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 valuable.

This episode was sponsored by an anonymous donor in honor of Battalion 363 of the Harel Brigade, which is an infantry brigade in the IDF where the sponsor’s loved one serves. May all our sons and daughters come home safely.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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 broad trust and buy-in, and without addressing the desperate lack of other checks and balances in the country's constitutional order.

It's time for a more serious left-wing critique and a more responsible right-wing reform. Anything less will only cause harm.

Thank you to Jason and Lauriel Klinghoffer for sponsoring this episode.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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 American?"

Thank you to Jason and Lauriel Klinghoffer for sponsoring this episode in honor of Jason’s grandmother, Nusia Klinghoffer, a holocaust survivor who passed away last year.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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 strategically alone.

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.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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 on the war differ. All their stories are powerful and excruciating, and often also unexpectedly inspiring; all are worth hearing.

And Shaked's voice stands out among them for its clarity and courage.

Shaked lost three family members in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be'eri, including her beloved father Avshalom, or Avshal. Seven more family members, including sister Adi, brother-in-law Tal, three-year-old niece Yahel, eight-year-old nephew Naveh, and 12-year-old cousin Noam, were dragged into Gaza as hostages.

Just two weeks ago, the last family member still held by Hamas, Tal Shoham, was finally released, closing a long and painful chapter in the life of this extraordinary family.

We sat down to talk about that day, about what it feels like to search desperately for your family after a massacre, about finding the strength amid the pain and fear to launch a globe-spanning fight to rescue your loved ones. We looked at Israel's social fractures and at what holds us all together, about a morally confused world and an enemy territory that could still, she believes, flourish if it managed to come out from beneath the shadow of the murderers of her family.

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.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected].

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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.patreon.com/AskHavivAnythingIf you would like to sponsor an episode please email [email protected]

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 astonishing successes, such as its groundbreaking tactical innovations in tunnel warfare. And we learned about the gaping lacuna at the heart of Israel’s strategy in Gaza — the reason it still hasn’t won the war.

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.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

If you would like to sponsor an episode please email [email protected]

Recorded Thursday, February 20th

Israelis watched horrified on Thursday, as Hamas gunmen conducted a ceremony handing over four coffins, two of them with the bodies of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, aged 1 and 4, when they were murdered in Gaza, along with their mother Shiri. Oded Lifshitz, 83, was the fourth body handed over to Israel. Around the ceremony, Gazan civilians cheered and threw rice, people brought their kids to watch.

What should we make of this gruesome spectacle, of a festival conducted over the coffins of little children?

Some thoughts on what Israelis, and with them, the whole Jewish world, just witnessed.

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.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

American Jews constitute the biggest, wealthiest, most influential and safest Jewish diaspora community in Jewish history, and also among the most Jewishly illiterate and profoundly anxious about their future.

There's a good reason this immense and powerful community is also culturally weak and unsure of itself. There is deep history behind its illiteracy, a story of tragedy and trauma, rebellion and rebuilding.

We unpack it all in this episode.

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.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

It’s hard for a modern Jew to grasp the depth of marginalization and ostracism that even the most assimilated of Austrian Jews experienced in the 1890s. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, began his journey as a passionate assimilationist, a deep believer in European modernity and Germanic culture. It was only when these hopes were dashed that he turned, as a drowning man to a life raft, to political Zionism.

Here is the untold story of how Herzl found Zionism. (Spoiler: It wasn’t the Dreyfus Affair.)

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.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything