Today's episode is a very special show which was recorded live on November 10, 2025 at the Finchley United Synagogue - Kinloss in London. Haviv had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Jewish Chronicle Editor Daniel Schwammenthal. We had a great discussion about growing antisemitism in England, the war in Gaza, the possibility of upcoming elections in Israel and the many challenges facing Israelis and Jews today.

We would like to thank Jonathan and Debra Field, who have been long-time supporters of this podcast, for bringing Haviv to London and sponsoring the event. We would also like to thank Rabbi Dr. Yoni Birnbaum, the Senior Rabbi of Finchley United Synagogue, for welcoming Haviv.

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East. Our current question: Is criticizing Israel antisemitic?

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

These are strange times to be a Jew. Jews are in many ways safer and stronger than ever, but face a surge of antisemitism unlike anything seen in generations. This includes a hatred of Jewish collective identity on the progressive left as well as hatred of Jews as Jews in millions of online posts each day and in the mainstream platforming of neo-Nazis like Fuentes and Carroll by the Tucker Carlsons of the West.

These people aren't engaged in criticism of Israeli actions or of the Gaza war, but ride the wave of legitimate critique to advance something uglier, darker and older.

What does this return of the old hatred mean? Were some of the more pessimistic Zionist thinkers right in their pessimism about the world? Do we hunker down together as Israelis or Jews and turn our backs on the world and its bigotries?

We put the question to the ever wise Dr. Tal Becker, vice president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a preeminent international law expert who served as legal advisor to the Israeli foreign ministry.

His response, as ever, is a poignant conversation on the meaning of these strange times in the larger arc of Jewish history and Zionism.

--

This episode is cosponsored by Sue Levin in honor of her father Frank Levin, who passed away on January 23, 2025 at the age of ninety-eight. "Frank, a World War II veteran, spent his entire life in Buffalo, New York, devoted to his family, his local community and his religion. He would be shocked and thrilled to know that his daughter Sue, a terrible Hebrew school student growing up, is now finally diving in and learning so much about history and current events from Haviv’s tremendous podcast."

This episode is also cosponsored by an anonymous sponsor in honor of the memory of William Isadore Eisberg, who along with the sponsor’s father enlisted in the US Navy after Pearl Harbor and was killed in action during WW2 in the battle of Tassafaronga in the waters off Guadalcanal in 1942. In addition to William Eisberg, this episode is dedicated to all the Jewish soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines past and present who serve in US Central command, and alongside Israel are protecting our most basic freedoms.

--

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

We’re trying something new at AHA: Short-from episodes interspersed with the regular interviews that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East. Our first question sent in by a listener: Are Jews really indigenous to Israel?

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

As Israelis wait with bated breath to discover if the body of Hadar Goldin, killed and taken into Gaza in 2014, will be returned for burial in Israel, we sit down with returned hostage Tal Shoham for a conversation about his harrowing experience and insights into Hamas and Gazan society. Long-time listeners will recognize Tal's name from one of our earliest episodes with his sister-in-law, our friend Shaked Haran, who described her fight to bring back the eight members of her family who were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7. Tal is the last member of her family to come home. He returned in early 2025.

We discussed his survival in impossible conditions of abuse, torture and starvation, his grappling with the uncertainty over his children's survival, and the hard work of rebuilding a home and a sense of safety for children who'd had direct experience of evil.

Today’s episode is sponsored by my friend Elissa Wald, a writer who noticed after October 7, 2023 that American Jews were being marginalized, even ostracized, within the American publishing world. She decided to mount a fierce fight against this trend. She started the Never Alone Book Club with the goal of sending Jewish writers to the NYT bestseller list every month. It has become the biggest Jewish book club in the country but more members are still needed to create a continuous series of Jewish bestsellers.

RABBI ANGELA BUCHDAHL will be joining the Never Alone Book Club on December 10th to talk about her new book "Heart Of A Stranger." If you join the book club now, you can join that conversation. Here is the link to join on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/810380537866936/

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Human rights organizations help shape the world's understanding of conflicts, including the one between Israelis and Palestinians. Some of the biggest groups, especially Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, are immensely influential in government, the media and civil society in Western countries. And for decades, their expertise, detailed reports and moral reputations made them agents of positive change.

But signs are mounting that that's changing, and you don't have to be Israeli to notice it. They publish fewer professional reports, conduct fewer serious investigations, and have shifted their focus to partisan activism. They are often more quick to issue statements on climate issues or police violence in American cities or systemic racism or gender identity than the old bread-and-butter questions on which they built their reputations: international law, war and repressive regimes.

And they have become partisan to the point of often failing that old fundamental mission. One startling example: Amnesty International continues to refuse to publish its report about the October 7 massacre over two years after the event. According to emails from some of the organization's top leaders, they are concerned that such a report about Hamas's egregious human rights abuses might help Israel make the case that Hamas are...well, serial and egregious human rights abusers.

This goes beyond criticizing Israel, which any organization can and should do, to an inability to criticize Hamas.

What happened? How did these organizations become so partisan and polarized, to the point that their original missions are no longer their top priority? How does the severing of ties with Israel's domestic human rights activists - Amnesty abruptly shut down its Israel chapter last year, even as those Israeli activists were stridently critiquing the war in Hebrew to Israelis - serve the cause of human rights or help Palestinians?

We asked two former staffers at Amnesty and HRW, Daniel Balson and Danielle Haas, whether these organizations have lost their way; and if so, what caused it; and how the cause of human rights might be reclaimed from the political partisans who have steered it so far into the culture wars.

This episode was sponsored by the Kleinman family of Manhattan, who asked to dedicate the episode to the memory of the 64 residents of Kibbutz Kfar Aza killed and the 19 kidnapped on October 7. The asked to add in their words: "After a recent visit to the kibbutz and spending time with one of the few remaining residents, we were overwhelmed by the devastation and meaningless loss of life. The destruction in the 'youth' section was particularly horrendous given the proximity to the Gaza border. On the other hand, we were impressed by stories of the bravery of the members of the community who tried to defend against the terrorists. We support the rebuilding of the kibbutz and those members of the kibbutz who decide to return and rebuild. We also pray for the return of the bodies of the hostages still being held in Gaza.”

Thank you to the Kleinman family for their support and their dedication.

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and opinions, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Today we step out of the politics and anxious debates of this difficult time and go back 5,500 years to the Chalcolithic, the so-called Copper Age. Our guide is Prof. Tom Levy, eminent archaeologist and emeritus Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at the University of California, San Diego.

Tom's new graphic-novel memoir, The Boomer Archaeologist, tells the story of his journey into the deep past of the land of Israel, and offers an opportunity for us to talk to him about his groundbreaking work on the origins of inequality, on the vast copper industry of the ancient Biblical kingdom of Edom - a kingdom whose very existence archaeologists long doubted - and even, along the way, some thoughts on the roots of religion and technological innovation.

Tom has published 12 books and several hundred scholarly articles. The Boomer Archaeologist is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Boomer-Archaeologist-Graphic-Memoir-Identity/dp/B0F2LP47JK/ref=sr_1_1

This episode is sponsored by Renee Schweber and Matthew Schweber in memory of their late husband and father Jack Schweber, who passed away on April 30, 2020. Jack's story, retold in the podcast, is an extraordinary snapshot of the American Jewish experience writ large.

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and opinions, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Trump's peace plan explicitly calls for deradicalization of the Gazan population. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are hoping to take part in Gaza's rebuilding in part so they can help push back against the radical Islamism of Hamas, which those countries see as a larger threat to themselves as well.

Can Palestinian society be deradicalized? What might that even mean? Is the problem a religious one? A political one? Can Israel play a part, and how would that look?

We turned to Dr. Einat Wilf, a leading thinker and writer on Israel, on the conflict, on the history of the two peoples, and on Israel's foreign and education policies. Wilf has long argued that Palestinian society is in thrall to a particular ideological narrative that goes beyond Palestinian self-determination and fixates on the demand for a complete eradication of Israel - and that Palestinian ideologues and elites have been advancing that desire for generations, nearly always at the expense of Palestinian interests and wellbeing. She also believes they will continue to do so until this impulse is understood, named and tackled head-on.

This episode is sponsored by the American Technion Society. With Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah degraded, what technologies will Israel need to defend itself in a new Middle East? Every day, groundbreaking research from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is transformed into real world defense tech that protects Israel and saves lives. From Iron Dome to Iron Beam, drones to satellites, and cybersecurity to supercomputers, fundamental science born in Technion labs is brought to life by visionary Technion alumni serving in the IDF and defense industries giving Israel its qualitative edge.

If you love Israel and want to keep it safe, boost its economy, and strengthen its people, investing in the great minds, discoveries, and inventions that come from the Technion is a phenomenal way to make a bigger impact on Israel’s future and ensure its safety. Please visit them and contribute to this astonishing Israeli institution that is a key part of Israel's strength and resilience. Visit https://www.ats.org/haviv

If you like what we do here, please join us on Patreon to support our work: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

The Gaza war may now be over. But Hamas remains entrenched in the half of Gaza from which the IDF has withdrawn.

Many are hopeful that this marks a new and better day for Gaza, but it's hard to see how Gaza moves forward to the better future envisioned in the Trump peace plan as long as Hamas continues to rule there.

Prof. Dan Schueftan, a preeminent and blunt-spoken Israeli national security scholar who helped craft the original 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza joins the podcast to talk about the meaning of this moment - his lessons from the Gaza withdrawal, how Israeli strategy must account for what he calls the "barbarism" of its enemies, the failures of Israeli strategy that led to October 7 and the resiliency of Israeli society since the massacre. He offers a sober analysis of what the future holds for Gaza.

This episode is sponsored by Aaron and Donna Horowitz and Mitch and Sherri Padnos, who asked us (we swear) to say, "With heartfelt gratitude, we thank Haviv for being the most trusted and insightful voice on the Middle East—helping us make sense of complex realities and offering clarity in a time that so often feels overwhelming. Your work doesn’t just inform us; it helps us cope, reflect, and stay connected to what matters most."

They dedicated the episode to their lone soldiers Alexa Horowitz and Ethan Padnos and to all lone soldiers from Israel and around the world who commit themselves to the defense of Israel, both during their active service and in miluim (reserve duty), whose courage, sacrifice, and devotion inspire us every day.

They also asked us to make special mention of the heavy psychological toll this war has exacted on those who serve. Since the war began, dozens of soldiers have taken their own lives—an unbearable reminder that the wounds of conflict are not only physical but also emotional and invisible. May their memories be a blessing, and may their loss push us all to care for the mental health and wellbeing of every soldier, veteran and family touched by this war.

If you like what we do here, please join us on Patreon to support our work: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Rabbi Elhanan Miller has half a million online followers, and almost all of them are Arabs. They tune in to his "People of the Book" project on YouTube and other platforms to learn in Arabic about Jewish ideas, customs and holidays, and to hear the testimonies of Jews from the Arab and Muslim worlds who now live in Israel or the West.

Elhanan has appeared hundreds of times on Arabic-language television networks throughout the Gaza war, where is asked to convey the views and experiences of Israelis.

He joins the podcast to talk about the unique and remarkable bridge that he's built between Jewish Israel and its Muslim Arab neighbors.

We also tackle difficult questions of Islamic radicalism, alternatives to Hamas rule in Gaza, and whether peace is really possible in this deeply religious part of the world -- when religion itself often plays such a radicalizing force in politics and society.

This episode was sponsored by Tali Rice as a tribute to her sister who's currently serving in the IDF, and to everyone doing their part to keep Israel safe. This episode is also cosponsored by an anonymous donor who is dedicating it to the lone soldiers from Newton, Massachusetts for their bravery and for their safety. As hard as the situation is for their families here in the US, their service is also a source of deep pride.

If you like what we do here, please join us on Patreon to support our work: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠.

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

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.