Haaretz Weekly

By Haaretz

What's Haaretz Weekly about?

From Haaretz – Israel's oldest daily newspaper – a weekly podcast in English on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World, hosted by Allison Kaplan Sommer.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Being LGBTQ under Israel’s ...

05.31.2023

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 ...

Haaretz Weekly episodes:

05.31.2023 Being LGBTQ under Israel’s far-right government: ‘Going backward is not an option’ 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 ...
05.24.2023 'Secular Israelis Are Mad as Hell and They're Not Going to Take It Anymore' 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 ...
05.16.2023 'When Trump said: F**k Bibi, it wasn't a slip of the tongue' 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 ...
05.09.2023 Israel braces for Islamic Jihad response after Assassinations: What happens next? After Israel assassinated three senior members of Islamic Jihad and killed at least ten civilians in airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in the wee hours of Tuesday morning in a military operation, the country tensely braced for expected retaliation. Haaretz ...
04.19.2023 The one-state reality in Israel-Palestine: what does it mean for U.S. policy? Is it time for the international community to stop talking about a ‘two-state solution’ for Israel and the Palestinians, and begin instead to grapple with a ‘one-state reality’? That’s the argument four leading political scientists recently made in a thought-provoking, ...
03.27.2023 The urgent warning Netanyahu doesn't want to hear Prof. Karnit Flug was appointed as the first female governor of the Bank of Israel by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2013. Together they worked to stabilize and grow the country’s economy – particularly its flourishing high-tech sector. Now, she ...
03.22.2023 Why Israel's ‘Handmaids’ are fighting Netanyahu’s far-right government Women’s rights in Israel are under danger, warns Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a legal scholar and founding director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar Ilan University. The risk is coming from their own ...
03.14.2023 Why a former U.S. ambassador joined Israel's pro-democracy protests Martin Indyk, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel twice, made an unusual stop during a recent trip to Israel: He joined the massive Tel Aviv demonstration against Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to weaken the Israeli judicial system. “I am dismayed ...
03.07.2023 When Israel's Mossad chief met Vladimir Putin for the first time On this episode of Haaretz Weekly, Israel's top analysts and experts discuss one year to the war in Ukraine from an Israeli perspective. The conversation was recorded as part of the 2023 Haaretz-UCLA conference on Israel and the New World ...
03.01.2023 'For Israel, against Bibi': Why Israelis in NYC are protesting their own government It hasn’t taken long for the protests against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul in Israel, to find their way to the United States. On this episode of Haaretz Weekly, attorney Oz Benamram – an Israeli living in New York – ...
02.20.2023 Inside the Global Investigation that Exposed Israel's Agents of Chaos On this episode of Haaretz Weekly, host Allison Kaplan Sommer talks to investigative journalists Omer Benjakob and Gur Megiddo about their months-long investigation, in collaboration with Radio France, The Guardian and other leading international media outlets, that revealed the dirty, ...
02.15.2023 Is Netanyahu's corruption trial the real reason for Israel's judicial overhaul? The fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is running the country as his corruption trial continues no longer shocks Israelis. But maybe it should? Yael Freidson, Haaretz’s legal correspondent, has covered the Netanyahu trial every day since it began in ...
02.07.2023 'Fauda' creator on the show's fourth season and Israel's third Intifada Trouble is brewing in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and an eruption of violence may be coming, warns veteran journalist Avi Issacharoff on the latest episode of Haaretz Weekly. Issacharoff should know: he is not only a leading journalist covering ...
02.01.2023 Israel's former military intel chief is worried, and not about Iran Each year, the Institute for National Security Studies publishes a list of Israel's most urgent security threats. In the past, it has pointed to threats from neighboring states and terror groups. But this year, the well-respected think-tank chose to highlight ...
01.25.2023 ‘Democracies can become tyrannies’: Why Alan Dershowitz fears Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz has been a friend and adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for decades. But when it comes to Netanyahu’s plan to significantly weaken the Israeli Supreme Court, Dershowitz has a sharp warning for the prime minister. ...
01.17.2023 Israel's Jewish Fundamentalists are in Power. Here's What You Should Know Israel's Jewish fundamentalists hold an unprecedented level of power in Benjamin Netanyahu's current government. What does that mean for Israeli democracy, for the U.S.-Israel relationship and for the broader Middle East? Our guest Dr. Tomer Persico, an expert on Jewish ...
01.11.2023 ‘Corrupt and dangerous’: Benjamin Wittes on Israel’s judicial overhaul The Israeli Supreme Court has a “huge amount of power while the foundation of that power is paper thin,” says Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and editor-in-chief of the Lawfare Blog, in an interview with Haaretz Weekly ...
01.03.2023 Netanyahu can no longer control the pyromaniacs around him Less than a week into his new government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had his first confrontation with one of his coalition partners when National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir insisted on going to the Temple Mount, the most provocative act ...
12.28.2022 ‘Time to resist’: Top Israeli civil rights activist prepares for Bibi's ‘nightmare government' “We live in a terrifying time, facing realities that we couldn’t have dreamt about in our worst nightmares,” says the executive director of Israel’s largest human rights organization, Noa Sattath, speaking with host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz Weekly. The ...
12.21.2022 Israel's new far-right government will turn back the clock for women Benjamin Netanyahu's new government, based on the support of Israel's far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, presents a real threat to the rights of Israeli women, warns Dr. Yofi Tirosh on this episode of Haaretz Weekly. Increasing the powers of religious courts ...
12.13.2022 The law professor fighting to stop a 'disaster for Israeli democracy' Israel's incoming government led by Benjamin Netanyahu is gearing up to mortally wound Israeli democracy, warns Prof. Yaniv Roznai, a leading Israeli legal expert who is sounding the alarm over the 'override clause' - a piece of legislation that would ...
12.08.2022 Haaretz Live from Washington: What next in Israeli politics? What exactly happened in the Israeli election? Where is the country heading as Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power with the most right-wing government in Israeli history? And do long-term voting trends offer any hope for the center-left? At the recent ...
12.01.2022 Will Netanyahu's far-right allies ignite a third Intifada? Listen to Amos Harel Terror attacks in Jerusalem and southern Israel; Palestinians killed in IDF raids across the occupied territories; tensions between Israel's military leadership and the country's incoming government; and an unstable, weakened Palestinian Authority on the verge of losing control. When these ...
11.23.2022 'Israel is a red state, U.S. Jews are blue voters': Eric Alterman on U.S.-Israel ties Journalist and historian Eric Alterman joins Haaretz Weekly to discuss his new book "We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel." From Eisenhower's confrontation with Ben Gurion to Netanyahu's clashes with Obama, Alterman walks us through some ...
11.16.2022 Trump lost, Biden won: what the midterms mean for Israel On this week’s edition of Haaretz Weekly, host Amir Tibon welcomes Washington Post political columnist E.J. Dionne and Haaretz journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer for an in-depth discussion of the results of the 2022 midterms and their impact on the U.S.-Israel ...
11.07.2022 From Bibi to the midterms, a dramatic election season for U.S.-Israel ties With the most religious and right-wing Israeli government in history about to be formed following last week’s dramatic elections, what’s ahead for the U.S.-Israel relationship, and especially for Israel’s ties with American Jews? On Haaretz Weekly, host Amir Tibon and ...
11.03.2022 Israel election: Understanding Bibi's comeback Have Israel's election results got you down? No one parses the voters' choice like Election Overdose hosts Anshel Pfeffer and Dahlia Scheindlin. In the special one-hour season finale, they walk through all the nerdy data and critical commentary to make ...
10.31.2022 Israel Election: What's Behind the Rise of the Far Right If one major story dominated Israel’s 2022 Knesset election, it was the surging popularity of the Religious Zionism Party. The party’s leaders Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, claim to have moderated their extremism, but their party platform reflects their racist, ...
10.27.2022 Israeli Election: these surprises could tip the scales on Tuesday What in the world will happen on Tuesday? In the final episode ahead of the Israeli elections next week, Election Overdose hosts Anshel Pfeffer and Dahlia Scheindlin walk through the permutations of electoral outcomes, analyze the projected deadlock between party ...
10.25.2022 Iran has joined the war in Ukraine. Why is Israel still on the sidelines? Ukraine has been begging Israel for defensive weapons systems since the start of the Russian invasion, but Israel has refused, fearing the wrath of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Security expert and Haaretz journalist Yossi Melman tells Haaretz Weekly host Allison ...
10.20.2022 Money time: Israel's election campaign starts now With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, the campaign has moved to high-tempo. Or has it? This week’s Election Overdose episode tries to work out why no issues have caught the public’s attention so far in the ...
10.06.2022 Why religious voters could tip the scales in Israel's election Will religious Jewish voters tip the scales in Israel's elections? With just 25 days to go and each electoral bloc desperate for the final push to reach a 61-seat majority, Israel's national religious community faces surprisingly tough choices. Which parties ...
09.28.2022 "Putin told Trump: 'maybe they should name all of Israel after you'": Listen to Peter Baker Former U.S. president Donald Trump divided the Jewish community and American Jews from Israel “just like he divided his political party, he divided his White House staff and he divided even his own family,” says Peter Baker, chief White House ...
09.22.2022 Israel's Arab voters can decide its election. Do they want to? All eyes are on Arab voters, as the Israeli election campaign begins in earnest. In the final hours before last week's deadline for finalizing party slates, the Joint List disintegrated, leaving three different parties to compete for the votes of ...
09.19.2022 Is anything still left of the Israeli Left? Listen to Nir Baram As the Jewish year 5782 comes to a close, we devote the first half of this week's Haaretz Weekly to discussing the biggest stories of the outgoing year – from Israel's short-lived “government of change” to the Jewish aspects of ...
09.15.2022 With party lists submitted, the action begins: LISTEN to Election Overdose As Israeli parties submit their final lists of candidates to the Central Election Commission, the latest episode of Election Overdose goes deep into the emerging battlefield. Why has Benjamin Netanyahu added new names to Likud's list? Who are the potential ...
09.13.2022 Why British Jews loved the queen, and how the U.S. failed Anne Frank When Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein began work on the documentary series “The US and the Holocaust” together with acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns, they, like other Americans, shared the common belief that America only rescued a small fraction of Europe’s ...
09.08.2022 A week of big decisions for Israeli politicians: LISTEN to Election Overdose On September 15th, Israeli parties must submit their final lists of candidates and be inscribed in the book of parties for the upcoming election. One week from now, parties of the left and right that have been flirting with merging ...
09.06.2022 Bad, worse or terrible? Inside Israel's dangerous dilemma on Iran As talks between Iran and world powers over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program continue, Israel is facing a difficult choice between bad and worse options. Should it accept a flawed deal in order to postpone a potential confrontation with Tehran? ...
09.01.2022 Who represents Israel's 'real' right-wing? Listen to Election Overdose Our guest this week is Member of Knesset Yossi Shain, who joins the podcast to discuss how Yisrael Beitenu, his party, is preparing for the November 1 election. Shain argues that the secular right-wing party led by Finance Minister Avigdor ...
08.22.2022 'A sign of weakness': Why Israel and Turkey are suddenly friends again What lies behind the charm offensive launched by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan toward Israel that has resulted in the restoration of full diplomatic ties between the two countries last week, and how long will the honeymoon last? Dr. Gallia ...
08.19.2022 Election Overdose \| In America, "it's the economy, stupid". And in Israel? On this episode of Election Overdose, we ask if the famous rule of American elections, is finally making its way to Israel as well. Our guest Karnit Flug, former governor of the Bank of Israel, now at the Israel Democracy ...
08.14.2022 Why the U.S. Supreme Court is bad for the Jews: LISTEN to Dahlia Lithwick After a series of dramatic decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, the “wall between church and state is almost completely eroded,” warns our guest Dahlia Lithwick, a senior journalist at Slate and legal commentator for MSNBC. In a conversation with ...
08.07.2022 Days of war: What's behind new Israel-Gaza flare-up On this week's episode, Haaretz's national security analyst Amos Harel joins the podcast to discuss the dramatic events in Israel and Gaza. Why did Israel strike the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad organization, and why is Hamas, the most powerful group in ...
08.01.2022 Israeli director Rama Burshtein opens up on romance and religion Before Shtisel and Unorthodox became Netflix hits, writer and director Rama Burshtein-Shai was pulling back the curtain on life and love in the ultra-Orthodox community. Following Burshtein’s internationally acclaimed films “Fill the Void” and “The Wedding Plan,” comes her first ...
07.26.2022 'And then I heard the gun click': What happens when a terrorist enters a synagogue January 15, 2022, began as a quiet Saturday morning for Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, then the rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. When a stranger knocked on the synagogue’s glass door and inquired about a night shelter, Cytron-Walker performed ...
07.19.2022 Haaretz goes to Saudi Arabia: LISTEN to Ben Samuels and David Makovsky Last week, Haaretz reporter Ben Samuels was the only Israeli journalist to fly with the White House press delegation from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – a first-of-its-kind historic flight between two countries that officially still don’t recognize ...
07.11.2022 What will MBS give Biden in Saudi Arabia? LISTEN to Gregg Carlstrom As President Joe Biden takes off from Washington for his long-awaited visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia, The Economist's Middle East correspondent Gregg Carlstrom joins the podcast for a wide-ranging conversation on U.S. policy in the region. Hosts Allison Kaplan ...
07.03.2022 'This president loves Israel:' U.S. ambassador talks Biden visit, Saudi ties 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 ...
06.29.2022 ‘Abortion bans hurt our religious freedom': LISTEN to Sheila Katz 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 ...

Older episodes

Haaretz Weekly

What's Haaretz Weekly about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Haaretz Weekly episodes:

Being LGBTQ under Israel’s far-right government: ‘Going backward is not an option’

'Secular Israelis Are Mad as Hell and They're Not Going to Take It Anymore'

'When Trump said: F**k Bibi, it wasn't a slip of the tongue'

Israel braces for Islamic Jihad response after Assassinations: What happens next?

The one-state reality in Israel-Palestine: what does it mean for U.S. policy?

The urgent warning Netanyahu doesn't want to hear

Why Israel's ‘Handmaids’ are fighting Netanyahu’s far-right government

Why a former U.S. ambassador joined Israel's pro-democracy protests

When Israel's Mossad chief met Vladimir Putin for the first time

'For Israel, against Bibi': Why Israelis in NYC are protesting their own government

Inside the Global Investigation that Exposed Israel's Agents of Chaos

Is Netanyahu's corruption trial the real reason for Israel's judicial overhaul?

'Fauda' creator on the show's fourth season and Israel's third Intifada

Israel's former military intel chief is worried, and not about Iran

‘Democracies can become tyrannies’: Why Alan Dershowitz fears Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul

Israel's Jewish Fundamentalists are in Power. Here's What You Should Know

‘Corrupt and dangerous’: Benjamin Wittes on Israel’s judicial overhaul

Netanyahu can no longer control the pyromaniacs around him

‘Time to resist’: Top Israeli civil rights activist prepares for Bibi's ‘nightmare government'

Israel's new far-right government will turn back the clock for women

The law professor fighting to stop a 'disaster for Israeli democracy'

Haaretz Live from Washington: What next in Israeli politics?

Will Netanyahu's far-right allies ignite a third Intifada? Listen to Amos Harel

'Israel is a red state, U.S. Jews are blue voters': Eric Alterman on U.S.-Israel ties

Trump lost, Biden won: what the midterms mean for Israel

From Bibi to the midterms, a dramatic election season for U.S.-Israel ties

Israel election: Understanding Bibi's comeback

Israel Election: What's Behind the Rise of the Far Right

Israeli Election: these surprises could tip the scales on Tuesday

Iran has joined the war in Ukraine. Why is Israel still on the sidelines?

Money time: Israel's election campaign starts now

Why religious voters could tip the scales in Israel's election

"Putin told Trump: 'maybe they should name all of Israel after you'": Listen to Peter Baker

Israel's Arab voters can decide its election. Do they want to?

Is anything still left of the Israeli Left? Listen to Nir Baram

With party lists submitted, the action begins: LISTEN to Election Overdose

Why British Jews loved the queen, and how the U.S. failed Anne Frank

A week of big decisions for Israeli politicians: LISTEN to Election Overdose

Bad, worse or terrible? Inside Israel's dangerous dilemma on Iran

Who represents Israel's 'real' right-wing? Listen to Election Overdose

'A sign of weakness': Why Israel and Turkey are suddenly friends again

Election Overdose | In America, "it's the economy, stupid". And in Israel?

Why the U.S. Supreme Court is bad for the Jews: LISTEN to Dahlia Lithwick

Days of war: What's behind new Israel-Gaza flare-up

Israeli director Rama Burshtein opens up on romance and religion

'And then I heard the gun click': What happens when a terrorist enters a synagogue

Haaretz goes to Saudi Arabia: LISTEN to Ben Samuels and David Makovsky

What will MBS give Biden in Saudi Arabia? LISTEN to Gregg Carlstrom

'This president loves Israel:' U.S. ambassador talks Biden visit, Saudi ties

‘Abortion bans hurt our religious freedom': LISTEN to Sheila Katz