Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

An Insider's Account of Columbia's Pro-Hamas Protests - with Shai Davidai

Share on Twitter: tinyurl.com/5n6bswst Since 10/07, no faculty member at Columbia University (or any university for that matter) has been more outspoken about the shocking and staggering rise in antisemitism than Shai Davidai. He brings his first-hand accounts to our conversation...

A lot is happening in the Middle East... and nothing at all - with Nadav Eyal

Share on Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/3wv3d77z As we try to make sense of the past two weeks, consider this: 1. IDF withdraws from most of the Gaza Strip while it now also appears increasingly likely that the IDF will conduct an operation in Rafah....

How Israel Lost The Story - with Scott Galloway

Share the episode on Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/yc2yfbmz Just about every day we’re asked: how did Israel lose the story?We wanted to put this question to an expert in marketing and storytelling, but could come at Israel’s story with some distance. Someone who...

Special Episode: Did Iran Miscalculate? - with Nadav Eyal

Share the episode on Twitter: tinyurl.com/yc3rjw6y To help us understand what happened overnight in Israel, ourguest today is NADAV EYAL, who returns to the podcast. He is a columnist for Yediot. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the...

What it’s like to fight for your (captive) family - with Maya Roman

There has been growing tension within Israeli society over where to prioritize a hostage deal – at what cost (in terms of how many and which Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons should be part of the deal and the length...

Data Science Vs Hamas Math - with Abraham Wyner

30,000. You hear that number and you already know exactly what we are referring to. It’s 30,000 casualties. That’s the number of Palestinians that have been killed in Gaza as a result of the IDF response to the October 7th...

Is the war in Gaza over? With Nadav Eyal

There have been two major developments in the past few days. First, the IDF has announced it is withdrawing much of its ground force presence from Gaza, at the same time that Iran is threatening a direct military hit against...

Is Israel Losing America's Jews? With Yossi Klein Halevi and Rabbi David Ingber

Over the past several weeks, especially the Biden administration’s statements Thursday, Israel has been subjected to a fresh round of harsh criticisms. We’ll be turning to the elevating U.S.-Israel tensions in our Monday episode with Nadav Eyal. But today we have...

Is Gantz headed for the exit? with Anshel Pfeffer

On Wednesday, Benny Gantz announced he was calling for new elections to take place in September. What is the significance of this announcement? Is it a sharp turn for Israel’s Government? What are the implications for the war and the...

Lessons from Gaza for war against Hezbollah? - with Haviv Rettig Gur

Biden’s two-pronged Israel strategy — with Bret Stephens

Since October 7, the United States has vetoed three resolutions put before the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire. But suddenly, this past Monday, in a jarring change of course, the U.S. abstained, which -- for all practical purposes...

Is Israel Alone? With Haviv Rettig Gur

The new edition of The Economist Magazine features a photo of an Israeli flag, blowing in the wind…all alone. The cover title of this issue’s editorial is just that — “Israel Alone”. The editorial reads: “Today Israel has destroyed perhaps...

War Cabinet Member, Ron Dermer

In the days ahead, Minister Dermer will be flying to Washington with a small delegation to meet with the Biden administration about the IDF’s options for Rafah, which we discuss. We also discuss where the overall military operation in Gaza...

Biden's Bibi Problem - with Nadav Eyal

On October 6th of last year there was a long-standing ceasefire in place between Israel and Hamas. On October 7th, Hamas launched a massive war against Israel. Israel responded to this war that Hamas launched. Wars are violent. In all...

The Sobering of the Israeli Left - with Dr. Einat Wilf

Since October 7, we have heard from more and more friends in Israel who came of age -- politically -- in the 1990s. Some of these friends were key political figures on the Israeli Left and were committed to working...

My 'Come to Jesus' Moment with Haviv

As Ramadan begins, many analysts are speculating on what this means for Israel’s coming military operation in Rafah. There is a threat from Hamas to deter a Rafah operation. There is a threat from the Biden administration seemingly designed to...

Israel’s Near Death Experience - with Micah Goodman

Micah Goodman is on the speed-dial of a number of Israeli political leaders – from right to left, but especially on the center-left and the center-right. He is a polymath, a podcaster and one of Israel’s most influential public intellectuals,...

External pressures on Israel, and within - with Haviv Rettig Gur

Will there be a negotiated pause in fighting in advance of Ramadan, or will the IDF move against the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah? At the same time, what to make of the new external and internal pressures on Israel? Externally,...

1948 - with Benny Morris (Part 1)

PART 1 of 2 For more than 30 years of ‘on again-off again’ peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, many Israelis, and certainly most interested observers in the West, looked to the 1967 Six-Day War as the root cause of...

1948 - with Benny Morris (Part 2)

PART 2 of 2 For more than 30 years of ‘on again-off again’ peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, many Israelis, and certainly most interested observers in the West, looked to the 1967 Six-Day War as the root cause of...

The Anatomy of a Deal - with Nadav Eyal

Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu released to his cabinet what could be interpreted as a first sketch, an early blueprint, or a statement of principles for post-war Gaza planning. At the same time, and much more newsworthy, it appears that...

How Hamas fooled the world - with Matti Friedman

Every day we see news accounts “reported” by reputable journalists. There is typically one frame in the post-10/07 War: ‘Gazan Palestinians are the victims of Israel.’ How does this happen? How do journalists actually operate in Gaza and around the...

Is a peaceful Palestinian State even possible? - with Haviv Rettig Gur

On Sunday, Israel’s cabinet unanimously issued a statement rejecting efforts by the international community to force immediate recognition of a Palestinian State, especially so soon after 10/07. This was following an extensive article in the Washington Post last week that...

The spirit of a nation at war — with Wendy Singer

While there has been a lot of resentment inside Israel towards its political and security leadership, Israeli society has stepped up in ways sometimes impossible for me to describe. So, when I was in Israel, I asked Wendy Singer to...

Jerusalem - Rafah - Washington - with Nadav Eyal

Are we witnessing a dramatic change in the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s defensive war against Hamas? Are these changes just rhetorical to mollify either US domestic political constituencies or Middle East regional actors (or both)? Or do they represent...

The cost of starting a (losing) war - with Dr. Einat Wilf

Today we look back at the history of Palestinian violence against the Jews in Israel (and in the pre-state Yishuv) -- from the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917 through the myriad efforts to establish a Palestinian Arab State...

How to build a Palestinian state - with Haviv Rettig Gur

Haviv Rettig Gur of the TIMES OF ISRAEL returns for his weekly check-in from Israel. There has been a recent flurry of statements coming out of London, Washington, Brussels and the UN about the need to move on the recognition...

UNRWA & Hamas, the perfect affair - with Haviv Rettig Gur

The UN has one central agency responsible for handling all refugees globally, but Palestinian refugees have their own UN agency, UNRWA. Why? The number of Palestinian refugees has increased from 360,000 in 1948 to to 5.9 million today. And...

Can a Sunni-Israeli alliance win the war?

Al Jazeera is constantly blasting a steady stream of stories and images to the Arab world about 'tens of thousands of Palestinians dead,' according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. Condemnations against Israel are issued all over the place,...

Israel’s escalating internal debates — with Haviv Rettig Gur

In today’s weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur from the Times of Israel, we discuss intensifying debates within Israel over the leadership of the government, how to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable war aims as Israel transitions to a new phase in...

The End of a Jewish Golden Age — with John Podhoretz

Will we look back at the past few decades in America as the Jewish ‘golden age’? And is this ‘golden age’ now over? Did October 7th mark the end? Or should the signs have been obvious years ago? John...

On Sexual violence and… Silence - with Shari Mendes

Having recently passed the 100 day-mark of Hamas’s massacre against Israel, two events in recent weeks occurred that should have occurred some time ago. The New York Times published a major investigative piece on the details and the scale of...

Haviv Rettig Gur (Part 2) - 100 Days into Israel's 'Forever War'

This past weekend, Israelis marked 100 days since the Hamas massacre -- and 100 days that 136 hostages, of all ages, still remain captive in unimaginable conditions. We resume our weekly conversation with Haviv Rettig Gur of THE TIMES OF...

Haviv Rettig Gur (Part 1) - 100 Days into Israel's 'Forever War'

This past weekend, Israelis marked 100 days since the Hamas massacre -- and 100 days that 136 hostages, of all ages, still remain captive in unimaginable conditions. We resume our weekly conversation with Haviv Rettig Gur of THE TIMES OF ISRAEL...

The Houthis and The Hague - with Nadav Eyal

In recent days, two big stories have gotten a lot bigger. The U.S. and U.K. have launched air and missile strikes against Houthi targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on Thursday and today, marking a significant response after...

Growing tensions between Hamas Leaders — with Dr. Matt Levitt

What do Israelis know about the political tensions within Hamas’s leadership? About their decision-makers, their motives, their processes, and Hamas’s internal disagreements and rivalries? Matt Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Ehud Yaari of Israel’s Channel...

Gaza’s “Operating System” - with Nadav Eyal

Gaza runs like no sovereign entity. On the one hand, Hamas rules Gaza like any government does — it has a health system, an education system, a security, force, and a finance system. Hamas works with international agencies based in...

Haviv Rettig Gur on Palestinian radicalism - was 10/7 just another turn of the dial?

In recent days, we have been shocked to read the details in the New York Times investigative piece titled: “Hamas weaponized sexual violence on October 7.”For those of us following events on and after October 7 who have bothered to...

From Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houtis & beyond — with Bret Stephens

Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, returns for a conversation analyzing how the October 7 War is expanding beyond just the Hamas-Israel. Bret came to The New York Times after a long career with The...

A Shift in the War - with Haviv Rettig Gur

The Hamas-Israel War, nearing its three month mark, is now the longest war in Israel’s history since Israel’s War of Independence (1948/49). The first phase of this war, which took place over the three weeks following October 7, was largely conducted...

An insider’s account of the Harvard Antisemitism Committee — with Rabbi David Wolpe

Understanding where and how antisemitism has come to exist at an institution like Harvard is the focus of today’s conversation. We will hear the perspective of Rabbi David Wolpe — visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School — who tried to...

The Two-State Solution - with Haviv Rettig Gur

We are increasingly hearing from policymakers in the U.S. and around the world about re-starting the path to a two-state solution after the war. That is our focus today in our weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur. Is there a...

What starts with the Jews, rarely ends with just the Jews - with Yuval Levin

On previous episodes of this podcast we’ve discussed the origins and history of antisemitism. But what does this antisemitic moment tell us about society more generally? If you look back throughout history, the persecution of Jews has often coincided with...

The 'Day After' in Gaza - with Haviv Rettig Gur

In today’s weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur of The Times of Israel, we discuss Israel's current thinking about what a post-Hamas Gaza might look like - from a governance perspective and a security perspective. It's a topic we'll return...

Would Gazans rise up against Hamas? - with Amos Harel

Today we get an update on the IDF operation in South Gaza, what Israel is learning about the Gaza tunnel system, what Israelis are learning through further de-briefing of the returned Israeli hostages, and what to make of reports of...

Hamas’s psychological warfare — with Haviv Rettig Gur

In today’s weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur of The Times of Israel, we discuss the volatility in Israel, as Israelis pivoted from fighting the war to collectively embracing returning hostages during the pause in fighting. And, now, the IDF...

Haley's path & Biden's only move - with Mike Murphy

There are two storylines we have been following closely that are not necessarily shaped by the minute-to-minute developments in Israel, but their outcomes could have an outsized impact on U.S. policy on Israel, Gaza, and the broader Middle East. The...

Douglas Murray debunks 5 lies about Israel

Douglas Murray, a British writer and commentator, has been on the ground in Israel for about a month, covering the war as a reporter and analyst. He writes for the New York Post, the Sun, and Spectator. He is an...

Lessons learned from the hostage deal - with Haviv Rettig Gur

Today is our weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur of The Times of Israel. We discuss early lessons that Haviv is identifying for Israeli leaders and security officials – and for Israeli society – based on: the implementation of the...

The hostage deal: a new phase in the war - with Amos Harel

Amos Harel has been the military correspondent and defense analyst for Israel's Haaretz newspaper for 25 years. He is among the most well-sourced and thoughtful journalists and analysts covering Israeli security affairs inside Israel. Prior to his current position, Amos...