U.S. President Joe Biden is set to arrive in Israel next week, and his top diplomat in the country says that the long-expected visit won’t be affected by Israel’s recently-announced election. “The show will go on,” Ambassador Thomas Nides told the Haaretz Weekly podcast in a special July 4th interview.

“Joe Biden is coming here for the Israeli people. He's not coming for one political party or another,” Nides told hosts Allison Kaplan Sommer and Amir Tibon, describing the U.S. president as a “Zionist” who “knows more about the Middle East and Israel than probably any politician in the history of the United States.”

In a wide-ranging interview held on the eve of the Knesset’s vote to dissolve itself and Yair Lapid’s instatement as caretaker prime minister, Nides lays out the goals of Biden’s Mideast tour, with stops in Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia. He also answers our questions on related policy issues from Ukraine and China to Iran.

Also on this week’s episode, a special announcement: Haaretz’s Election Overdose podcast is back! As we begin the journey toward Israel’s fifth election in three years, Anshel Pfeffer and Dahlia Scheindlin will be in our studio each week to talk about the biggest political stories of the hour, and how they could impact the results in November. Listen to them discussing the Knesset’s dissolution and Lapid’s appointment, starting at time code 27:50.

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When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, ending the federal right to abortion, it was “devastating,” says Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, in an interview with Haaretz Weekly.

“We had been mapping out every possible path this decision could go down. And the one the court chose was absolutely the worst,” Katz tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer. Katz has been spearheading the fight for abortion rights in the Jewish community under the banner of religious freedom.

“Judaism not only permits abortion: our tradition commands it when it comes to protecting the life of the mother,” she says.

Also on this week’s episode: political consultant Dahlia Scheindlin analyzes the dissolution of the Knesset and what lies ahead as Israel faces its fifth election in three and a half years, and weighs the odds of a comeback for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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For the fifth time since 2019, Israel will hold an election as the country's political crisis grows ever worse, with no end in sight. Why did Prime Minister Naftali Bennett decide to shock the political scene by blowing up his own government? What kind of leader will his interim successor, Yair Lapid, be? And is it too soon to discuss a comeback by Benjamin Netanyahu?

Our team in the studio – Amir Tibon, Anshel Pfeffer and Allison Kaplan Sommer – answer all your most pressing questions on the political drama.

Later on this episode, an in-depth interview with former Israeli national security adviser Uzi Arad, on his years working next to Netanyahu, the books he used to buy for the former prime minister in London's best bookstores, and what Joe Biden whispered in his ear outside the Oval Office. Arad, today a sharp critic of his former boss Netanyahu, also has some harsh words for the government that replaced him.

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Trump adviser Steve Bannon has refused to testify to the congressional January 6 committee about his role in the Capitol insurrection. But he agreed to speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Senior – though when confronted he didn’t tell her the truth.

“He was definitely working the phones all day. And he was lying to me about it,” Senior tells Haaretz Weekly podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, discussing her recent profile of Bannon in The Atlantic.

Senior also talks about how the U.S. alt-right movement has fanned the flames of antisemitism, and how Bannon dealt with being profiled by a Jewish woman.

“He knew early on that I was Jewish and was therefore extremely awkward, almost clumsy, and trying to bring up how much he loved the Jews,” she says. “It was almost like that movie scene where Austin Powers sees a person with a mole and keeps accidentally saying the word ‘mole’ out loud. Like he was staring at me and thinking, ‘Jew, Jew.’“

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Haaretz Weekend host Allison Kaplan Sommer and Haaretz English Deputy Editor Amir Tibon review the turbulent Israeli political scene after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s embattled governing coalition failed to pass a contentious West Bank bill this week – and ask if this could be the death knell for the anti-Netanyahu "change government."

Later on the show, Prof. Joshua Shanes joins the podcast to discuss changes in ultra-Orthodoxy – a community that will soon represent a fifth of all U.S. Jews, their affinity for Donald Trump and his camp, and the activism that emerged during the pandemic. 

Shanes, who directs the Arnold Center for Israel Studies at the College of Charleston, also talks about the antisemitism panel he attended during a recent visit to Jerusalem. He was “shocked and scared” to hear former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer – a confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu – use “violent language” that sounded “straight out of Kahane.”

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Rep. Andy Levin, a progressive Democrat from Michigan, is facing a tough primary race against fellow lawmaker Haley Stevens, as the two politicians battle in a newly redrawn Congressional district in the Detroit area. Their election has become the latest front in the political war between AIPAC, which is supporting Stevens, and J Street, which has endorsed Levin.

Joining host Allison Kaplan Sommer on this episode, Levin responds to what he calls “sad and pathetic” personal attacks from a former AIPAC president who called him “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

He explains his views on the subject by stating: “I love Israel. I'm a supporter of Israel and always have been, I voted for all our aid to Israel. I'm against the BDS movement. I voted to replenish Iron Dome. To use the kind of language that they're using against me, just because I won't tow AIPAC’s exact line is wrong, and it's not going to work.”

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U.S. President Joe Biden visited Asia this week, where he made headlines by promising to defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese attack on the island. At home, his administration has been struggling with rising inflation ahead of this year's midterm elections. So why, in the face of multiple internal and international crises, is the president soon planning a visit to Israel and potentially also Saudi Arabia?

On this week's episode, we asked leading U.S. foreign policy expert Aaron David Miller what Biden will try to achieve during the trip – from a diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and Saudi Arabia, to improved ties with the region's major oil producers. Miller also told host Amir Tibon why America's greatest global challenge today is actually coming from within. 

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Ending a decades-long policy of neutrality, Sweden and Finland have decided to join NATO in response to Vladimir Putin's botched invasion of Ukraine. On this episode of Haaretz Weekend, our correspondent in Stockholm, David Stavrou, explains why this decision is an earthquake for the two Scandinavian countries, and veteran national security analyst Amir Oren discusses the global implications it will have, ranging from Washington and Moscow to Israel and the Middle East. They also tell host Amir Tibon how Putin could punish the two countries in the interim period until they are accepted to NATO, and what it would take to remove Turkish President Erdogan's opposition to their application. 

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“If I thought that I was going to win the Pulitzer for a book called ‘The Netanyahus’ I would have to be crazy to want to be in Israel when that happened,” novelist Joshua Cohen tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz Weekly, shortly after arriving in Israel for the Jerusalem International Book Forum and Writers Festival. 

In the interview, recorded in Tel Aviv days after he got the news, Cohen says he is still in shock that he had won the biggest literary prize in the United States for a novel “that has characters in it that most Americans can't pronounce their names.”

Cohen’s part-historical, part-fictional satire is subtitled “An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.” Its main character is the brilliant but embittered Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, best-known today as the father of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. 

As he was writing, Cohen says, he “kept on thinking of the line in ‘The Big Lebowski’ where the Dude says to Walter: ‘You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.’ And that was Benzion Netanyahu."

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As the Israeli Knesset begins its summer session, political expert and Haaretz columnist Dahlia Scheindlin joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s chances of survival, and why United Arab List leader Mansour Abbas pulled his party back from the brink after threatening to leave the coalition. 

Abbas is taking “a huge risk," she notes, amidst growing criticism from within the Arab camp “attacking him every day for being some kind of collaborator in this government. But his strategy is that he will achieve long-term goals and ultimately be rewarded.”

Also on the show, Acre hotel owner Evan Fallenberg reflects on the events of May 2021, when his business was decimated during the riots in mixed Jewish-Arab cities, and why he still believes coexistence is possible. 

“It’s easy for people to point fingers, blame the other side and not feel that they’re responsible. But I think it’s the only way we’re going to find a way out of this situation. We’re all responsible in some way.” 

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