Haaretz Podcast

As former US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk experienced one of the most devastating moments of the country’s history - the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, during the time of Israel’s deep divisions over the Oslo Peace Accords. 

And yet, Indyk tells Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, the current split over the judicial overhaul, following the passage of its first piece of legislation on Monday, is a “more fundamental” crisis. One that he says has left him “heartsick.”

“Israel was born as a Jewish and democratic state. And throughout its history, for 75 years, there has always been that tension between its Jewish nature and its democratic nature and they remained in balance for those 75 years. Now they are out of balance.”

Indyk said he is “deeply worried” both for the future of the US-Israel relationship and for Israel’s security after it has become clear that that the government’s unilateral actions have “undermined Israel's deterrent capability” given the decision of crucial fighter pilots to suspend their military service in protest of the overhaul. 

“I think it's a very dark day in Israel's history,” Indyk said. “And I know that the Iranians in particular and their proxies around Israel's borders, and Israel's other enemies, were just sitting back and watching this in amazement, as Israel tears itself apart.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he says, has been “taken hostage” by the far-right parties in his coalition. On the podcast, Indyk also discusses his statements in a recent New York Times column in which he endorses an end to the $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid that Israel receives annually.

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Among the numerous mass protests against the Israeli government’s controversial legislative moves to weaken Israel’s judicial system, the most influential effort has come from reservists in the country’s elite military units threatening to refuse to report for duty.

One of the reservists, Yiftach Golov, tells Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer that he and his comrades in the group Brothers and Sisters in Arms – who are visibly on the front lines of the protest movement – are determined to do all they can to fight what he calls Benjamin Netanyahu’s “government of destruction.”

“We haven’t even moved our queen yet in this chess game,” Golov warns. “The fact that we are threatening not to volunteer in Israel’s elite special units is only the beginning. We have much more ammunition in our arsenal.”

Golov rejects critics in the government camp who say the defense of the country shouldn’t be put at risk for political goals. As a soldier, he says, he vowed to fight any force that was putting the survival of the country at risk – even when the threat isn’t an external one. “It’s a crazy situation, but right now, our enemy comes from within. ... I feel that I’m serving my country for exactly the same values” as on the battlefield.

Also on the podcast, Haaretz defense analyst Amos Harel talks about the reservists’ actions, and their impact on the government’s behavior.

Harel says Netanyahu is “extremely concerned” about the reservists’ actions – particularly those of its elite fighter pilots, who are vital to the Israel Defense Forces’ combat readiness in case of attack, and the coalition is struggling with its response to a phenomenon that he says is “getting bigger” by the day.

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As the Israeli streets explode in protests against the renewed effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to “neuter the judiciary,” Haaretz English editor-in-chief Esther Solomon joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz for an overview and explanation of the charged state of Israeli politics.

The current push in the Knesset to eliminate the “reasonableness standard” which allows the High Court of Justice to block irrational government decisions has been a dramatic turning point, Solomon says, and is just the first step in executing a full overhaul to weaken Israel’s courts in favor of its politicians.

It is all part of Netanyahu’s efforts “to try and appease the most extreme members of his government ever since he set up… the most theocratic and ideologically pro-settler government that Israel has ever seen. And what happens if you sit down with the far-right is that you end up being pulled towards where they are.”

Also on the podcast, Haaretz writer Anat Peled tells the story behind the kidnapping of high-profile Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli citizen who is being held by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, why Israeli academics like Tsurkov take the risks they do when researching the Middle East, and the efforts underway to bring her home safely,

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Despite the weakened position of Russian President Vladimir Putin following the weekend’s aborted coup, chances that Israel’s government will change its policy in the Russia-Ukraine conflict are extremely low, says Haaretz senior correspondent Anshel Pfeffer, who has covered the war from the ground.

“Israel has - both on a moral level and on a strategic level - been making a mistake by staying on the sidelines and keeping its relationship intact with the Russians,” Pfeffer tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz Weekly podcast.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Sommer and Pfeffer, author of the book “Bibi: The Life and Turbulent Times of Benjamin Netanyahu” discuss producer Arnon Milchan’s testimony in the Prime Minister’s corruption trial that kicked off in Brighton, England this week, his sinking numbers in the polls, and the renewed effort to reboot the controversial judicial revolution.

He also addresses the violent attacks on Palestinian towns by West Bank settlers in the wake of a deadly terror attack, and the response by far-right ministers in the government “who openly support this kind of vigilantism.”

While they pay lip service against settlers taking the law into their own hands, “We know what Minister of National Missions Orit Struck, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have said in the past. And you can see it now in their body language when they're not saying it: that they're perfectly okay with, with the settlers going on rampage. So the only difference between this government (and those in the past) is that it's out in the open.”

 

 

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In a special podcast in honor of Israel’s annual Book Week celebration, Haaretz Weekly is spotlighting two female Israeli journalists turned authors: Dina Kraft, co-author of Hannah Pick-Goslar’s memoir “My Friend Anne Frank”; and Ruth Marks Eglash, a journalist who reported from Israel for the Washington Post for eight years before writing her debut novel, “Parallel Lines.”

The world knows Anne Frank as a spirited teenager through her diary recounting her years in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam. But her childhood friend Hannah Pick-Goslar knew her entire story from its hopeful beginning to its tragic end.

“My Friend Anne Frank” – currently a New York Times best-seller – was written by Pick-Goslar and Kraft. In an interview with Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Kraft recounts her experience interviewing the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor during the last six months of her life. Pick-Goslar died in 2022, before the book was completed.

Kraft shares how Anne and Hannah met as young children in Amsterdam, after their Jewish families fled Hitler’s Germany, and were inseparable friends as they grew into teenagers. Until one day, following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, when Hannah went to see her friend and was “completely shocked to see breakfast dishes still in the sink and beds left unmade, which was never the case in a very orderly Frank household.”

Years later, as Kraft describes, the two friends had a heartbreaking reunion at the fence separating them in Bergen-Belsen. Pick-Goslar remembered finding her once-vivacious friend “freezing, starving, with just a filthy blanket to keep her warm.”

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Also on the podcast, Ruth Marks Eglash tells the story behind her novel “Parallel Lines,” which follows modern-day Jerusalem life and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the eyes of three young women: one Jewish secular Israeli, one ultra-Orthodox Jew and one East Jerusalem Palestinian, who live side-by-side but in entirely different worlds.

Her book – inspired by having to make sense of the roller-coaster of conflict and violence in Israel’s capital to her own teenage daughter while working as deputy bureau chief for The Washington Post – focuses on “how this conflict that we write about as journalists and that we read about as adults is impacting young people.”

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The Trump indictment rocking the United States contains numerous references to foreign countries and military battle plans that many believe relate directly to Iran and Israel – and may have even originated in Israeli intelligence sources. 

Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Amir Tibon joins Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the indictment as well as the similarities between Trump’s latest legal headaches and those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was elected to Israel’s highest office while on trial for corruption.

“If you’re an American watching anxiously and wondering what it’s like to have a clash between a former president running for [office] again and the legal authorities, I don’t think there’s a lot of good news we can bring you from Israel,” Tibon said.

If the documents squirreled away in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom were indeed Israel-related, “it wouldn’t be the first time that Trump revealed secret information related to Israeli activities,” he added, recalling the 2017 incident in which the-then president reportedly gave Mossad intelligence to the Russians. 

If they were, he predicts that “it won’t be good for Israel to be part of the legal and political circus that will happen around this indictment.

Tibon also gives an update on the U.S.-Iran negotiations to revive a nuclear deal over Israeli objections – and the continuing signs that full diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia may come sooner than we think.

 

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An unprecedented number of Israeli ministers and governing coalition lawmakers flew to New York City last week to participate in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade and the conferences and meetings surrounding it.

Haaretz Washington correspondent Ben Samuels joins Allison Kaplan Sommer with all the highlights of what happened next – from the historic “inflection point” of progressive American Jews and Israelis joining forces to bring pro-democracy and anti-judicial overhaul voices to the parade, to MK Simcha Rothman grabbing a megaphone from a protester following him on the street, to Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli giving the middle finger to the crowd. 

“It all showcased just how much of a fault line Israel has become, particularly under this government, in the conversation here,” Samuels said, speaking from New York. “And the optics of Israelis protesting the Israeli government at the Israel Day Parade? That’s the worst PR you can get.” 

Also on the podcast, a look at the Israeli under-20 soccer team that shocked and delighted the nation in a come-from-behind victory against powerhouse Brazil in the quarterfinals of the FIFA world championship last Sunday. Haaretz sportswriter Ido Rakovsky joins the podcast to discuss the unique qualities of a dream team made up of both Arabs and Jews, what their success means to Israeli soccer and what their coach has in common with Ted Lasso.

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June 1 marks the beginning of Pride Month around the world, and in Israel, it is being launched with the annual Jerusalem March of Pride and Tolerance, the most tense of the month’s events. Alona Nir Keren, a lesbian Reform rabbi who offers its opening blessing this year, has been part of the parade since it began in 2002.

In this episode of Haaretz Weekly, she shares her memories of the early years, when the men who are today the country’s national security and finance ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, waited for the revelers with donkeys on the parade route – “to send the message that homosexuality was the equivalent of sex with animals.”

“These people are mean and they are vicious,” she says in conversation with host Allison Kaplan Sommer. “They’re using fascist metaphors and ideas, and spreading hate. And this person [Ben-Gvir] is supposed to be in charge of my safety while I’m marching in this parade?”

Despite the challenges, Nir Keren says she is determined to raise children who can “celebrate their Judaism but also the fact that they have two moms and not be ashamed of it.”

Haaretz correspondent Linda Dayan also joins the podcast to describe the protests surrounding an event honoring U.S. author Abigail Shrier, who has written a book warning that a predatory transgender movement “is coming for” young girls.

Dayan then shares her experiences at similar events where North American social conservatives Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson addressed Israeli audiences, and her observation that “suddenly very American, very British and very Western ideas about gender identity are making their way here” – sparking “a kind of discussion different from those I had ever heard before” in Israel.

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As the protest movement against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul moved into its 20th week, there has been a clear shift in its focus.

From battles over the billions of shekels in government budget expenditures on ultra-Orthodox schools that don’t offer basic education, to turf wars over a yeshiva in downtown Tel Aviv and an indoor playground open on Shabbat, to a firestorm around a television talk show host calling ultra-Orthodox Israelis “bloodsuckers.” These days, the public discourse is all about the secular-Orthodox divide.

Uri Keidar, CEO of Israel Hofsheet ("Be Free Israel") and Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz join host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz Weekly to discuss the growing rift, how it relates to the wider struggle against the judicial coup, and the increasing frustration in the secular public.

"I think we are starting to see the majority wake up," says Keidar, who believes that this majority is "over and done with" an ultra-Orthodox political agenda which "are not up to speed with the fact that we live in the 21st century."

"A lot of angry, secular people are saying: enough is enough. We're sick and tired of sending our kids to the army, while ultra-Orthodox kids don't have to go, we're sick and tired of paying more and more taxes for things that we not only don't believe in, but that we are vehemently opposed to. And this is it. We're not going to put up with it anymore," observes Maltz.

"A year ago, if somebody secular in Israel spoke out against the ultra-Orthodox sector, they would have been called anti-Semitic or a self-hating Jew - and that would have shut them up. Today, it's not shutting them up."

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When journalist Barak Ravid’s book "Trump's Peace: the Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East" was published in Hebrew in 2021, two words in his text made international headlines.

Bitter about the Israeli Prime Minister’s eagerness to congratulate President Joe Biden on his win, Trump said of Benjamin Netanyahu in their 90-minute interview for the book: "Fuck him," making a point of declaring "I haven’t spoken to him since."

In a conversation with Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Ravid reports that two full years later, Trump and Netanyahu still haven’t exchanged a word.

On the occasion of the publication of his book in English - with new chapters updating the state of the Abraham Accords under the Biden administration, Ravid offers a look behind the scenes of his two lengthy interviews with Trump and how eager he was to express his unhappiness with Netanyahu’s behavior.

When Trump used the F-word, "It was at the end of a 20-minute monologue about all the bad things he thought about Netanyahu," Ravid shared, saying the interview revealed to him that the Trump-Netanyahu bromance "was like watching a show for four years. And then you realize that everything you saw was just BS, because the reality between those two was completely different."

Also on this week’s podcast, Haaretz English Editor in Chief Esther Solomon and correspondent Simon Waldman in Istanbul assess the political situation in Turkey after the election results leading to a second-round face-off for the presidency between incumbent Tayyip Erdogan and opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. According to Waldman, the first round outcome is “the worst-case scenario” for the opposition.

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