The Deep Dive

Netanyahu got his eighth Trump meeting, but no South Portico welcome, no cameras, no one-on-one. Former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz asks what that silence means. Three months before Israelis vote on October 27, Yaakov Katz argues the more urgent question isn't who won the room, it's whether Israel is still in it. Turkey may get F-35s, Saudi Arabia is moving on a nuclear agreement, and the presidents of Lebanon and Iraq received the White House embrace and Oval Office cameras Netanyahu did not. "Is it possible that there's a new regional order that's being written here, that Israel just might not be one of the coauthors for?" Katz asks. On the anti-Iran coalition forming without Israel: "Israel is not being invited to sit at the table." Host Jacob presses Katz on two reports that landed this week: unreleased documentary footage of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, in which Graham questions whether Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are suited to Middle East negotiations given their financial ties in the Gulf; and a New Yorker piece in which former Biden administration officials say they were misled about Israel's plans in Gaza. Katz, who knows many of those officials personally, makes an argument that cuts against both camps: Biden and Trump were both deeply supportive of Israel, and neither will be on the ballot in 2028. Israel, he says, needs to get serious about the America that comes next.

Israeli elections have barely been called and already the Shin Bet is warning of threats to their integrity, AI-generated attack ads are flooding the campaign, and Bibi's own coalition is turning on itself in public. The Jerusalem Post political correspondent Keshet Neev joins host Jacob Laznik on The Deep Dive to unpack the most volatile opening to an Israeli election season in years. They break down President Herzog's warning about election interference, the Likud AI ad depicting Eisenkot embracing Mansour Abbas, and why Eisenkot overtaking Netanyahu in the polls could shift the entire opposition bloc's momentum. As Keshet puts it, "the second that Likud isn't the biggest party anymore… it kind of shifts the sense" of the whole race.

Israel's most turbulent political stretch in four years just collided with an election date.

As Netanyahu's Likud rams through two of the most contentious laws in the country's history, host Jacob Laznik breaks down what it means.

With the vote set for October 27, the coalition has unleashed a legislative blitz, succeeding where it matters most, on the haredi draft exemptions, over the public warnings of senior officials and the IDF chief of staff himself.

Laznik and the Post's breaking-news desk manager, Shir Perets, unpack why these laws challenge Israel's constitutional order, and why they land at Netanyahu's most vulnerable moment The fallout is already visible: Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel has resigned, and Minister Ofir Sofer says he won't run again.

As Trump meets Erdogan and F-35 sales dominate the headlines, former Israeli intelligence colonel Or Horvitz makes a contrarian case: Turkey is a real and growing threat to Israel, but it is not, and will not become, the next Iran. In this conversation with The Jerusalem Post's Jacob Laznik, Horvitz breaks with the alarmist consensus taking hold among Israeli decision-makers. He argues that Ankara "is not Abu Dhabi, but not Tehran either", a pragmatic actor Washington and Jerusalem still have real leverage over, from NATO corridors to the quiet air-force deconfliction seen over Syria. On the F-35 fight, he notes that Israeli officials themselves frame the sale as "very bad, but not a disaster," and warns against turning a manageable disagreement into a public rupture with Israel's indispensable ally. On Gaza, he's blunt: Hamas's move to disband its emergency committee is "only a charade," and the group will never surrender its weapons without military force.

Presidential historian Gil Troy returns to examine the aftermath of the Israel-Iran conflict, Donald Trump’s decision to end the fighting, Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and the uncertain future of the US-Israel relationship. In this hopeful conversation with host Jacob Laznik, Gil explains why declaring victory or defeat may be premature. He discusses Israel and America’s military achievements, the lack of a clearly defined endgame, concerns surrounding negotiations with Iran and the political pressures that could shape Trump’s next move. The conversation also explores growing anti-Israel sentiment in American politics, misconceptions surrounding US support for Israel and why Gil describes Israel as America’s “DIY and ROI ally.”

The US and Iran finalized phase one of talks this week. Israel was not in the room. In this episode of The Deep Dive, Shifra Jacobs (filling in for Jacob Laznik) is joined by Ezra Taylor, The Jerusalem Post's social media manager, for a roundup of a week that may shape the region for years. They unpack what the US-Iran deal actually contains, oil waivers, $12 billion in unfrozen Iranian assets, a reported $300 billion reconstruction fund, and Taylor's central argument that the deal makes the next war with Iran more likely, not less. They walk through research showing Hezbollah's October-7-style plans for the northern border have existed in broadcast form since at least 2012. Then they pivot to a string of antisemitic incidents across continents, Berlin, Haarlem, Manchester, Montreal, and what it tells us about a climate political leaders are still struggling to name.

The US and Iran are days away from signing a deal in Switzerland. Israel has been left out of it. And Yasmin Sayeh — an Iranian-Israeli strategic analyst whose family fled Iran — opens this conversation by saying it plainly: "This is probably the worst deal ever. I cannot believe it." In this episode of The Deep Dive, Shifra Jacobs (filling in for Jacob Laznik) sits down with Yasmin Sayeh — an Iranian-Israeli analyst with an MA in security studies, a member of Forum Dvora, a Persian speaker, and the daughter of immigrants from Iran. Sayeh works to bridge the gap between academic strategy and the human reality inside Iran, and she brings both to bear here. She walks through what the deal does and doesn't address, the way the regime has spent the past months brutally suppressing internal protest, and her conviction that any agreement that leaves the regime intact will simply hand it the resources to attack again — Israel, the Gulf states, and most of all its own people.

Israel strikes Beirut. Iran strikes Israel. Israel strikes Iran. Iran downs a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz. The US strikes Iran. All in roughly a week, and all while a 15-year US-Iran nuclear deal was reportedly days away from being signed. In this episode of The Deep Dive, Shifra Jacobs filling in for Jacob Laznik, sits down with Shir Perets, The Jerusalem Post's senior breaking news desk manager, to make sense of one of the most chaotic news weeks since the start of the war. They walk through the sequence that led from a single Israeli airstrike on Beirut to a multi-front exchange of fire that pulled the United States in for the first time in months, and they unpack what the latest round actually reveals: the central tension is no longer between Israel and Iran but between Israel and the United States.

Behind the scenes, the EU is Israel's largest trade partner, 32% of its merchandise trade, and the single biggest funder of Israeli science.

In public, 46% of EU institutional statements about Israel since October 7 are negative.

In this episode of The Deep Dive, host Jacob Laznik previews findings from a JPPI study with Prof. Sharon Pardo, Jean Monnet Chair of European Studies at Ben-Gurion University.

After analyzing 24,000 EU statements, Pardo's team found a sharp gap: harsh public criticism of Israel from EU institutions, paired with continued quiet cooperation from EU member states. By comparison, statements about Qatar, even through the 2022 "Qatargate" bribery scandal, ran 66% positive.

Pardo argues European Jewish communities are paying the price for what he calls Israel's "megaphone diplomacy" with the EU, and that Israel has spent three years deserting the relationship it can least afford to lose.

He advised Naftali Bennett. He ran strategic engagement at AIPAC. And he now says this is the most extreme government in Israel's history.

In this episode of The Deep Dive, host Jacob Laznik talks with Yisrael Klitsner, JPPI fellow, former Diaspora Affairs Advisor to PM Bennett, and former AIPAC strategic engagement director, about whether Israel can run an election in the middle of a two-front war, and whether the US-Israel bond survives the aftermath.

Klitsner argues the campaign comes down to "security, security, security," that Netanyahu "single-handedly made Ben-Gvir who he is," and that the widening rift with Diaspora Jewry now boils down to one message from Israel's American partners: "first, do no harm."

A mainstream pro-Israel insider's candid read on a country holding an election, fighting its longest war, and trying to hold its global family together at the same time.