Benjamin Netanyahu’s endurance as Prime Minister is matched only by his mystique: what lies behind his grip on Israeli society? How did he climb to the top, and what is the price of his long stay at the summit? Anshel Pfeffer, of Haaretz and the Economist, has a new biography of Netanyahu following his strange brew of intellect and populism, poor taste and fine legal lines, fierce family loyalty and shameless political-self-promotion.

This episode of the Tel Aviv Review was made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

After fighting apartheid for forty years and surviving a bomb attack in the process, in the early 1990s, Albie Sachs found himself helping to draft the constitution that would become the foundation of the democratic South Africa. After the first free elections, Nelson Mandela appointed him as a justice on the first Constitutional Court in the new South Africa. Albie Sachs offers incomparable insights about law and justice, society and humanity, and South Africa’s historic transition in his book, “We, the People: Insights of an Activist Judge.”

This episode was made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Tel Aviv Review host Gilad Halpern interviews Yale University’s Professor Timothy Snyder about his New York Times number one bestselling book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” History doesn’t repeat itself, but what can contemporary Americans learn from 20th-century Europe?

Amalia Sa'ar, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Haifa, discusses her co-authored book (together with Dr. Hawazin Younis) Diversity: Palestinian career women in Israel, reviewing the professional and personal experiences of female doctors, lawyers and engineers in the Jewish state.

Sari Bashi's life was already complicated, as a Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer defending Palestinian freedom of movement. Then she fell in love with a Palestinian man trapped in Ramallah by the occupation. Her book, Maqluba: Upside-Down Love, tells what happened next.

Dr Itay Lotem, Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Westminster, discusses his new book The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence. In both countries, though in different ways, memory is more about issues of the present than about the past.

Dr Radu Ioanid, Romanian Ambassador to Israel and historian of Romanian Jewry, discusses his book The Ransom of the Jews: The Story of the Extraordinary Secret Bargain between Romania and Israel detailing how, over decades, hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews were exchanged for money, livestock and goods.

This episode is made possible by Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

Philosopher and cultural critic Susan Sontag spent a lifetime thinking about the mysterious space between reality and representation, becoming one of the most influential public intellectuals of the 20th century.

Benjamin Moser's acclaimed biography, Sontag: Her Life and Work captures her story with photographic complexity, leaving only a longing for Sontag's perspective on life today.