The Universal Zionist

Freshly sworn into the Knesset, Zehut party leader Moshe Feiglin joins Rabbi Tuly Weisz on the Universal Zionist Podcast for a direct conversation about where Israel stands after the election.

The Israeli public moved right after October 7th, so why did the Knesset move left? Feiglin argues that the national camp, from Begin to Netanyahu, never offered a real ideological alternative to the “state of all its citizens” idea. He calls the 19-seat Arab bloc, which he says was financed by Qatar, a “political October 7th.” He also explains why he believes the right shares the blame for the war not being won.

Feiglin presents his first proposed law, which would rename the country “Israel, the State of the Jewish Nation.” He explains why he says Israel is a Jewish state, period, rather than “Jewish and democratic,” and why he sees building the Third Temple as the core of Jewish national identity, not only a religious goal.

The conversation then turns to America and the West. Feiglin explains the argument of his book Israel Is Just the Beginning: progressivism has emptied out Western civilization, which he calls monotheistic civilization, and left the door open to Islamist takeover. He says Israel’s fight is a fight for all of humanity.

He closes with practical next steps for the national camp, starting with building leadership that will know what to do the next time history offers an opportunity.

Topics: Knesset swearing-in • the Arab vote and Qatar • left vs. right in Israel • Jewish identity • the Third Temple • Israel Is Just the Beginning • Islam and the West • what happened in Gaza and what comes next

Israel votes next week, and MK Ohad Tal of the Religious Zionist Party says this election will decide whether Israel can withstand what is coming. Trump won’t be in the White House forever. A future Democratic president could recognize a Palestinian state, Europe is already moving that way, and the UN veto Israel has relied on for decades may not last.

On this episode of the Universal Zionist, MK Tal explains why he doesn’t trust Eisenkot, Bennett, Lieberman or Yair Golan to hold the line, and why opposing construction in E1 tells you more about a politician than any statement against a Palestinian state. He lays out a plan rooted in the Bible: three options for Israel’s neighbors, the “Emirates plan” for dealing with local tribes instead of a Palestinian nation, and a foreign policy built on new alliances in Latin America, India, the Abraham Accords countries and a changing Europe.

He also goes after the money. MK Tal argues that Qatar, Iran and their networks fund the campus protests, the media campaigns and the provocations in Judea and Samaria, including staged confrontations timed for visiting European diplomats. He points to more than 100 new communities and nearly 200 farms established in Judea and Samaria over the past four years, and to Regavim’s data showing how UN “settler violence” figures are inflated.

Finally, he takes on the toughest criticism of his own party: the Haredi draft. MK Tal, who fought in Gaza himself, calls the current reality a moral disgrace, then makes a case you probably haven’t heard. Six thousand Haredim volunteered after October 7 and the army took 450. The Netzah Yehuda battalion has 18,000 reservists, and only a fraction get called up. According to MK Tal, the real obstacle isn’t the rabbis. It’s the IDF.

Days before Israel’s October 27th election, Knesset candidate Mati Gill sits down with Tuly, his classmate since kindergarten in Columbus, Ohio, to make the case for Naftali Bennett as Israel’s next prime minister.

Mati doesn’t hedge. He calls for Netanyahu to retire, blaming him for the failure of October 7th, years of appeasing Hamas, and a political strategy built on dividing Israelis against each other. Tuly pushes back hard: Why not join a broad government with Likud? Will Bennett sit with the Haredi parties, Ben Gvir or Smotrich? Can a coalition that includes Yair Golan hold a hawkish line on security?

Mati lays out where Bennett’s party stands on the biggest fights in this election. No Palestinian state and not a centimeter of land handed over. Drafting the ultra-Orthodox and ending funding for communities that don’t serve or work. A constitution based on the Declaration of Independence to end the battles over the courts. Enforcing the law in Judea and Samaria. Rebuilding bipartisan support in America, which he says Netanyahu has lost in both parties. Declaring Qatar an enemy state for funding antisemitism online. And protecting Israel’s economy through AI and technology partnerships if sanctions talk in Washington turns real.

He also shares how he got here: aliyah in 1992, six years in the IDF’s foreign relations division, closing the gates at Rosh Hanikra during the 2000 Lebanon withdrawal, commanding a joint operations center with US CENTCOM after October 7th, a decade at Teva, and founding a venture that brings AI into drug discovery.

Whether you agree with him or not, this is a candid look at what an opposition government could mean for Israel.

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Is another new party on the right a gift to the left? Rabbi Tuly Weisz puts that hard question straight to Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem and number five on the Amcha Yisrael list led by Brig. Gen. (res.) Ofer Winter.

Fleur explains why she believes the party is expanding the right-wing bloc instead of splitting it, pulling votes from Lieberman voters, new immigrants, and pro-Israel Arab Christians who have never had anyone to vote for. She tells the story of Ofer Winter, the general who was reprimanded for reciting the Shema with his soldiers and who warned the top brass about Gaza years before October 7th. She also shares the remarkable story of Yoseph Haddad, the Christian Arab from Nazareth who served in Golani and was carried for miles by fellow soldiers after being badly wounded in the Second Lebanon War.

Fleur also talks about Campus Israel, her initiative helping Jewish students, and soon Christian students, earn affordable English-language degrees at Israel’s top universities instead of paying for the privilege of being harassed on campuses abroad.

And she reveals the real story behind the bronze Lion of Judah in Jerusalem’s Bloomfield Garden, a gift from the Christian community that one Israeli news channel tried to turn into a missionary conspiracy.

Learn more about Campus Israel: https://campusisrael.com

The prophet Zechariah saw a day when people from every nation would take hold of a Jew’s robe and say, “Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you” (Zechariah 8:23). Since October 7, that picture looks less distant than ever.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz sits down with Michael Decker, founder of Decker-Pex & Co., one of Israel’s leading immigration law firms. Michael’s office has seen inquiries from people wanting to move to Israel rise roughly fourfold since the war began, many from non-Jews watching their own countries turn against Israel.

In this episode:

• Who qualifies under the Law of Return, and the surprising cases that fall in between
• Spouses and grandchildren of Jews, and people who discover their Jewish roots later in life
• Residency for descendants of the Righteous Among the Nations
• Investor, expert, and volunteer visas for friends of Israel
• The honorary citizenship offered by the governors of Judea and Samaria
• A proposed visa for the ger toshav, the Bible’s “resident gentile”
• Whether welcoming non-Jewish Zionists would weaken Israel’s Jewish identity or strengthen it

This conversation is part of the Universal Zionism podcast, based on Rabbi Tuly Weisz’s book Universal Zionism, which explores Israel’s calling to be a blessing to all the nations.

Contact Michael Decker at Decker-Pex & Co.: [email protected]

Yael Eckstein, president and CEO of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), joins Rabbi Tuly Weisz for a candid conversation about faith, prophecy, and the changing bond between Jews and Christians.

Yael shares how she went from a "wild child" with little connection to faith to leading the organization her father, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, built against fierce opposition. She tells the story of Flags of Fellowship, the October 7 memorial movement that has grown to more than 3,000 churches this year. She also reveals how the Fellowship has worked with the IDF to bring aid to persecuted Christians in Syria and southern Lebanon.

Together they explore Isaiah's vision of the nations standing with Israel, the biblical command to love the stranger, and why Universal Zionism may make Israel a refuge for Christians as well as Jews in the days ahead.

Learn more and join Flags of Fellowship at ifcj.org.

Dan Illouz made aliyah from Montreal at 23, trading a promising legal career for an IDF uniform as a lone soldier. He went on to serve on the Jerusalem City Council and in the Knesset as a member of the Likud. This year, he left the party, gave back his Knesset seat, and joined Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu ahead of the October 27th election.

In this episode, Illouz explains what drove him out of Netanyahu's party. He talks about his fight to bring Haredi men into the IDF, and why he sees it as essential to Israel's survival. He also shares his frustration over the war's unfinished results and his view that leadership after October 7th must take responsibility. He draws on the Bible to make that case, pointing to Judah, the father of the Jewish people's name, as the model of a leader who owns his failures.

Illouz also reflects on his own journey to Israel, and why he believes the return of the Jewish people to their land is an even greater miracle than the Exodus from Egypt.

The Universal Zionism podcast explores Israel's role not only as a home for the Jewish people, but as a light to the nations and a source of blessing to the whole world.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe never called himself a Zionist. Yet few people loved the Land of Israel as deeply, or fought as hard to protect it.

In this episode, Rabbi Tuly Weisz sits down with Rabbi Elisha Pearl, author of Make Peace: A Strategic Guide to Achieving Lasting Peace in Israel, to explore the Rebbe's teachings on Israel, security and the end of days. The book is now out in Hebrew as Oseh Shalom.

They discuss:

• Why the Rebbe taught that anyone who reads the Bible should see the Jewish return to Israel as a sign of the end times, based on the prophecy of Balaam
• The Rebbe's urgent warnings to Israel's leaders about the ceasefire with Egypt, and why he cried out, "I have called, but no one answers" (Isaiah 50:2)
• His three conditions for Israel to be ready for the Messiah: shleimut ha'Torah (the wholeness of the Bible's teachings), shleimut ha'am (the wholeness of the Jewish people) and shleimut ha'aretz (the wholeness of the land)
• Why he warned that giving away land, including Gaza, would cost lives
• The private conversation between the Rebbe and Benjamin Netanyahu that has never been revealed
• How non-Jews can take part in bringing the redemption by keeping the seven Noahide laws

This conversation brings the Rebbe's teachings on Israel to an audience far beyond Chabad, and shows how much of what he foresaw has come true.

Subscribe to the Universal Zionist Podcast for more conversations about Israel, the Bible and the redemption of the world.

Is Bible prophecy unfolding in the hills of Judea and Samaria? Eyal Turgiman grew up in Ashkelon, served in the IDF, and then ran from his Jewish identity to Africa and Europe. A near-fatal accident brought him home, and living in Judea and Samaria brought him back to the Bible.

Today he is one of the leading builders in Judea and Samaria. His company has built thousands of homes across roughly 25 communities, from Gush Etzion to the Jordan Valley and the hills near biblical Shiloh. He also runs Lev Haolam, a monthly box that brings the tastes and stories of the Land of Israel to tens of thousands of homes worldwide. Many of those homes are Christian families who say it feels like Christmas every month.

Rabbi Tuly Weisz and Eyal talk about why Israel's army is unlike any other, how Lev Haolam started as an answer to the BDS movement, and why Israel should never try to be a beach resort. Eyal also shares his vision for spiritual tourism that could bring tens of millions of people to Israel. It is a hopeful look at Isaiah's promise that God's house will be "a house of prayer for all nations" (Isaiah 56:7).

Yishai Fleisher is running for Knesset. In this conversation with Rabbi Tuly Weisz, the Jerusalem broadcaster and longtime Zionist activist announces that he has been added to the Otzma Yehudit slate, his first time on a major list after twenty five years of trying.

He tells the story behind Route 60. Four years of lobbying to rename the road that runs through the biblical heartland, past Shechem, Shiloh, Beit El, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron, as Derech HaTanach, the Biblical Highway. He explains why a road sign is a national strategy, why Israelis do not know the book of Genesis, and why the Ministry of Tourism spent decades selling beaches instead of the land of the Bible.

Then the harder conversation. Yishai argues that Judaism has no real offering for the non-Jew who loves the God of Israel, calls the Noahide framework a branding failure, and proposes an Abrahamic path instead: houses of worship that face Jerusalem and follow the Jewish calendar, without asking anyone to convert. Rabbi Tuly answers with a different biblical category, the Ger Toshav, and the two work out what a Ger Toshav visa could look like.

Also: Ben Gvir's record at National Security, gun permits, prison policy, and the pastor at the National Religious Broadcasters convention who told the State of Israel exactly what Christians actually want.

Hosted by Rabbi Tuly Weisz, founder of Israel365 and publisher of The Israel Bible.