Yonit Levi of Israel's Channel 12 News and Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian are two of the most prominent journalists in the world today. They are also Jews. Each week, join what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow calls "two great, smart smart smart hosts" as they dissect and debate current events shaping Israel, Jewish life - and the wider world.
Their blend of nuanced discussion and sparkling conversation, featuring a dazzling range of guests, is why New Yorker editor David Remnick calls himself a “proud, avid listener," why Ira Glass says he "completely enjoys this show" and why Malcolm Gladwell calls it an "incredibly fun podcast".
For a weekly fix of globally informed talk – including nominations for the greatest act of chutzpah and outstanding mensch of the previous seven days – there’s only one destination. Make every Friday morning Unholy.
Contact us via: unholy@unholy-media.com
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A wave of antisemitic terror swept across Western Europe this spring — and one man appears to have been behind it all. This week, Yonit and Jonathan hear the full, remarkable story as they sit down with Jason Burke, The Guardian's international security correspondent and terrorism expert. He describes how a single Iraqi-Iranian dual national is accused of leveraging both social media and teenage criminals to orchestrate what looked like a series of scattered attacks but was, in fact, a coordinat...
The new reality of Washington’s relationship with Israel is slowly sinking in — and it’s not pretty. As JD Vance grows visibly chummier with Qatar and Pakistan than with Israeli officials, Yonit and Jonathan discuss the likely impact of the shift and whether Israel’s old assumption — that an American president will always have its back — has to be discarded for good. Then: as the Mamdani effect ripples through New York’s primaries, sweeping in a slate of politicians sharply critical of Israel, t...
Israel just learned that the US and Iran have agreed to a deconfliction cell with Lebanon — and Israel wasn't in the room. As the dust settles on a war whose outcome is, at best, ambiguous, Yonit and Jonathan sit down with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who wants his old job back. Bennett doesn't hold back: on why he believes this government dragged out a war Israel was never built to fight, on the "infinite power of propaganda" keeping Netanyahu afloat three years after October 7th, and...
As the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding is signed in Versailles — covering a ceasefire, sanctions relief, and billions in unfrozen assets, but saying nothing about uranium enrichment, centrifuges, ballistic missiles, or Iran's proxies — Israel is left reading a deal it wasn't part of and only received hours before Trump's signature. Yonit is joined this week by CNN senior global affairs analyst and Unholy co-author Bianna Golodryga, live from a New York celebrating the Knicks' first champio...
This week’s Unholy conversations is a rare interview with Nir Bar Dea, CEO of Bridgewater—the world's largest hedge fund. Bar Dea moves beyond market trends, framing our current moment as a volatile collision between a changing world order, and an unprecedented technological revolution fueled by AI. He offers a sobering perspective on why the comfort of the last several decades has perhaps left us less resilient than the generations before us, urging listeners to view history not as destiny, but...
Yonit is joined by Yaakov Katz, author, columnist and former editor of the Jerusalem Post, and together they try to make sense of a week that had it all: a 17-hour mini-war with Iran, Trump growing visibly impatient -- and Netanyahu caught between his base and the White House. Israeli politics see the Israeli PM focusing on the rising political threat of Gadi Eisenkot, who for the first time has pulled ahead of Netanyahu in head-to-head polling for Prime minister -- and how the Likud is trying t...
Israeli children are still running to shelters. The hostages are home, but the wars keep coming. And somewhere underneath it all — the October 7th trauma, the Iran strikes, the hostages, the endless sirens — something is being passed down to the next generation, whether we mean to or not. This week, Yonit sits down with Dr. Galit Atlas, psychoanalyst and author of Emotional Inheritance , to ask the questions most of us are afraid to answer: what does prolonged, unprocessed national trauma do to ...
Iran broke a two-month ceasefire on Sunday night, launching missiles at Israel after Netanyahu struck Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut. By Monday, Trump declared an immediate stop — but the questions it raised won't close that easily. In this emergency update, Yonit and Jonathan are joined by Amos Harel — Haaretz's military affairs analyst and author of 629: Anatomy of a Failure — to break down the calculus on every side. Did Netanyahu engineer the escalation ahead of October elections? Is Trump...
The fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government is overshadowed by an already notorious phone call where Donald Trump reportedly dropped multiple F-bombs on Benjamin Netanyahu for threatening Israeli strikes on Beirut. Yonit and Jonathan dissect the increasing strain in the US-Israel relationship - and a new equation set by Iran that will alarm all Israelis. Meanwhile, two warning signs this week for the state of Israeli democracy, as Netanyahu appoints his personal la...
This week, Yonit and Jonathan sit down with acclaimed military and intelligence analyst Amos Harel to discuss his new book 6:29 -Anatomy of a Failure — a devastating, meticulously reported account of October 7th and the collapse that preceded it. Drawing on internal investigations, intelligence materials, battlefield testimony and conversations with senior officials, Harel reconstructs how Israel failed at every level: intelligence, operations - and strategy. They discuss the “Walls of Jericho” ...
A US-Iran deal appears to be taking shape — and Israel isn't in the room. As diplomatic back-channels buzz and American strikes on Iran continue under a ceasefire that apparently requires bombing to maintain, Netanyahu finds himself watching from the outside: no seat at the table, no answers on the nuclear file, no movement on proxies. Meanwhile, two hostage parents — whose sons were held in Gaza at the same time — are entering Israeli politics from opposite ends of the spectrum, a story that sa...
Franklin Foer is the man who declared that the golden age of American Jewry is over - or at least ending. Two years on — in the aftermath of October 7th and the Gaza war, collapsing bipartisan support for Israel, a wave of antisemitism from both left and right, and a military misadventure in Iran — he thinks he underestimated the problem. This week, Yonit and Jonathan sit down with Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the landmark piece that became required reading in Jewish communit...
This week Jonathan is in celebratory mode—and no, it's not only because it’s the festival of Shavuot, but because his beloved Arsenal finally won the Premier League, sparking a spontaneous tribal gathering of ‘marauding revellers’ in North London. Meanwhile, Yonit and Jonathan unpack the volatile situation with Iran, and ask where President Trump’s vague threats of a renewed strike are heading. Then, it's wall-to-wall condemnation for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose grotesque 5...
Two and a half years after October 7th, the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children has published its comprehensive report — 300 pages of meticulously corroborated evidence documenting what was done to women, men, children, and hostages on that day and in captivity since. This week, Yonit and Jonathan speak with Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the founder and chair of the Commission, 2024 Israel Prize laureate, and expert in international law and human rights — the wo...
Yonit and Jonathan discuss a week brimming with unresolved questions. Did Benjamin Netanyahu really travel to the UAE during the war with Iran? Why would he leak it now, and what led the UAE to issue such a quick denial? After a trip to China, where is Donald Trump heading on Iran? And inside Israel, as the political drama intensified with United Torah Judaism threatening to break ranks with the coalition over the draft bill's failure, could elections be held in September? And what role could be...
Maoz Inon lost his parents on October 7th. They were in their safe room, 200 meters from the Gaza border wall, when Hamas came. Aziz Abu Sarah lost his brother — the person who raised him — after he was tortured in an Israeli prison during the First Intifada. Two days after October 7th, Aziz wrote Maoz a letter. Maoz wrote back. That exchange became a friendship, a journey across the Holy Land, and now a New York Times bestselling book: "The Future Is Peace." This is not a polemic. It is not a p...
The Iran war may be over — or it may not. In the space of a few hours this week, Washington ordered warships into the Strait of Hormuz, paused the operation, threatened to resume bombing at higher intensity, and then declared peace was near. Yonit and Jonathan cut through the chaos — and ask the question the ceasefire deal still hasn't answered: what happened to Iran's nuclear stockpile? Also this week: Bezalel Smotrich calls October 7th "a tactical failure" and says including Arab parties in go...
Dr. Suzanne Maloney provides a critical analysis of the recent conflict and ceasefire, arguing that Iran has emerged stronger, effectively controlling the Strait of Hormuz and wielding a new 'economic nuclear weapon.' She discusses the challenges of diplomacy, the US's reluctance to escalate due to domestic pressures, and the unaddressed nuclear threat. Maloney also details the shifts in Iranian leadership, the entrenchment of the Revolutionary Guard, and the global implications of Iran's emboldened stance, including regional instability and attacks abroad.
As stabbing against Jews in Golders Green rises up, again, the question of security of Jewish communities around the world, Israel starts the countdown: 6 months to the elections. Yonit and Jonathan discuss the Golders Green knife attack and the wave of antisemitism hitting Britain since October 7th; the Bennett–Lapid merger and what it means for Israel's October elections; whether the Iran–Israel war is on pause or simply reloading; Jake Sullivan's bombshell statement on arms sales to Israel; a...
Howard Jacobson has screamed "liar" at the BBC, lost friends over a newspaper article, and started asking his wife whether it's still safe to live in London. Now he's written a novel about all of it. *Howl* is the story of Ferdinand Draxler — Jewish headmaster, reluctant marcher, man on the edge — who watches the world he believed in applaud the October 7th massacre and descends into a rage that may or may not be madness. Jacobson says he borrowed quite a lot from the last two years of his life....
Watch us on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1RBYWVXGom0 Follow Unholy and learn more about the pod: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ Join our Patreon community to get access to bonus episodes, discounts on merch and more: https://bit.ly/UnholyPatreon Listen to Aner Shapira z"l and Yehudit Ravitz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1XbaGln45Q Pre-order "Zariz" by Adeena Sussman: https://www.adeenasussman.com/zariz Israel's 78th Independence Day arrives in the shadow of a three-year war — and a nation ...
Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/HFowIpBxqKs Rachel Goldberg-Polin has stood before the UN, met with presidents, and worn a number on her chest every single day until there were no more hostages in Hamas captivity. Now, months after Hersh was murderd, she sat down and wrote a book. When We See You Again is not a hostage story and not a political reckoning. It is, as Rachel describes it, a painful love story — a grief memoir written "with one finger from underneath a truck," with no distance...
Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/1GIuMFYYX1E Get more Unholy content: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ As Israel marks one week out of 40 days of missiles from Iran, Yonit and Jonathan take apart the week's impossible contradictions: Netanyahu delivering a triumphalist Yom HaShoah speech while 400 kilograms of enriched uranium remain intact in Iran; a fragile Lebanon ceasefire that almost no one trusts; 40 Democratic senators voting against arms transfers; and Italy's far-right prime min...
Follow Unholy and learn more about the pod: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ Join our Patreon community to get access to bonus episodes: https://bit.ly/UnholyPatreon Day 40 of the US-Israel war on Iran — and it's ceasefire. But the relief is complicated: Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah in Lebanon has already shifted the world's anger from Washington back to Jerusalem. Bret Stephens, opinion columnist at the New York Times and one of the conflict's most prominent intellectual defenders, joins...
Watch us on Youtube and follow Unholy on social media: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ Day 39 of the war. Pesach. Instead of news, we brought you books — two of them, both essential. Jonathan speaks with Daniel Taub, former Israeli ambassador to the UK and author of Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement — about why Jewish argument culture might be the most relevant thing in the world right now, and how families torn apart over Gaza might actually talk to e...
Get more out of Unholy: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ In this special Pesach episode, Yonit and Jonathan discuss seder traditions and those who had to change due to the war. They are joined by Tom Holland — historian and co-host of The Rest Is History and author of landmark books on Rome, Persia, and the roots of Western civilization — to explain why the Romans were wrong about the Jews, why the West fundamentally misunderstands Iran, and why secularism is itself a religious inheritance. F...
Please note that an (authentic!) alert sound is heard twice throughout the episode. Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/UdhHLAquwgs Follow Unholy and learn more about the pod: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ The fourth week of the war with Iran finds both sides insisting—loudly and contradictorily—that peace talks are either underway or nowhere in sight. In the meantime, Iranian missiles continue to hit civilian neighbourhoods across Israel, while rolling news blurs day into night, trackin...
Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/dhvM7lnkO88 Follow us on social media and get more Unholy content: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ This morning, Donald Trump posted something that might — or might not — mean the US-Israeli war on Iran is coming to an end. A five-day pause on strikes. Secret talks via Pakistan and Turkey. Kushner and Witkoff on the American side. A shadowy Iranian speaker being cast as the pragmatist the US has been searching for. This is a special emergency episode of ...
Watch us on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HeoVvd294Ww Follow us on social media and join Patreon to get more of Unholy: https://unholy-podcast.lovable.app/ Day 20 of the US-Israeli war on Iran — and it's becoming a war of attrition. In the meantime, Europe refuses to lend its ships, daylight emerges between Trump and Netanyahu, and Joe Kent's antisemitic conspiracy theory gets the full debunking it deserves. Amos Harel , Haaretz's military affairs correspondent, joins Yonit and Jonathan for a deep d...
Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/vQ0o0F07o2k Subscribe to get bonus episodes, read more about the team, and catch us on every platform we're on! > https://bit.ly/unholy-podcast Naomi Alderman on Substack: look at me. I’m here. I’m the ultimate product of Hitler’s defeat: https://naomialderman.substack.com/p/look-at-me-im-here-im-the-ultimate Day 13 of the war with Iran — and the conflict just got bigger. Overnight, 200 rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon. Hezbollah, which many beli...
