostili...
Dec 04, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 458
There was a clear “threat” delivered in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s formal letter to the President Isaac Herzog requesting a pardon in his corruption case, senior Haaretz columnist Dahlia Scheindlin said on the Haaretz Podcast. Netanyahu’s government continues to conduct a “campaign of vicious political incitement against the Israeli judiciary,” Scheindlin noted. “And what he's basically saying in the request is: ‘You see how bad I can make things. This is what will happen and co...
Dec 02, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 457
The feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene may not be exclusively about Israel, “but Israel is one of the pillars of the narrative” that fueled Greene’s decision to resign earlier this week, Haaretz’s Washington correspondent Ben Samuels told the Haaretz Podcast. Until recently, the right was viewed as an unshakeable mainstay of American support for Israel. Schisms within the Republican Party have ruptured over Israel’s compatibility with MAGA-styl...
Nov 28, 2025•32 min•Season 1Ep. 456
Now that all of Israel’s living hostages are home and the vast majority of the bodies of deceased hostages have been returned, the “line of thinking” among many Israeli military and political leaders is “we have nothing to lose” and “we can continue our fight against Hamas,” says Haaretz senior security analyst Amos Harel . Members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, he believes, are clearly “looking for an excuse” to return to full-fledged war. Speaking on the Haaretz Podcast, Ha...
Nov 24, 2025•29 min•Season 1Ep. 455
Haaretz held its first-ever conference in Berlin, “Fault Lines and Futures: Israel, Gaza and Germany in Wartime and After," to explore the dynamic between Israelis, Palestinians and Germans at this charged moment; this special edition of the Haaretz Podcast features highlights of those conversations. Among the conference speakers was Hadash MK Ayman Odeh , who called on German politicians to follow other European leaders in recognizing a Palestinian state and acknowledge that “there are two peop...
Nov 20, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 454
Iran remains a major threat to Israel and the United States – with clear ambitions to expand its influence and terror activity into the Western hemisphere, said Danny Citrinowicz , a former IDF military intelligence officer and Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast. Those ambitions were recently highlighted when a U.S. official revealed an advanced plan by Iran to assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Mexico, using a base of operations in Venezu...
Nov 17, 2025•32 min•Season 1Ep. 453
Olive harvest season has become a flashpoint in the West Bank in recent years as extremist Israeli settlers regularly threaten and physically harm Palestinian harvesters, but this year, “the situation on the ground is out of control,” Anton Goodman of Rabbis for Human Rights said on the Haaretz Podcast. “We have never seen anything like this,” Goodman emphasized, noting that in the past, “We've seen settler attacks, and we've seen unnecessary army aggression and restrictions, but we've never see...
Nov 13, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 452
After October 7, actor, singer and writer Jonah Platt pivoted away from his entertainment career and poured all of his energy into what until then had been his “side hustle” – advocating for more “joyful” portrayals of Jews in Hollywood, and broadening his focus to include pro-Israel advocacy and fighting antisemitism. Platt joins the Haaretz Podcast where he discusses his own top-ranked Jewish podcast aimed at what he calls the “middle majority” of American Jews – engaging in pro-Israel advocac...
Nov 10, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 451
The scandal rocking Israel’s military justice system has “serious ramifications” that could undermine the country both internally and in its ability to address accusations of war crimes overseas, Dr. Eran Shamir-Borer said on the Haaretz Podcast. Shamir-Borer, who served for over 20 years in the IDF Military Advocate General's Corps, and currently heads the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for National Security and Democracy, said he was “personally and professionally shocked” by the admissio...
Nov 06, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 450
The prospect of a New York City mayor who “won’t march in the Israel Day Parade, will not travel to Israel, who will divest from Israel” with a history of pro-Palestinian advocacy has brought many Jews to a place of “caution and worry” as they choose the city’s next leader, New York political reporter Jacob Kornbluh said on the Haaretz Podcast. At the same time, he stressed, despite the “fear campaign” that Jewish leaders and rabbis pursued against the 34-year-old Democratic nominee Zohran Mamda...
Nov 03, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 449
Throughout the Gaza war, the tremendous difference between international coverage and Israeli media coverage was obvious to anyone exposed to both. In a new report, media scholar Dr. Ayala Panievsky’s research quantifies precisely how pronounced that difference was. On the Haaretz Podcast, she said the silencing of dissent in Israel’s mainstream media was unprecedented. “The professional journalists, people who Israelis spend their entire lives trusting to tell them the truth, rallied around the...
Oct 31, 2025•36 min•Season 448Ep. 1
The turmoil around the Gaza war has transformed French Jews into “different people” than they were two years ago, pioneering rabbi Delphine Horvilleur said on the Haaretz Podcast. “I don't know any of any Jewish family in France who hasn’t had a conversation around the Shabbat table,” Horvilleur said, contemplating possible emigration and wondering what will remain of Jews in France a decade from now. In her discussion with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Horvilleur talks about inspiring the...
Oct 28, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 447
The flow of high-level Trump administration officials to Israel in the wake of the Gaza cease-fire agreement has sent a clear signal to Israel’s prime minister and his government, columnist Joshua Leifer said on the Haaretz Podcast. In a single week, envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived for an extended stay, followed by the first state visit of Vice President JD Vance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed on Thursday evening. For Leifer, “the bottom-line message to the world that th...
Oct 24, 2025•28 min•Season 1Ep. 446
From the international success of “Fauda” to Academy Award nominations and prestigious festival awards, the Israeli film and television industry was at a high point before the October 7 attacks. Throughout the two-year Gaza war, the industry has struggled as international funding and festival invitations dried up, and Hollywood A-listers circulated petitions to boycott any association with the Israeli industry. Domestically, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been hostile, especially when infur...
Oct 21, 2025•28 min•Season 1Ep. 445
The miraculous release of Israel’s remaining 20 living hostages in Gaza may have been “the best news we’ve had for the last two years,” Haaretz senior security analyst Amos Harel said on the Haaretz Podcast. Yet a great deal remains to be resolved before anything resembling security is in place for Palestinians in Gaza or for Israelis. Inside Gaza, Harel noted, “Hamas is already making its intentions clear – to remain by any means necessary. They're not going anywhere. They do not intend to dism...
Oct 16, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 444
The Gaza war may be finally coming to an end, but it has made a long-term impact on Israel and the way the world views the Jewish state – including Diaspora Jews – especially those who spent the war on turbulent university campuses. Judy Maltz , Haaretz's Jewish World Editor, surveyed the effect of the two-year conflict on a group of young Jews from around the world, seeking to understand how their evolving views on Israel, antisemitism and Jewish identity changed since October 7. She found that...
Oct 13, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 443
