Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis

To long-term readers and listeners of Israel from the Inside, Professor Netta Barak-Corren is by now well known. During the height of the judicial reform debates, we hosted voices from across the political spectrum. But whenever we wanted a balanced, non-partisan, and deeply informed perspective on what was broken in Israel’s judicial system, what made the proposed changes problematic, and what a more moderate fix might look like, we turned to Professor Barak-Corren.

One of the most admired faculty members among Hebrew University Law students, Professor Barak-Corren is also an internationally recognized scholar who has taught around the globe.

Today, she brings her expertise to bear on Israel’s “electoral threshold”—a topic we have touched on here in recent weeks. Why does the threshold exist? Why did a previous government vote to raise it so dramatically? And did that reform actually work as intended?

Had the threshold been lower in 2022, it is quite possible that Benjamin Netanyahu would not be Prime Minister today (see my explanation here). Understanding this mechanism is critical for anyone interested in Israeli politics and in the country’s future—and there is no better guide to learn from than today’s guest.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

Prof. Netta Barak-Corren is a legal scholar and cognitive scientist specializing in the empirical and behavioral analysis of constitutional, public, and international law, and the relationship between law and society. She holds the Haim H. Cohn Chair in Human Rights and is a full professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Faculty of Law, where she leads an ERC Starting Grant developing an empirical approach to constitutional law. She is the inaugural ERC Ambassador to Israel, a member of the Israel Young Academy, and a Nootbaar Religious Freedom Fellow at Pepperdine University School of Law. She has previously held teaching and research positions at the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and Princeton, and will be a visiting professor at Yale Law School in spring 2027. She earned her degrees in law and cognitive science from the Hebrew University and received her doctorate from Harvard Law School in 2016.

To visit Netta Barak-Corren’s website, click here.

Professor Barak-Corren has kindly made her paper on the subject accessible to the IFTI communitiy. The paper is in Hebrew, but (a) you can easily copy portions and get AI translations, and (b) many of the charts are understandable without a great deal of Hebrew. Her paper can be viewed here.

The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.

For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.

Many Israelis noted—both publicly in the press and privately with family and friends—that there was something agonizing about this year’s October 7 commemoration that we hadn’t felt in years past. We all have our theories about why this year was so hard, and I address a few of them at the beginning of today’s video.

After October 7, though, when we all b…

I was not in the least bit surprised by the attention that our first conversation with Dr. Yaacov Lozowick generated when we posted it last week. In these conversations, Lozowick models something rare—a willingness to reassess his own views on the basis of new documents he’s read and new history he’s encountered.

There is a phrase that appears several times in the Talmud (in various formulations)—חָזְרוּ בֵּית שַׁמַּאי לְהוֹרוֹת כְּדִבְרֵי בֵּית הִלֵּל—noting that the School of Shammai retracted their views and began to teach according to the ruling of the School of Hillel.

To be sure, clinging with pride to one’s position in the face of objections can be both honorable and brave—especially amid the surge of antisemitism presently sweeping across the world, including in the United States and Canada. It is not easy to hold our ground in the face of pressure from colleagues, professors, fellow students, family members, and others; at times, standing firm is indeed an act of courage.

There are other moments, however, as evidenced by the Talmudic phrase above, when—after learning something we didn’t know or hearing an argument we find compelling—the truly courageous step is not to cling to our position, but to admit that our minds have changed. Doing so at any time is difficult. But to do so after one has written books on the subject and served as a public intellectual for decades requires a unique kind of moral bravery.

Regardless of whether any of us ultimately agrees or disagrees with Lozowick—and the third episode, still to come, is a critical component of his argument—what we all can and should do is learn from the intellectual and moral integrity he exhibits.

At present, our plans for this week are as follows:

* TUESDAY: Ironically, because this was the first anniversary of October 7 in which we did not have hostages held in Gaza, it felt more painful to many of us. The sense that “we have work to do to get them out” was gone, replaced by a feeling that “this year is the first year of the rest of your life.” Yet Israelis still managed to break through the deep sadness of the past week. On Tuesday, I’ll share some thoughts on the specific moments that helped me do that—and why they worked.

* WEDNESDAY: Our interview with Professor Netta Barak-Corren on Israel’s “electoral threshold.” We discuss what it was designed to achieve versus how it functions in reality—and why she believes it needs to be reformed.

* THURSDAY: We’ll cover several emerging election stories and other key reporting from the Israeli press this week. Questions we’ll explore include:

* Is Netanyahu pressuring Trump to attack Iran before the U.S. Midterms so Israel can join, ultimately causing Israeli elections to be delayed?

* Why did Naftali Bennett suggest that Bibi could serve as a minister in a Bennett-led government?

* Why did other members of the “change bloc” react so strongly to his proposal? Is this debate fundamentally about policy, or personality?

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

Yaacov Lozowick is an Israeli historian, writer, and archivist. He studied history and Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he later earned a doctorate in contemporary Judaism.

Lozowick spent much of his career at Yad Vashem, where he served as Director of the Archives from 1993 to 2007. From 2011 to 2018, he served as Israel’s Chief Archivist at the Israel State Archives, where he was involved in efforts to expand public access to and digitize Israel’s historical records.

His scholarship focuses particularly on the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, Israeli history, and the role of archives in historical research and public life. His books include Hitler’s Bureaucrats: The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil (2002) and Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars (2004). He currently teaches at Bar-Ilan University and researches the history of Israel’s settlement project.

The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.

For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.

At this pivotal moment in Israel’s history—a week when Israelis marked the first time the October 7 anniversary arrived with no hostages left in Gaza, when Israel faces an unprecedented degree of international isolation, and as citizens prepare to go to the polls to determine what kind of country they want to be—we turn our attention away from the events of October 7 themselves and begin to address Israel’s soul.

Yaakov Lozowick—historian, scholar, and former head of both the Yad Vashem Archives and Israel’s National Archives—has traversed a complex personal odyssey. He lays out his journey for us in a series of three conversations, the first of which we share today.

The issue is not whether we ultimately agree with Lozowick or view Israel as he does. The challenge for all of us is to embrace the endless complexity of our situation and to acknowledge the extent to which our own narratives—whatever they may be—must be challenged by realities we often prefer not to see.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

Yaacov Lozowick is an Israeli historian, writer, and archivist. He studied history and Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he later earned a doctorate in contemporary Judaism.

Lozowick spent much of his career at Yad Vashem, where he served as Director of the Archives from 1993 to 2007. From 2011 to 2018, he served as Israel’s Chief Archivist at the Israel State Archives, where he was involved in efforts to expand public access to and digitize Israel’s historical records.

His scholarship focuses particularly on the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, Israeli history, and the role of archives in historical research and public life. His books include Hitler’s Bureaucrats: The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil (2002) and Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars (2004). He currently teaches at Bar-Ilan University and researches the history of Israel’s settlement project.

The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.

For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.

If you aren’t familiar with the work of Ziv Koren—one of Israel’s finest photojournalists—today is the day to discover it.

Ziv Koren has been a professional photojournalist for over 30 years. Today, Koren represents Polaris Images photo agency worldwide and works for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. He serves as director of education at Travelog photography school, an ambassador for Canson fine art paper, for Think-Tank Photo brand, and as an advisor for Canon Israel.In the last three decades Koren covered some of the most dramatic events in the world and is considered to be one of the leading documentary photographers in our time. In addition, he has documented the Israeli Defence Forces and Elite Counter-Terror units.

On October 7, 2023, Koren was one of the first photographers to set out to the south of Israel to document the brutal attack of Hamas, the daily horrors and the war that followed. This documentary work has exhibited in dozens of cities worldwide and was edited into an encompassing book, contributing to the Israeli advocacy.

Ziv Koren’s website

Here is the homepage of Koren’s website. Today, October 7th, start by watching the video on the main page (indicated by the arrow in the screenshot below). The very brief clip above is taken from it, but the full video contains even more powerful footage.

Ziv Koren has a new book, just published, titled Shiva Be-Oktober.

The word Shiva carries a poignant double meaning here. Spelled שבעה, it means ‘seven’ or ‘the seventh.’ However, spelled שיבה—as it is in this volume—it means ‘return.’

Thus: Return in October.

Koren published an earlier volume with the first spelling of Shiva—the black book pictured on the right. It is a stunningly beautiful yet searingly painful work, titled The October 7 War in English, and is available in English on Amazon here.

His new book—the gray one below (and on the left, above)—is not yet available in English, to my knowledge. However, YNet published a selection of photos from the book alongside brief accompanying essays (see below).

The YNet photo essay can be found here.

Once you’re on the website, you can get your browser to translate the site into English. As you see below in the English translation, the formatting doesn’t always work quite right, but you can still see the photos and read the captions and the accompanying essays.

Here, for example, is a Koren photo of Amit Soussana (the Google translation on the website misspells her name).

On the website, there is first the full photograph (which you should absolutely view on a big screen and not on a phone), and then, in the right-hand-bottom corner, a caption.

Here, for example, is an enlargement of the caption above. And as you can see, it links, in yellow, to an essay. Those, too, your browser can translate, as below (though the formatting, once again, won’t be perfect).

There are about thirty photos and essays in this project, taken from Ziv Koren’s new book.

Today, on an anniversary so painful that it defies words, images are more effective.

Put your phone aside, get to a larger screen, and work through Koren’s stunning photos and the accompanying essays.

I can’t think of a more powerful way to honor this day — and the hundreds and hundreds of innocent people who lost their lives on a day that changed Jewish history forever.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

To listen to Israeli radio this week is to subject oneself to a unique kind of pain — recordings of final phone calls between young people and their parents, recollections of last hugs from widows whose husbands went off to war but did not come back, reflections on homes lost, dreams shattered — and hope still emerging.

If one doesn’t live in Israel or speak Hebrew, those radio broadcasts, especially on Reshet Bet, aren’t accessible. How, then, can we create time this week to devote ourselves to the preservation of the memories in which Israel is mired?

October 7: Bearing Witness to the Massacre was officially released on digital and streaming platforms on October 3, 2025. It became available for digital rental and purchase across major services, including Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, and YouTube. (Full disclosure — I have a small role in the movie.)

On a week like this, renting the movie is one way to honor the victims and the memories this nation will carry for as long as any of us will live.

The “teaser” for the film is above, while the brief trailer follows below.

On the film’s website, you will find a variety of options for renting it.

This week, more than ever, I urge you to take the time to watch the movie.

As the film notes at the outset, it is dedicated to preserving the voices of those who were silenced by the assault of October 7, in the prayers that their memories will be a blessing.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

This is a terribly painful week in Israel.

The third anniversary of the barbaric Hamas attack fell this past Shabbat, and on the secular calendar, it falls this week, on Wednesday, October 7. Newly uncovered stories about what happened three years ago, stories that are now appearing on the news and in newspapers, are utterly heartbreaking.

At the same t…

Earlier this week, the IDF eliminated Saher Nidal Latfi Sakr , the terrorist who was seen kidnapping Noa Argamani on a motorcycle from the Nova music festival on October 7.

The video above is the IDF’s released recording of his elimination. We’ve added the subtitles for our viewers.

We’ll get back to that, below.

Most people who know anything about “Operation Wrath of God” know it from Steven Spielberg’s 2005 movie, MUNICH.

“Operation Wrath of God” was Israel’s response to the Munich massacre. After Black September gunmen killed eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team at the Olympics on September 5–6, 1972, Israel rolled out the operation, with the express purpose of tracking down and killing every one of the terrorists who remained alive.

Five of the eight attackers died in the horribly botched German rescue at Fürstenfeldbruck. The other three, Jamal al-Gashey, Adnan al-Gashey and Mohammed Safady, were captured. But a mere seven weeks later, when West Germany released all three in exchange for the passengers of a hijacked Lufthansa jet, Israel concluded that Europe would never bring the killers to justice (certain things about Europe do remain constant).

Golda Meir and a small ministerial group, usually referred to as “Committee X,” authorized the Mossad under Zvi Zamir to hunt down those responsible—whether they personally took part in the Munich attack or even if they were responsible in other ways. The goal was partly deterrence: they believed that every Palestinian terrorist operative in Europe should believe he was being watched. But the goal was also revenge.

The campaign began in Rome in October 1972 with the shooting of Wael Zwaiter, the PLO’s operative there. Then Mahmoud Hamshari was killed in Paris by a bomb hidden in his telephone. Hussein al-Bashir died in Nicosia when his hotel bed exploded. Basil al-Kubaisi was shot in Paris, Zaiad Muchasi was killed in Athens, and Mohammad Boudia died in Paris when his car was bombed.

So far, it was going smoothly.

The most dramatic operation was the April 1973 commando raid on Beirut, “Operation Spring of Youth,” led on the ground by Ehud Barak (disguised as a woman). It killed three senior PLO figures in their apartments: Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar (Abu Youssef), Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser. For the Mossad and the IDF this was a huge operational success—now it was clear that Israel could pierce the heart of the PLO leadership. And Israel had demonstrated that no city was out of its reach.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

The success was clouded, though, by questions regarding who was actually being targeted. Several of the dead were PLO representatives, organizers, or spokesmen whose direct role in Munich was thin or unproven. Zwaiter was a translator and Palestinian intellectual. Kamal Nasser was a poet and the PLO’s spokesman. Israel treated Black September and Fatah as one organization, which they largely were, and it treated the broader leadership as fair game. Critics both then and since have argued that the list gradually morphed from “the Munich killers” to “PLO figures we could reach.”

The Beirut raid also killed others who were not targets, among them al-Najjar’s wife and several Lebanese security personnel and bystanders. The exact “collateral damage count” is not clear.

The worst failure came in Lillehammer, Norway, in July 1973. A Mossad team shot Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter, in front of his pregnant wife. They had mistaken him for Ali Hassan Salameh, Black September’s operations chief and the man Israel considered the principal planner of Munich. Six members of the Israeli team were arrested, and five were convicted. The affair exposed Mossad methods and personnel, humiliated Israel diplomatically, and led to a significant pause in the European campaign. Though Israel never formally admitted responsibility for the killing, it did eventually pay compensation to Bouchiki’s family.

Salameh himself was finally killed in Beirut in January 1979 by a car bomb detonated as his convoy passed. His bodyguards died with him, but so did four passersby, including a British student and a German nun. The case was complicated further by Salameh’s reported back-channel relationship with the CIA, which some believe had been protecting him.

Yet even after all of this killing—some of it intended and some of it not—much remained undone.

Of the three Munich survivors, Jamal al-Gashey is generally believed to have lived on in hiding. The fate of Adnan al-Gashey and Safady is disputed. Some accounts say Israel killed them, while Aaron Klein’s reporting suggests that Safady was alive even decades later. Abu Daoud (Mohammed Oudeh), who later openly claimed to have planned the operation, survived a 1981 shooting in Warsaw and died of natural causes in Damascus in 2010, almost thirty years later.

Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf), often described as Black September’s political head, was killed in Tunis in 1991 by Abu Nidal’s faction, not by Israel. Black September also struck back during the campaign itself. It killed the Israeli agricultural attaché Ami Shachori with a letter bomb in London and killed a Mossad officer, Baruch Cohen, in Madrid.

In short, the operation’s results are murky. Even if the goal was clear and initially certainly justified, things got messy.

For better or for worse, none of that has stopped Israel’s current leadership from explicitly declaring that it will kill every terrorist who participated in October 7—and the list is very, very long.

As far as we know, there’s no operation name comparable to “Wrath of God.” What has been named is the unit running the current campaign: Nili. The name is a Hebrew acronym for Netzach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker, “the eternity of Israel will not lie” (I Samuel 15:29). It also echoes the name of the Jewish espionage network during World War I that supplied intelligence to the British against the Ottomans.

The (new) Nili unit was set up right after the October 7 massacre and from the very outset, drew on experienced intelligence personnel from the IDF and Shin Bet, both regulars and reservists. Its job is to investigate the terrorists who invaded and returned to Gaza, locate them, and kill them. For a long time, the existence of this program was only an open secret.

But this past August, the IDF and Shin Bet confirmed it on the record for the first time, in interviews with Israel’s Channel 12.

How does it work? Over nearly three years Nili has built a list of thousands of names. It uses facial recognition, AI, detainee interrogations and human intelligence. Ironically, much of the material comes from video that the attackers filmed of themselves. The list of course includes those who crossed the fence, but it also includes anyone who held or abused hostages.

How is it going thus far? Channel 12 reported that about 2,800 people on the list have been killed, including roughly 1,200 terrorists whom Israel killed during the attack itself. Of an estimated 5,000 participants, more than 2,700 are confirmed dead, and about 300 more have been captured and await military trials.

Itamar Ben Gvir is calling for the execution of those Israel is holding. Morally, there’s virtually no one in Israel who does not agree that all these people deserve to die. But the sight of Israel hanging 300 people would obviously cause an international uproar, and might well unleash something very problematic in Israeli society. Despite Ben-Gvir, the smart bet is that we’re not going to execute them all.

Thus, roughly 2,200 of the terrorists remain alive and at large.

It’s worth noting that the Gaza “ceasefire” has not ended the campaign. After the ceasefire began in October 2025, an IDF official said Nili’s work would continue “until the last of [the terrorists is killed],” within the legal and operational framework. The Times of Israel reported in July that the effort had in…

As Israel’s October 27 elections draw near—a contest some observers call a “make or break” moment for the country—our goal at Israel from the Inside is to explore the Jewish state’s challenges and opportunities from many different angles.

* What vision do the country’s leaders actually have for what comes next?

* How do everyday Israeli voters feel about the pivotal moments ahead?

* And what do recent decision-making patterns reveal about how people will vote for the next government?

In the remaining weeks before elections, we will hear from the following, among others:

* Dr. Yaakov Lozowick, former head of the Israel State Archives, on how archival documents fundamentally shifted his perspective on his country.

* Prof. Netta Barak-Coren (Hebrew University Law) on the original intent behind Israel’s 3.25% electoral threshold—and how it actually plays out in practice.

* David Rosenberg, economic reporter, investigating whether educated and highly skilled Israelis are truly leaving the country in large numbers.

Yesterday, MK Shelly Tal Meron shared what a new government must tackle first as she seeks re-election. Today, we shift our focus to the electorate. We speak with author Paul Gross, whose latest book speaks directly to Anglo voters, about why he believes everything is on the line in this election.

Paul Gross’ book, To Be a Free People in Our Land, is available here on Amazon.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

Paul Gross is a British-born Israeli writer, lecturer, and political commentator specializing in Israeli history, politics, and contemporary Middle Eastern affairs. Before immigrating to Israel in 2007, he worked in the Public Affairs Department of the Israeli Embassy in London, including as speechwriter to the Israeli ambassador. He holds an MA in Middle East Politics from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Gross has written extensively for Israeli, British, and American publications, including The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, The Times of Israel, Fathom, and The Forward. He also lectures on Israeli history and politics and has appeared as a political commentator in English-language media. He previously served as a Senior Fellow at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem and as Director of the Israel Government Fellows program.

Based in Jerusalem, Gross continues to write and speak publicly about Israeli politics, Zionism, democracy, antisemitism, and Israel’s relations with the wider Middle East and the Jewish world.

The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.

For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.

As Israel’s October 27 elections draw near—a contest some observers call a "make or break" moment for the country—our goal at Israel from the Inside is to explore the Jewish state’s challenges and opportunities from many different angles.

* What vision do the country's leaders actually have for what comes next?

* How do everyday Israeli voters feel about the pivotal moments ahead?

* And what do recent decision-making patterns reveal about how people will vote for the next government?

In the remaining weeks before elections, we will hear from the following, among others:

* Paul Gross on his new book written for Anglo voters, examining why he views this as a “hinge” election and what is truly at stake.

* Dr. Yaakov Lozowick, former head of the Israel State Archives, on how archival documents fundamentally shifted his perspective on his country.

* Prof. Netta Barak-Coren (Hebrew University Law) on the original intent behind Israel’s 3.25% electoral threshold—and how it actually plays out in practice.

* David Rosenberg, economic reporter, investigating whether educated and highly skilled Israelis are truly leaving the country in large numbers.

Today, MK Shelly Tal Meron shares her perspective on where Israel has gone off track, which priorities must be tackled first, and why she remains deeply optimistic about the nation’s future.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

MK Shelly Tal Miron is a member of the Knesset from the “Yachad” party. She previously served as a captain in the Israeli Air Force, worked as a spokesperson, and later served as a business development manager in Southeast Asia’s high-tech industry.

During the 25th Knesset, MK Tal Miron served as an active member of the Economics Committee, the Science and Technology Committee, the Labor and Welfare Committee, and the Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee. As a member of the special committee for advancing the law, she stood out as a leading figure in the opposition’s campaign for the freedom of the media and broadcasting.

Since the October 7 massacre, Tal Miron has become an tireless informal ambassador for the State of Israel. As chair of the Knesset Caucus for the Return of the Hostages, she has fought for their release, and she established a caucus dedicated to securing international recognition of sexual violence as a weapon of war and as a crime against humanity.

During the war, she has met with hundreds of delegations of heads of state, ministers, senior international officials, and representatives of the public in Israel and around the world, alongside extensive involvement in the meetings and activities of Yair Lapid. She has also served as chair of the Israel–Britain Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group and represents the Knesset delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM).

The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.

For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.