Just last week, PM Benjamin Netanyahu spent three very full days in Washington DC conferring with President Trump and overseeing his most senior advisers get down to brass tacks with their US counterparts. The expectation – fed by repeated statements made by the President – was that a deal to end the war with Hamas and free the remaining hostages was close. So close. The families of those in captivity dared to allow themselves to feel hopeful. Until the PM returned to Israel. And suddenly, there...
Jul 14, 2025•27 min
In this final episode in our three part series focusing on Piers Morgan and his YouTube show, Piers MorganUncensored , we speak with two tough people about how to handle this new wild west of independent media. First up is Emily Schrader , journalist and activist with particular expertise on Iran. She also has a huge social media following, and for good reason. A regular guest on Uncensored , Schrader has gone head-to-head with some of the most vicious antisemitic and anti-Israel personalities o...
Jul 10, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Today we bring you the second of our three part series taking a close look at celebrity media host Piers Morgan and his show Uncensored . Viewed by millions daily, Uncensored has focused intensely on the Israel-Hamas war, Israel-Iran war, and really pretty much all things related to Israel. Somewhat unceasingly. In this interview with Lee Kern, we get into his thoughts on why Uncensored is not just unbalanced but does not even qualify as a serious news or political program. Lee’s insights and co...
Jul 06, 2025•30 min
In this special three-part series, we explore the increasingly contentious place of media superstar Piers Morgan and his YouTube show, Uncensored . Morgan has always inclined to the sensational, but in recent months he has perhaps gone too far – in terms of platforming some of the most hateful, uninformed antisemites and anti-Zionist voices in the world. Repeatedly. As he reminds us often, millions watch his show and engage on social media. So, he reasons, he must be doing something right. Well,...
Jul 04, 2025•57 min
Ya’akov Katz and I get into the dramatic overnight developments in the Middle East and brace for the possible scenarios that may unfold. We discuss the US military action, Iranian retaliation so far, and how this global conflict may escalate, or resolve. State of Tel Aviv is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber Yaakov Katz is an Israeli-American author and journalist. Between 2016 and 2023, Yaakov was editor-in-chie...
Jun 22, 2025•37 min
OK. Tonight I really. Must sleep. I spoke last night with Beni Sabti, an Iranian-born expert on security, culture and politics of his native country. BenI has been going night and day since Friday morning, being one of the most highly regarded Iran experts in the world. So I was thrilled to finally have some time to speak with him Wednesday night. We both signed off, exhausted, around midnight. Five minutes later the first alarms went off in central Israel, where he lives. This morning, multiple...
Jun 19, 2025•34 min
It has been a five-day blitz of attacks by the Israeli Air Force over Iran. The IDF has taken out many key Iranian military and other strategic sites and capabilities. Civilians are very deliberately not targeted. In recent days Tehran has been evacuated—responding to IDF warnings. Based on photos we have seen, it is a ghost town. And now we are waiting to see what happens next. The nuclear centrifuges—located deep underground in a mountain bunker at Fordow, Iran—must be destroyed to truly end t...
Jun 18, 2025•29 min
For four days, Israel and Iran have engaged in direct, intense conflict. For Israel, destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons and capability is a matter of survival. For the ruling Islamist regime in Iran, resisting Israeli power is also a matter of survival. The deeply unpopular theo-fascist rulers are clinging to power by fear and oppression. Israeli attacks are pulverizing the nation’s ability to fight back. This could be a very quick and decisive conflict that resets the geopolitical global reality...
Jun 16, 2025•30 min
In recent days Hamas has shifted all of its attention to controlling the food supply for civilians in the Gaza Strip. They continue to hoard aid meant for the needy and then resell it at extortionate prices. The last two weeks have been especially chaotic as the food supply diminishes, and people are living meal to meal. Concerns regarding famine are real and the involvement of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is intended to address the food scarcity. But the rollout of this new initiative has b...
Jun 08, 2025•52 min
So many times since October 7, the UN and many governments have raised alarms regarding imminent and mass starvation in the Gaza Strip. It never materialized. But recently a serious crisis with respect to food availability has developed there. The causes of this food scarcity are not as simple as the media and many national leaders would have us believe. There have been rash and constant allegations smearing Israel, alleging that food deliveries were withheld in order to starve the civilian popu...
Jun 04, 2025•54 min
On October 7, 2023, 19-year-old Itay Chen was serving in the IDF on the border with Gaza. His father, Ruby, recalls the agonizing wait until the IDF concluded that he had been taken hostage by Hamas. Not until March 2024 did they return to tell the Chen family that, based on intelligence they had gathered, the military declared that Itay had been killed. To this day the family has no concrete evidence that Itay is alive. Or not. And so they live with a sliver of hope and face each day with coura...
May 28, 2025•36 min
In this second episode of my recent interview with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, we begin by discussing his reaction to the horror of October 7. Within minutes of hearing and reading reports of the Hamas atrocities, he said he knew that this would result in total disaster for Hamas as well as the people of the Gaza Strip. He decided to pivot in his very comfortable life and job to immerse himself in explaining and advocating the conundrum of Gazans. Alkhatib is adamant that the majority of the people li...
May 24, 2025•35 min
Like so many of us, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib’s life took a hairpin turn on October 7, 2023. Until age 15, he lived in the Gaza Strip. He then attended high school in the U.S. on an exchange program and has never left. Ahmed has returned to Gaza often over the decades and still has many family members living there. After October 7, he left his old life in California and relocated in Washington D.C. Since that time he has emerged as a leading intellectual activist articulating an alternate Palestinian...
May 24, 2025•45 min
I’m delighted to be back in action with my regular guest on the podcast, Ya’akov Katz. He is a State of Tel Aviv favorite because he brings such deep knowledge and passion to his analysis. There is no sugar coating or equivocating with Ya’akov – but he is always grounded and well-reasoned. And today that is a tall order. We discuss Israel’s threats to renew the war on Gaza with a major ground offensive, likely after President Trump’s visit to the region in mid-May. In the meantime, tens of thous...
May 07, 2025•41 min
Immediately following the horrors of October 7, John Ondrasik, the singer-songwriter who fronts the band “Five for Fighting”, stepped up for Hamas hostages and, as he says, for moral clarity. His band is best known for his post-9/11 super-hit “Superman”, a beautiful tribute to those who perished on that terrible day in America. When Ondrasik heard that the mother of 24-year-old musician Alon Ohel (held hostage to this day by Hamas) was looking for someone with whom to collaborate musically, he a...
May 06, 2025•39 min
WARNING: Graphic and violent visual content. Israel is in a state of collective shock regarding many things in this post-October 7 apocalyptic reality. But perhaps the most incomprehensible is that 19 months after that attack, 59 hostages—alive and dead—remain captive in the most barbaric conditions. Then 22 years old, Alon Ohel had recently returned from his post-army trip to the Far East when he decided to head to the Nova Music Festival on Friday, October 6, 2023. Since then he has languished...
May 05, 2025•57 min
Part II: Government subverts democracy with its illegal firing of Shin Bet Chief. In this podcast episode, I speak with Amir Tibon, diplomatic correspondent with Ha’aretz newspaper, author, and member of kibbutz Nahal Oz. A survivor of October 7, Amir and his family were rescued that day by his father, retired IDF General Noam Tibon. In his superb book, Gates of Gaza, Amir tells the story of that surreal day, weaving in historical context so that readers develop a much deeper understanding of th...
Apr 20, 2025•38 min
Part I: Can the government fire the head of Shin Bet? You bet! Says Simcha Rothman Apologies for the gap in podcast posts, but this coming week your cup will runneth over. Lots of great stuff coming your way. And we begin with this fiery discussion with Religious Zionist MK Simcha Rothman. I spoke to him on Sunday, April 6, just after the government had fired Shin Bet Head Ronen Bar and two days before the appeal of his firing was being heard in the Israeli Supreme Court. Rothman sees this lates...
Apr 19, 2025•59 min
Each week, it seems, the stakes get higher. Last week, PM Netanyahu strode into very dangerous territory. In addition to resuming the war with Hamas, his government took the rather bold steps of firing the Internal Security Service Head, Ronen Bar, as well as Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara. Never before has a government fired a Shin Bet boss. And this, in the midst of unprecedented security threats—externally. And then there’s the fact that these acts were brought to the Israeli Supreme Cou...
Mar 24, 2025•42 min
A video from an ultra-orthodox wedding last week went viral and stoked fresh rage targeting the ultra-orthodox population. In his column in the Jerusalem Post last Friday (see the Podcast Notes for the link), State of Tel Aviv regular, Ya’akov Katz, gave voice to the growing anger that many Israelis feel towards the ultra-orthodox population in Israel. This time, it was triggered by the wedding video, showing a prominent Rabbi leading what looked to be many hundreds, maybe more than a thousand, ...
Mar 16, 2025•36 min
On Wednesday, March 5, President Trump welcomed eight men and women who had been held hostage by Hamas into the Oval Office. Most were released since January, having spent 16 months, more or less, in brutal conditions. To a person, they expressed their profound gratitude to President Trump, saying that they believe that it was his election as president that led to their freedom. Among those presentwas 20-year-old Naama Levy, an IDF soldier who had just arrived at the Nahal Oz base from her train...
Mar 09, 2025•39 min
The pace of events here is impossible. I’m keen to keep you updated and for now that means more podcasts than usual. Today I was lucky to catch a regular State of Tel Aviv guest and a man with deep knowledge of security and military issues… politics too…Ya’akov Katz. My head has been spinning from the pace of reports being made public by the IDF into the total failure of October 7 and I turned to Ya’akov to make it make sense. He did his best. We discuss the reports, which confirm what we alread...
Mar 04, 2025•34 min
Every Saturday for the last 7 weeks Israelis have been riveted to their television screens, watching the release of hostages, alive and dead. I expect that many reading this introduction have followed the coverage and been horrified by the macabre propaganda theatre productions of Hamas. Today, after so much gut wrenching testimony, funerals, and cruel videos released by Hamas, State of Tel Aviv gets into this terrible time with a good friend of the podcast, Lt. Col. (Res.) Jonathan Conricus, se...
Mar 02, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Ya’akov Katz and I pick up where President Trump left off. The horrific images of skeletal hostages released from Hamas captivity last Thursday were reminiscent of survivors of concentration camps during the Holocaust. President Trump and so many people reacted. Strongly. This insanity must stop. Release them all by noon on Saturday, he said... or else... And that’s where PM Netanyahu and the Israeli government come in. Or else…what? We get into the possibilities... and try to unravel what seems...
Feb 12, 2025•34 min
In late December, I met in Tel Aviv with Lishay Miran-Lavi’s brother, Moshe, who was visiting for a few weeks from his home in New York. He has been a prizefighter on behalf of his brother-in-law, Omri Miran, husband of his sister, Lishay, and father to two little girls, Roni and Alma. A few days after seeing Moshe, I drove to meet with Lishay at her home in southern Israel. Omri is not on “the list” of hostages to be released in the first phase of the so-called “deal” with Hamas. This rightly e...
Feb 11, 2025•32 min
At the urging of his Mid-East Envoy and longtime golf buddy, Steve Witkoff, President Trump will watch a 47-minute movie today before he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is the story of how that movie came to be made and the extraordinary effort of one Israeli man, Mattan Harelfisch, who came up with the idea and plan to do so. Within hours of the shock Hamas attack of October 7, video clips and news reports documenting the unspeakable savagery being committed went vira...
Feb 04, 2025•32 min
We were fortunate to catch up with State of Tel Aviv regular and now a globally recognized A+ commentator and analyst on the Israel-Hamas conflict and more—Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus (Res.). He spoke to us on Saturday evening—after a very busy day doing media in Israel and abroad. The hostage release has been a spectacle unlike any other—when an Islamist terror group commands center stage on media worldwide—showcasing their grotesque propaganda machine and what appears to be surprising military ...
Feb 02, 2025•38 min
Israelis watched the video on October 7, 2023 in shock. A teenage girl, bloodied and terrified, was being pulled by her long hair from the trunk of a jeep by a heavily armed Hamas terrorist. Naama Levy, a newly conscripted IDF soldier, had been brutalized, and the short clip of her went viral globally. When they first saw it even her parents did not recognize their daughter. In a dramatic few weeks leading up to last Saturday, the fate of Na’ama—as well as four other female IDF soldiers also kid...
Jan 27, 2025•49 min
This interview with Karnit Flug was on January 2, shortly after the Government of Israel released all manner of economic statistics and announced some rather significant tax tweaks. Based on my anecdotal conversations with people in the professional, VC and tech sectors, there is growing concern that the new tax measures will have the most deleterious—and disproportionate—impact on small independent businesses in Israel. Karnit Flug, as you will hear, thinks otherwise. So, I will keep an eye on ...
Jan 24, 2025•43 min
Ya’akov Katz is back to discuss the wild week we’ve had here. I caught up with him on Wednesday evening, Israel time, and had intended to focus on the resignation the day before of IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. But, of course, we spent more than half our time discussing the terrible hostage deal that we agree was absolutely necessary. And we get into how the deal might unfold in the coming weeks. Then, we got into the Halevi thing. Herzi Halevi was in office on October 7, and shortly after th...
Jan 23, 2025•32 min
