To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).

--

Israel's first election since October 7 will be held on October 27 -- and the system it runs through is one of the simplest in the free world, which is exactly why the results look insane from outside.

One district: the whole country. One ballot slip. You vote for a party, never a person.

In this primer, Haviv walks through how a slip of paper becomes 120 Knesset seats: the 3.25% threshold that erased Bennett and Shaked's party in 2019 by just 1,380 votes, the Bader-Ofer leftover math that quietly rewards big parties and can decide the election, and the surplus-vote agreements filed by October 16 that could hand a bloc the last two seats -- and the country.

Plus: why the most chaotic Knesset in memory produced the most stable government since 1973, why religiosity predicts an Israeli's vote better than income or ethnicity, the Haredi demographic numbers nobody can wish away, and the most under-covered story of the cycle -- Arab turnout.

By the end you'll know what to watch on election night, and why Israeli broadcasts will be excitedly obsessing about "Bader-Ofer" on election night.

--

This episode is sponsored by David Allouch and is dedicated “to the next generation, among whom are my amazing nieces, Tali and Elsa; my equally amazing nephew, Ilan; and the children of my dear friend Binyamina, Shmuel, Freidel Esther and Eliyahu. May they all continue to thrive and bring their intellectual creativity to the world, as their ancestors did before them.”

--

If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).

--

Can Gaza ever be rebuilt while Hamas remains armed? Gazan-American writer Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib returns to trace Hamas’s rise — from Islamist charities and the slow remaking of Gazan society to authoritarian rule, October 7, and ruinous war. Drawing on his childhood in Gaza and his new book, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, Ahmed argues that foreign aid, international NGOs, and Al Jazeera helped Hamas entrench itself while ordinary Gazans paid the price. He and Haviv confront the hardest questions: Can Hamas be separated from Gazan society? Could a movement built around armed “resistance” ever disarm? And is there still a path from permanent war to Palestinian nation-building and coexistence?

Ahmed's new book, Hamas and its Two Million Hostages is available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Hamas-Its-Two-Million-Hostages/dp/1760646156/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WYTUN2AK9KHF&di

--

This episode is sponsored by the family of Dr. Chalo Smukler, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, physician, and proud American Jew, on the occasion of his unveiling.

Born in Paraguay and descended from Jews who fled persecution in Eastern Europe, Chalo was a leader from a young age in the Jewish youth movement Hanoar Hatzioni and first moved to Israel at sixteen. There he discovered a free society, a sense of Jewish brotherhood, and a refuge that would remain central to his life.

He lived with humility, kindness, courage, and an extraordinary capacity to make every person feel heard and loved. He believed profoundly in the Jewish people, in Israel, and in tikun olam, the responsibility we share to build a better future for all humanity, Jewish or not.

While he would have been dismayed by what Jews around the world have faced since his passing, he would have taken solace in a truth he deeply believed: that when the Jewish people stand together, there is nothing we cannot overcome.

To all those whose lives he touched, his memory will forever be a blessing.

--

If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).

--

Why does the West misunderstand the Middle East? Best-selling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore returns to the pod to discuss The Cauldron, his sweeping new history of the region, from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of its modern states to oil, Islamism, revolution and the Arab Spring.

The book is a kind of prehistory of present-day Western stumbling in the Middle East. Western powers repeatedly arrive with grand political theories — imperialism, nationalism, socialism, liberal democracy — only to watch them change beyond recognition or collapse on contact with the region’s deeper identities, loyalties and social contracts. It is a conversation about the states that endured, the ones that failed, and why the Middle East remains so intensely debated in the West — and so poorly understood.

--

This episode is sponsored by the Technion.

Israel became the Startup Nation by turning talent into strength, ideas into industries.

For more than a century, the Technion has trained the engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs who transformed Israel into the Startup Nation and delivered breakthroughs that changed the world.

Now Technion scientists are advancing the next wave of innovation to help power Israel’s next chapter.

Israel. Engineered by the Technion.

Join us. Visit https://ats.org/rebuild .

--

If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).

--

Van Jones came on the podcast a few months ago and said some things that lit up our inbox. A lot of praise, a lot of pushback.

So he came back to answer your questions.

Why did progressives spend twenty years building hierarchies of oppression and leave Jews off the list? Why do Black students on campus struggle to see Jewish vulnerability? What do you do with a community that hears "we're like you, we're Jewish," and thinks: do you want to trade spots?

Van doesn't dodge. He also pushes back on how Jews frame the conversation. It's an honest conversation about campuses, Farrakhan and Black antisemitism, the NAACP voting to disarm Israel, and why the Jewish world "feels like David, but looks like Goliath" to outsiders. Van gives ground where he thinks the critics are right and takes it back where he thinks Jews are getting the Black community badly wrong.

It’s a conversation that doesn't happen enough, and which Van is committed to advancing. That's why he founded the EXODUS Leadership Forum that brings together Jewish, Black and Jewish-Black leaders and activists. You can find out more about their work, including the 70 dinners Van discusses on the podcast, here: https://gather.exodusdinner.org .

--

Today’s episode is sponsored by SAPIR, the quarterly journal edited by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. SAPIR’s tagline is, “Ideas for a Thriving Jewish Future,” which is one reason the journal has devoted time and space to the future of Black-Jewish relations, one of the most powerful -- and imperiled -- political alliances in American history. The relationship is important to the thriving of both communities, SAPIR editors believe. I highly recommend Dana White’s article from a couple years ago on the role historically Black colleges and universities once played in building the relationship between Black and Jewish Americans.

SAPIR is, unbelievably, free. Yes, you can receive this beautiful and enriching publication at your door four times a year at no cost. Subscribe today at http://sapirjournal.org/Haviv -- and your subscription will begin with the next issue on the theme of Influence. They won’t even ask you for credit card information. That’s http://sapirjournal.org/Haviv, or click the link in the episode show notes.

--

If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).

--

Dr. Dara Horn didn't want to write this book. She wanted to write more acclaimed novels. But after she published her bestselling essay collection People Love Dead Jews, readers kept cornering her with their own horror stories of antisemitism and one unfair question: can you help? She became the antisemitism Lorax.

So she wrote the answer, and gave it the humdrum, unprovocative title: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. It’s out September 1.

Dara joins the podcast to talk about why antisemitism isn't a bigotry but a lie told by people who want power ("Jews are destroying what you value the most"); how a 1940s American Jewish strategy to be seen as a religion rather than a people left today's Jews defenseless; why American Holocaust education "eliminates pattern recognition" and outsources everything else people should learn about Jews -- about living Jews, not just dead ones -- to TikTok; and why "Zionism is genocide" is a KGB slogan older than most of the people chanting it.

Plus: Harvard, Durban, data-poisoning the AI, Muslim allies with the Hebrew הנני tattooed on their forearms, and why Dara thinks this is the Jewish people's Queen Esther moment.

--

This episode is sponsored by SAPIR, the quarterly journal of ideas for a thriving Jewish future, edited by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. One of the most astonishing things about SAPIR, beyond the fabulous essays -- more than a few written by guests who’ve come on this podcast, including Reihan Salam and today’s guest Dara Horn -- is that it is free if you live in the United States!

The print publication is beautiful and enriching. Every issue is devoted to a specific theme. If you sign up today your free annual subscription will begin with the forthcoming issue on the timely theme of Influence.

Subscribe today at http://sapirjournal.org/Haviv – completely free of charge; they won’t even ask you for credit card information. That’s http://sapirjournal.org/Haviv, or click the link in the episode show notes.

--

If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).

--

Antisemitism is no mere prejudice. It's a potent political technology, perhaps the most effective negative campaign and coalition-builder in modern politics. Prof. Ruth Wisse, professor emerita of Harvard, now a senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund, joins the podcast to help us trace the “politics of the pointing finger” from Wilhelm Marr’s Antisemitenliga to the Arab League, from the Harvard campus’s grievance coalitions after October 7 to the rising figures on the progressive left and the populist right who find Jews the easiest, least costly villain on which to foist their anxieties and fears. Wisse argues that Jews cannot win this fight by trying argue with the charges being leveled at them; that Israel’s creation remains the great modern resurrection of a people; and that Jewish (and American) self-confidence is the only real answer to this challenge.

--

This episode is sponsored by Club Z. I spend a lot of time on campuses talking to young Jews who call themselves anti-Zionist without being able to articulate what the word actually means — without knowing the basic history of how Israel came to exist. That's not their fault. Nobody taught them. Club Z is working to close that gap. Since 2011, they've been teaching Jewish teens their own story. They focus on identity and history before advocacy, helping to transform students' understanding of Zionism from a slogan into a real, explicable word that speaks of the survival and thriving of a nation. They run year-round programs in New York, New Jersey, Boston, LA, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and new cohorts are forming right now. You can find more info at http://ClubZ.org.

Here's the thing parents need to hear: You don't control what happens on campus. But you can college-proof your kid before they get there — give them the history, the confidence, the identity, so nobody can talk them out of who they are. That's what Club Z does for your child.

This Labor Day weekend, Club Z is bringing a hundred teens to Central Florida for The Rising, a national leadership gathering featuring speakers including Colonel Richard Kemp and Shabbos Kestenbaum. There are only about 20 spots left, and no teen is turned away for lack of funds.

Visit http://clubz.org/the-rising and use code ASKHAVIV200 for a listener discount.

--

If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything ), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/ ), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur ).And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/ ) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur ).--Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews and lectures that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East.In our current episode we ask: What does Qatar want?If you appreciate what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything ), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/ ), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur ).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/ ) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur ).

--

Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews and lectures that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East.

In our current episode we ask: Why not two states from the start?

If you appreciate what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything ), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/ ), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur ).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/ ) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur ).

--

Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews and lectures that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East.

In our current episode we ask: Why don’t Israelis trust the UN?

If you appreciate what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything ), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/ ), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur ).

And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/ ) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur ).

--

Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews and lectures that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East.

In our current episode we ask: Was Gaza still occupied after 2005?

If you appreciate what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join 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.