Haaretz Podcast

Haaretz journalist Sheren Falah Saab has been covering the unfolding disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza for months. Even now, aside from reporting on the lives of Gazans as the war rages, she manages, from time to time, to deep dive into Arab culture, and write the kind of articles that she used to send in all the time before October 7.

But, she confesses in this week's conversation with Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, the things she hears from Gazans often break her heart.

In the first of three special episodes in which Haaretz subscribers from around the world were given the opportunity to ask Haaretz journalists their questions, Falah Saab responded to a wide range of queries from readers and talked openly about her life as a Druze citizen working as a journalist in Israel, before and after October 7.

She talks about the complex identity issues embedded in the question whether minorities prefer to be called "Israeli Arabs" or "Palestinian citizens of Israel," and the challenging process of sourcing and verifying information inside Gaza, almost six months into the war.

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This special episode of the Haaretz Podcast features two of the standout sessions from the recent Haaretz-UCLA conference: Israel After October 7 

First, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman sits down with Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn to discuss the ?perils? and ?opportunities? that lie ahead for Israel in the aftermath of the war in Gaza. 

Friedman predicts that "Israel is either going to come out of this with a new relationship with the Palestinians in 2024? or will ?go back to 1947-48 with new weapons,? if it fails to develop a coherent vision for the future of Gaza and a wider strategic plan for the region.

The latter option, he fears, becomes increasingly likely the longer that the extreme right-wing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - a group of ?incompetent? ministers he would not want ?as waiters at my grandson?s bar mitzvah? remains in power.

Then, Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Amir Tibon and his father retired Major General Noam Tibon join deputy editor-in-chief of Haaretz English, Maya Lecker, to recount the dramatic episode on October 7 when armed Hamas militants infiltrated Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where Amir lives. He, his wife, and their two little girls spent tense hours locked in their safe room without food or electricity, before Amir's father undertook what he called "the mission of his life" and drove south in a daring campaign to rescue them on his own.

"On the morning of October 8, I said that everyone responsible for this failure, the biggest failure in the history of the state of Israel, needs to go," Noam Tibon said, echoing Thomas Friedman's message - that Israel needs a change in leadership. "The leadership of the IDF, the Shin Bet ? they took responsibility and I know they will go. All of the government too. But the first one who needs to take responsibility is Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. I believe that Netanyahu is personally in charge of this failure, he basically developed Hamas as an asset. He needs to go as soon as possible."

The entire conference is available for viewing on YouTube here.

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Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner, one of the first high-profile American Jewish artists to sharply and publicly criticize Israel's treatment of Palestinians, speaks to Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer about Jonathan Glazer's Oscar speech, the Gaza War, antisemitism in the U.S., and the current production of "Angels in America" in Tel Aviv.

He calls the events of October 7 "gutting" and as the months have passed since, has been horrified by the "unimaginable proportions" of the civilian death toll in Gaza and the result of actions by Israel which, he says "really looks a lot like ethnic cleansing to me" and explains the level of "passion and rage" in denunciations of the war around the world.

"If you had asked me, even on October 7, would Israel allow, 30,000 people, many of them civilians, to be killed by the IDF I would have said no. Or what the UN is warning of now and imminent famine, I would have said no."

He confesses on the podcast that over the five months since October 7, he has "moved closer to the idea that maybe boycott [of Israel] is is necessary." At the same time, he says: "I can't do it. I don't want to do it. I can't separate myself from Israel in that way. It just doesn't feel right."

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In a bold cover story in The Atlantic, journalist Franklin Foer declared "The Golden Age of American Jewry is Ending." On the Haaretz Podcast, he tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer how and why he reached the sobering conclusion that "an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans" is over.

Allegiance to the Palestinian cause on the progressive left, he says, is understandable ? even after the atrocities of October 7 ? as is opposition to the war in Gaza and calls for a cease-fire.

But "in that window after the horrific attacks of October 7 and before the Israeli war truly began, you had all of these people who had no sympathy for what had happened to Jews and immediately started blaming Israel for what had happened. And in that window there was just this sense of abandonment and disappointment that felt like a harbinger of something much worse that was to come."

According to Foer, people like him had a "sort of blind spot" when it came to antisemitism on the left before October 7.

Foer says he was particularly stunned after traveling to California to report on the "epidemic of bullying" of Jewish schoolchildren in Berkeley. The stories he heard were "horrifying," exemplifying a "kind of simplistic moralism, the dividing of the world into good and evil, where Jews are placed on the side of evil."

He sees what is happening as "a return to a more normal form of Jewish history where it's possible to live everyday Jewish life, but it is punctuated by episodes of antisemitism that cause a sense of insecurity and fear. I think that that that could be something closer to the new status quo."

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Veteran columnist Bradley Burston opens his new book "The End of Israel: Dispatches from a Path to Catastrophe" with a stinging indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he believes is leading the country towards what could be its final chapter.

He tells Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer that in recent years, when the country was embroiled in the battle over Netanyahu's judicial overhaul, "it was clear to me already that the Israel that we all once knew was not going to return and that something huge had already happened, some enormous abyss had already opened that would make it impossible for that Israel... to continue."

Calling the Gaza war a "man-made natural disaster," Burston asserts that Netanyahu has a vested interest in endless conflict and instability. "He wants the world to accuse Israel of genocide and apartheid, violent occupation and ethnic cleansing" so that Israelis believe "the world hates us, and he is the only one who can save them."

Also on the podcast, Haaretz Washington correspondent Ben Samuels provides an update on National Unity Party Benny Gantz's visit to Washington, and Vice President Kamala Harris' forceful speech in which she called for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Samuels also notes that in one of the major races on Super Tuesday, AIPAC made its biggest investment in the 2024 election season thus far, targeting California congressional candidate Dave Min who is "ostensibly pro-Israel." Yet the lobby organization and its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, flooded the airwaves with negative ads, none of which had to do with Israel.

The race, Samuels says, is sending a signal to other candidates that if they fail to "meet this threshold of what AIPAC defines as pro-Israel, they will be faced with millions of dollars in attack ads."

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In a recent op-ed in Haaretz, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers of knowingly steering Israel into an all-out war.

During a wide-ranging conversation on this week's Haaretz Podcast, Olmert tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer that for Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and Netanyahu, Gaza is only the beginning - they are aiming for "Armageddon, that will make it possible to expel many of the Palestinians in the West Bank."

He mentions the government minister's backing of violent groups of settlers, who are beating Palestinians and looting their homes, and goes as far as saying, "A great majority of Palestinians killed in the West Bank [since October 7] were killed not necessarily for good reasons, and not by qualified Israeli security forces, but by volunteers - such as the hilltop youth."

Olmert, who a year and a half ago lost a defamation suit filed against him by the Netanyahu family for asserting they were mentally ill, doesn't seem deterred from using strong language to describe the prime minister. Over the time that has elapsed, he believes he has "won the understanding of the vast majority of the Israeli people" that the Prime Minister's behavior points to "a nervous breakdown."

"Nothing would have happened on October 7," Olmert says, if a different government with different priorities was in charge. "The failure starts with the overconfidence spread by the prime minister," that his "sophisticated manipulations" deterred Hamas.

"5,000 Palestinian terrorists shook the foundations of the state of Israel because of the overconfidence and arrogance," he concludes.

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You can hear the drumbeats for immediate elections in Israel in demonstrations in the streets, on highway billboards, and in the headlines. After four months of putting politics aside to focus on the war in Gaza and the northern border, Israelis - in growing numbers - are finally asking when they will be able to take their growing frustration with their current leaders to the polls.

Politics is also in the air when it comes to the Palestinian future - as the issue over who will rule Gaza and who will decide that - heats up. And as the 2024 November election looms in the United States, Israel and Gaza has become a hot potato in the race for the White House.

Public opinion expert and Haaretz columnist Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer on this week's Haaretz Podcast to analyze the political map in each of these arenas in detail.

Scheindlin warns against misinterpreting the consistent polls showing that Israelis are ready to rid themselves of Benjamin Netanyahu following October 7 as evidence that they oppose his wartime policies, as well as the reason for why how Hamas appears to be far more politically popular in the West Bank than they are in Gaza.

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The decision by Moody's credit rating agency to downgrade Israel's rating and outlook last week was a shock to the country after decades of growth and a rosy outlook for the future as its technology-driven industries flourished.

Haaretz economics editor and commentator David Rosenberg explains to Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer why Israel received this "black mark," what it means, Israel's finance minister's "abnormal reaction" to the news and how it reflects the world's distrust of a far-right Orthodox-dominated government with an "agenda that, whatever else you might think about it, is not positive for the start-up nation phenomenon."

The Gaza war, he suggests, marks the end of "a view that was shared by many people in the Middle East ? not just by Israelis ? that there was an alternative to war and terrorism and constant political upheaval. That alternative, which we've seen happening in the Gulf, especially in the United Arab Emirates, and to a degree in Saudi Arabia, was 'let's focus on economic development and creating normal middle class societies' while pushing the Palestinian problem and try to put our political troubles behind us."

Also on the podcast, Haaretz's Washington correspondent Ben Samuels outlines the growing tensions between the Biden White House and the Israeli government over a full-on ground invasion in Rafah, where Hamas military presence remains, among 1.3 million Palestinian refugees crammed into the southern Strip.

Will Netanyahu defy the Biden administration's concerns and forge ahead? Samuels says that as long as the White House offers carrots without sticks, he believes it will. "The warnings are falling on deaf ears because Israel understands that there aren't going to be significant consequences other than rhetorical reprimands. Until there's really some sort of conditionality on U.S. support, the warnings of the administration will be relatively ineffective."

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Israel's former head of military intelligence, Tamir Hayman, now the managing director of the Institute for National Security Studies, joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz Podcast to discuss Israel's war with Hamas and the key question: How far is Israel willing to go to bring 130-plus hostages home?

While Hayman believes that the terms of a ceasefire are negotiable on both sides, he is skeptical that Israel's current government would release the political prisoners with blood on their hands that Hamas will demand in exchange. Therefore, "a large-scale hostage deal is not in the cards."

Israeli political considerations, he adds, also stand in the way of what he believes is Israel's best chance: embracing the Biden administration's "American Initiative for Regional Change" which packages a ceasefire in Gaza, acceptance of the Palestinian Authority as a central civilian authority there, and Saudi normalization and regional integration.

"It comes down to this: What is more important ? the survival of the prime minister in the current government, or? whether from the atrocities of the 7th of October, the lowest point in our history, we can achieve something grand, something that will create a new horizon," Hayman asserts, stressing that Israel has the most to lose by continuing to avoid the question of what will happen in Gaza "the day after" the war.

"If you don't give an alternative... for the population, eventually you will have chaos, and you will end up with Hamas rule," he says.

Four months after October 7, Hayman says that the question of the failures that led to the surprise attack continue to occupy him. "There is no night that I go to sleep and I don't think about my time as head of intelligence and ask myself whether I was wrong in my assumptions regarding Hamas."

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Thousands of Israelis are back on the streets, four months after the October 7 Hamas attack and the war in Gaza halted historic demonstrations against the Netanyahu government's plan to overhaul the judiciary.

Joining host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the Haaretz Podcast, reporter Linda Dayan explains how the protest movement has reemerged, and how wartime demonstrations differ. 

While the current wave of protests began with vigils and rallies for the hostages' return, "as the objectives of the war got a little bit muddier [and] military casualties started to mount, we started to see that the hostages weren't coming back and that we didn't have a deal on the table to bring them back ? we started to get more political anti-government protests demanding 'elections now,'" Dayan says.

These two movements ? one for bringing the hostages home and the other consisting of anti-government action ? "are being held concurrently in two separate locations in Tel Aviv."

Along with Dayan, Moran Zer Katzenstein, leader of Bonot Alternativa, the women's rights organization whose Handmaid's Tale-inspired costumes became a symbol of the pro-democracy protests last year, explains why her group has returned to the streets despite calls for unity in wartime.

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On this week's Haaretz Podcast, host Allison Kaplan Sommer holds a wide-ranging conversation with Chuck Freilich, Israel's former deputy national security adviser.

Freilich, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, discusses the numerous troubling issues arising from Israel's conflict with Hamas. He says that in the "hot atmosphere" following October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government set problematic goals when it declared its intention to destroy Hamas as a military organization and topple it from being the governing body in Gaza.

A deal to bring the hostages back, says Freilich, "will mean thousands of Hamas terrorists being released. And we know that a lot of them will go back and conduct terrorist operations in the future... but this is the price one pays for the decision-making failures that led to October 7. It's ugly."

The deterioration in the relationship between Biden, "a remarkable friend to Israel" and Netanyahu, and the loss of U.S. support, is what he fears may ultimately be the most dangerous consequence of this war.

"I think our relationship with the United States is an existential one," he says, " and the war with Hamas shows we are far more dependent on the U.S. than we ever knew."

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In a special edition of the Haaretz Podcast, host Allison Kaplan Sommer and the Haaretz editorial team asked subscribers worldwide what they saw as the most urgent questions as the Israel-Hamas conflict passed the 100-day mark. The questions poured in. 

Is there any way to get rid of Netanyahu? What do Israelis know - and think about the level of death and destruction in Gaza? How does Israel decide when to assassinate a Hamas leader? Should Israel be more worried about progressive Democrats or the possible election of Donald Trump and the rise of the far-right? What will the future look like for Israel and Gaza once this conflict is over? Should Israel go out of its way to protect diaspora Jews?

Listen to the answers given by Haaretz editor in chief Aluf Ben, Haaretz English editor in chief Esther Solomon, Haaretz analysts Anshel Pfeffer, Yossi Melman, Alon Pinkas and Dahlia Scheindlin, and Haaretz correspondents Sheren Falah Saab and Ben Samuels.

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Rabbi Sharon Brous, founder of the IKAR synagogue in Los Angeles, has been progressive Judaism's leading voice over the past decade speaking out for equality and human rights, as well as the rabbinic figure of choice for the Biden-Harris White House.

Author of the new book "The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World," Brous told Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer that her world changed since October 7 and that, among other realizations, she reached the "painful awareness" that some of her allies on the left still "don't see Jews in that utopian anti-racist society that we have been dreaming about together."

Brous, whose new book focuses on Jewish mourning rituals, said it is understandable that even Jews on the progressive left are currently enmeshed in tribal grief as the war rages on. Her own congregation in Los Angeles includes families of those murdered and kidnapped by Hamas.

Still, she said, "Each of us, in our own way, has to find when we're ready to step out of our shiva, and see that there is a world of human suffering that is happening just over the border."

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Ambassador Dennis Ross has played an important part in U.S. Middle East policy over the last decades, and was the point man in the peace process in both the George W. Bush administration and Bill Clinton's administration. On Saturday night, he made a speech on the stage of the weekly Tel Aviv rally in solidarity with Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, making the case for a more long-term vision in the fight to dismantle Hamas and shape the future of Gaza.

In this week's Haaretz podcast, Ross spoke to host Allison Kaplan Sommer about the impact of October 7 on Israelis and Palestinians, on the things that have shaken him most on his current visit to the region and what has to be done to move forward after the horrors of the Gaza war.

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As the number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza climbs to 20,000 while the number of Israeli soldiers killed in fighting grows daily, it is becoming harder every day for the two sides of the bloody conflict to see the humanity in the other side, says Sheren Falah Saab, who is covering the Gazan side of the conflict for Haaretz.

Falah Saab tells Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer about the difficulty of covering a war when you can't be on the ground and the individual human stories among the thousands of Gazan victims of the war she has chosen to bring the world through her journalism.

"In the end, they are human beings and Hamas didn't ask Gazans if they wanted to go to war or not," Falah Saab says, as she discusses the challenges of being an Arab citizen of Israel writing in Hebrew to Israeli readers at a time when speaking of death in Gaza "is taboo." She has personally lost friends on both sides of the conflict.

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The Houthis in Yemen, the Islamist rebel group that has shot missiles and drones at Israel and is now intensifying attacks on key shipping lanes in the Red Sea, have progressed from being "a nuisance and a headache to a major strategic threat to Israel," according to Dr. Yoel Guzansky, a former member of Israel's National Security Council and a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies.

Their escalating attacks on international shipping over the course of the Israel-Hamas conflict have raised the stakes of Israel's conflict with its neighbors into a global concern. On Monday, the U.S. announced the formation of a coalition of ten nations to take action against the Houthi aggression against cargo ships which threatens global trade.

On the Haaretz Weekly podcast, Guzansky, and Haaretz National Security editor Avi Scharf, sit down with host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss who the Houthis are and how Israel - and the world - should respond to them.

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From the horrifying live videos broadcasted by Hamas militants on the morning of October 7 during their invasion of Israeli villages, to IDF soldiers entering Gaza, the bombarded buildings, and the long lines of refugees with few belongings ? The Israel-Hamas war is probably the most continuously, visually, documented war in history.

Pictures have great power. And that means those in power have a great interest in directing images towards their political narrative. On this episode of the Haaretz Weekly podcast, Israeli journalist and activist Anat Saragusti, who has lived and reported from both southern Israel and the Gaza Strip, and is recognized as Israel's first woman war photographer, talks to Esther Solomon about the striking visuals we have been exposed to since the October 7 massacre, and the one's that are missing in Israeli media.

Saragusti is currently the curator of an exhibition called 'Local Testimony': a collection of the iconic photographs from the past year in Israel.

In the conversation, Saragusti also addresses the fact that Israeli mainstream media barely shows images of what's happening in Gaza and isn't regularly reporting on the dire situation in the Strip. "The fact that Israeli audiences don't see images from Gaza means that journalists are not doing their jobs," she states matter-of-factly. "They have to show the images. Hebrew speaking Israelis watching television news are not exposed at all to what's going on in Gaza. We don't see the atrocities, the rubble, the destruction and the humanitarian crisis. The world sees something completely different."

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In this week's episode of the Haaretz Weekly podcast, Haaretz English editor-in-chief Esther Solomon explores a topic that has angered the Israeli public since the start of the Israel-Hamas War: Why haven't representatives of the Red Cross been able to visit Israeli hostages who are being held in Gaza in unknown locations and conditions for almost two months?

As some captives were released by Hamas during a temporary cease-fire, Israelis ? who were closely watching the daily releases on television - have started to see the Red Cross's representatives as taxi drivers, who can do nothing more than drive the hostages to the border.

Yael Friedson, Haaretz?s legal correspondent, has been reporting on the plight of the hostages held by Hamas. She says, ?Everyone hopes that the Red Cross representatives could visit the hostages and pass on medicine and messages from the families,? but, she notes, there is a knowledge gap about what a neutral humanitarian organization can actually do without the consent of both parties. 

Sarah Elizabeth Davies, ICRC spokesperson based in Jerusalem, explains that the anger directed at the organization is misdirected. ?We cannot force our way in, we don't have weapons, and we don't have political power. We stay neutral, so that we can be trusted. And this is not something that is always easily understood, particularly in the emotional reality of a conflict.?

Jonathan Adiri, former IDF chief liaison officer to the Red Cross, tells Haaretz that Israel?s relationship with the Red Cross ?has had its ups and downs?, but stresses: ?Their neutrality is critical. The fact that there?s an organization with enough carrying capacity to receive our hostages [from Hamas] and bring them to safety is not to be taken lightly.?

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While the world is watching the Israel-Hamas war unfold in Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank are suffering some of the worst violence and restrictions on their daily life in years.

Since Hamas militants entered Israel on October 7 and killed an estimated 1,200 people, Israel's security forces have cracked down on Palestinian factions in West Bank cities, while also detaining a huge number of Palestinians and allowing settlers threaten and attack West Bank residents without consequences.

In this week's episode of the Haaretz Weekly podcast, Haaretz West Bank correspondent Hagar Shezaf speaks to host Allison Kaplan Sommer about why ignoring settler violence and other deepening problems in the occupied West Bank is a very dangerous course of action for Israel.

Since October 7, more than 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank. "There have been mass arrests of Palestinians suspected of being part of Hamas and also other groups, and settler violence has increased ? not that it wasn't very high before the war," says Shezaf. "This has resulted in some Palestinian villages evacuating themselves due to the settlers threats and violence."

One of the main friction points has been the olive harvest. According to Shezaf, many Palestinians find themselves unable to harvest this year at all: "They [young settlers] have WhatsApp groups where they notify others about where there are Palestinians picking olives, and then they show up to scare them."

Another critical issue in the conversation was the number of Palestinians detained in Israel since the start of the Gaza war. "One of the first things that Israel did on October 7 is cancel the work permits of thousands of Gazans," who were in Israel, working legally at the time.

This has led to overpopulation and mistreatment of detainees. "A couple weeks into the war, I found out that two Palestinians had died in Israeli detention," in unrelated incidents, Shezaf shares. "Both of them were sick. One had diabetes and one was a cancer patient. When I spoke to the family of the detainee that had diabetes, they did not know that he died. It was a very unfortunate role that I played, confirming to his family that he died. He was a diabetic, but he basically died because no one gave him his medicine."

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A disinformation war is raging online and Israel is losing, says Omer Benjakob, Haaretz cyber and technology correspondent at Haaretz.

It isn?t as if an effort isn?t being made by Israel to professionally curate and manage information about its war with Hamas in a responsible and reliable ?high value content,? he told to Allison Kaplan Sommer on the Haaretz Weekly podcast. ?The problem is that when you juxtapose that to what Hamas is doing.?

In today?s digital space, Benjakob explains, ?highly produced graphics looks like your country hired a PR company to do PR for you, which is literally what we do and what we've always done. The whole idea of Hasbara - that you need to do professional level kind of explanation - is actually shooting us in the foot right now. Hamas is just flooding the internet with raw materials that people can then supposedly check on their own.? When it?s checked, much of it is unreliable and untrue but by then it?s too late because they have controlled the discourse for days.

Also on the podcast, 88-year-old Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev, who became a Tiktok sensation with nearly half a million followers, and his life partner Julie Gray. They explain why, with ?grief and anger,? they deactivated their account this week as the platform was unwilling to confront the unprecedented wave of antisemitism that has overwhelmed Tiktok since the October 7 Hamas massacres.

When asked about his initial reaction to October 7, Lev says: "I said to my son: ?these people that did the massacre, they must have had Nazi instructors.? In some ways, they were even worse. I can?t describe what they did.?

Gray talked about the helplessness in the face of a wave of denialism and antisemitism that came with the Gaza War. "Our followers, who thanked us for learning [about the Holocaust], are the same people who are hating us now," she says. "They liked this little holocaust survivor with a sad sad tale. I?m used to getting hate from Nazis, the ones with the thunderbolts and swastikas, but the people that are sending us this hate now, their bios say ?vegan? and ?organic fiber creators? - they are our followers. So I feel like our three years of work have unraveled. That nothing was taught to them at all."

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?I knew right away that sexual violence was part of the events of October 7, but obviously, I could not have known the extent of the cruelty that Hamas engaged in,? says Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, who served for 12 years on the UN Committee on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Halperin-Kaddari now feels ?completely betrayed? by the international women?s rights organizations with whom she?s worked for years, for their failure to condemn - or even recognize - the rape, kidnapping and other atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli citizens on October 7.

In conversation with Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Halperin-Kaddari, a member of the newly-formed Civil Commission on Hamas?s Oct. 7th Crimes Against Women and director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University, explains that ?unlike any previous incidents of 'conflict related sexual violence,' as the UN calls it, the Hamas terrorists had body camera and they filmed their actions. They broadcasted it both to the families of the victims and on social media, so the horrific footage emerged right away.?

Also on the podcast, domestic violence advocate Lili Ben Ami, founder of the Michal Sela Forum, expresses her deep concern over the dramatic expansion of the ability of Israelis to obtain personal weapons in a campaign initiated by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Her organization, she says, ?is now receiving calls every day from worried women and domestic violence survivors? that their abusers will now get access to a firearm. When her group looked into the matter, she tells Haaretz Weekly, they found that the distribution plan did not contain a screening mechanism that would prevent men with a criminal record related to domestic violence from obtaining a gun.

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One of the first journalists to be embedded with forces in the Israeli army?s ground operation in Gaza, Haaretz senior columnist Anshel Pfeffer shares his observations with Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer after returning from a challenging battlefield.

Pfeffer, who accompanied a Givati infantry unit, tells how the maze of tunnels under Gaza forces the soldiers to continually sweep the territory from every angle so ?gunners and the commanders can constantly look at every point where they think a tunnel could open up and to try and spot it before it's used to launch a missile against them.?

He also addresses the ?many convenient but very inaccurate comparisons? between the Russia-Ukraine war, which he also covered, and Israel?s operation in Gaza, which is ?totally different? both operationally and emotionally. While Russians ran away from serving in their war, he points to the highly motivated IDF soldiers who rushed to join in the fight after the atrocities of October 7.

?Many of them know people who were killed, who were taken hostage, or wounded. Some of them are from families which have been forced to leave their homes because of the war. It?s very personal for everybody. There's no question about it.?

While the soldiers on the ground ?are very focused on their mission,? Pfeffer says, ?when you go up the IDF hierarchy to the top, there is a growing sense of frustration that there is no clear strategic idea of the next stage.?

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Prof. Dov Waxman has been on university campuses for several decades and experienced bursts of unrest following violence in the region and controversy over Israeli policies since the second intifada in the early 2000s.

But what has happened since the brutal attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens on October 7 and Israel?s retaliation in Gaza, he says, ?has felt qualitatively different. The atmosphere is different from anything I?ve experienced in the past. The tensions are greater. The animosity is greater, the fear is greater,? Waxman, the director of UCLA?s Israel Studies Center, tells Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer.

In the past, Waxman says, he has felt that Jewish and Israeli advocacy groups tended to exaggerate the levels of antisemitism on campuses and that ?it?s grossly simplistic and reductionist to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.? But in the last few weeks, there have been ?manifestations and expressions of anti-Zionism that are antisemitic,? and ?some campuses have actually become hostile environments for Jewish students.?

Waxman believes that today, a vocal minority of students ?have come to see Israel in such a negative way, to see it as essentially this kind of settler-colonial entity that has no right to exist.? He says ?they have come to see all Israelis as effectively colonists and colonizers. That has led them to somehow think it?s acceptable or tolerable or defensible to slaughter innocent Israeli civilians. And it?s something that I and many of my colleagues have really been shocked by.?

Also joining the podcast is Haaretz New York correspondent Judy Maltz, who has covered anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests in the U.S. since the start of the war. She believes the controversies and confrontations on campuses may change the way even the most status-conscious American Jewish parents view their children?s options for higher education.

?Many parents are asking themselves ?What would be a safer school for my kids?? and whether they would rather send them to a place that?s safe, but maybe not as prestigious ? or a place that?s prestigious but where they will have to walk around looking down as they move around campus and rush into their dorms so they don?t have to confront anything that?s very ugly.?

Like Waxman, Maltz always felt the issue of antisemitism on campuses was overblown ? until recently. ?That has changed now,? she says. ?I really think Jewish students don?t feel safe on campuses, certainly those students that I have spoken to in the New York area. They don?t feel safe walking around with a yarmulke on their head, while students are talking about the need to resist ?Zionist genocide by any means necessary.? What I?m hearing from them is that they try to avoid campus. They don?t hang out.?

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The ?alternative universe? Rachel Goldberg has been living in since her son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, was kidnapped by Hamas, has included non-stop interviews with the media. Rachel and her husband Jonathan have appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine and spoke to ?any outlet that would talk? to them, to advocate for humanitarian treatment and expedited release of their son and over 220 hostages being held captive in Gaza.

An appearance on CNN last week, she recounts to Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, took an unexpected turn when anchor Anderson Cooper ? who is making a documentary about the Supernova music festival massacre - put together her account of witnesses saying her son?s arm had been severed, and something he had seen while in the field reporting on the deadly attack.

?At the end of the interview, Anderson Cooper said: have you guys seen any video of Hersh? We said no - and we've had a friend who has been trying - searching through all the horrible videos that are out there. And then Anderson said, ?I have a video of your son.'?

As to how the continuing efforts to release the hostages will play out, Goldberg hopes that even though "you have people in the street who have gone through complete and utter trauma and are thirsty for an aggressive response? the government is using every ounce of thoughtfulness and wisdom when making its plan."

"There are hundreds of innocent hostages, and I'll also mention there are hundreds of thousands of innocent Gazans who are trapped there," she says. "We have to be very careful about not causing harm that we can't undo, and I think there is time to plan this out in a way that our soldiers are not embroiled in a situation that will bring us so much more pain, danger and loss of life."

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Brouria Carni Hadass lives in the tiny Kibbutz of Kerem Shalom on the Israel-Gaza border. On Saturday, October 7th, she went into the fortified safe room in her house when the first alarm sounded, quickly realizing this attack was "unlike anything we went through before. It felt like something else."

On this week's episode of the Harretz Weekly podcast, Carni Hadass spoke to host Allison Kaplan Sommer from the hotel in the southern city of Eilat, where the members of her community are staying since they were evacuated from their homes following the Hamas attack on Israel's Gaza border communities, which killed over 1,300 people.

"Every simple thing is complicated now," she says, though she acknowledges that compared to so many other people affected by the massacres, she and her family are "spoiled refugees," trying to maintain some sense of normalcy while living in a hotel.

In the conversation, she describes how shortly after the attack began, a friend from a nearby Kibbutz ? Holit ? contacted Brouria to see how she was doing. The friend, Shahar Debbie Mathias, said her son Rotem was worried about his friend, Brouria's son. But their next conversation was the last. Hamas gunmen were already inside Debbie's house, and she was hiding with her husband Shlomi and their son in the safe room. The gunmen managed to shoot into the room and get in.

When Debbie stopped replying to Brouria's messages, she asked her son to text his Rotem, who texted back: "My parents are dead, I need help."

"We were lucky. We're alive, but we are devastated," Carni Hadass says now.

In the second part of this week's episode, Haaretz columnist Alon Pinkas explains why U.S. President Joe Biden has proved to be a true friend of Israel this week, why the current Israel-Hamas War is the last thing that Washington wanted to deal with at the moment and how he "doesn't see Netanyahu surviving this, nor should he."

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Israel's reality transformed overnight this weekend and what looks like a major war is unfolding. Events are progressing rapidly, so in this week's Haaretz podcast, editor in chief of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, and Haaretz senior analyst Yossi Melman explain in conversation with Allison Kaplan Sommer how a country that has prided itself with having the best intelligence in the world was hit hard by an unprecedented surprise attack from the Gaza Strip.

Benn says the Hamas orchestrated attack ? that has already claimed the lives of over 600 Israelis - was a "total surprise," and that "there was no intelligence indicating anything remotely like this."

Even though there was a sense that Israel's enemies would take advantage of its inner rifts, "none of the warnings included anything similar to what happened yesterday."

According to Benn, "This is the worst blow to Israel in any war, since 1948, and of any terrorist attacks inside Israel or abroad. In 1973 Israel was taken by surprise, but the fighting took place far away from civilians. Now this is first and foremost an attack against civilians, and for the first time we have dozens of military prisoners of war and civilians taken hostage in Gaza. People are desperately trying to find out what happened to their family members. We know people, friends, that have children who are missing or dead. It's a very sad, unprecedented situation for all of us."

Melman addresses the "huge failure" of Israel's Intelligence. "When you talk to people in the intelligence community, they are confused, they are puzzled, they don't know what happened. They have no explanation," he says. "Certainly it was a huge failure, Israel has been prided with having the best intelligence in the world, and the intelligence failed. For many Israelis, what happened on Saturday, 50 years and one day after the Yom Kippur War started, is reminiscent of the same failure. But there is a big difference: Before the war in 1973, the intelligence was there. Israel had a lot of pieces of intelligence but didn't know how to read it or didn't want to analyze it in the correct way. This time there was nothing."

The Gaza Strip is an area Israel was supposedly watching very closely, so having hundreds of militants cross into Israel on a holiday morning was unimaginable. "It's a failure of the military intelligence, it's a failure of the domestic security service - the Shin Bet ? both the organizations have the technological means to listen to the other side, to recruit agents for human intelligence. It's a huge machine of intelligence gathering that didn't function."

Looking forward, both Benn and Melman think the wounds will take years to heal. "It's going to take time for the public to realize what happened," Benn says. "We are talking about hundreds of bereaved families, hundreds of hostage families, it's still unthinkable. I'm hearing horrible stories from people I know."

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The prospect of a U.S-Saudi-Israeli deal, that would include the normalization of relations between the Jewish state and one of the most influential forces in the Arab world, intrigues citizens in all three countries. But while the opinions of Israelis and Americans are covered widely, the media seems to be overlooking the Saudi angle.

Dr. Nora Derbal, an expert on Saudi Arabia currently at the Martin Buber post doctoral program at the Hebrew University, tells Haaretz podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, that Saudi society is drastically changing, and any step towards normalizing relations with Israel should be seen in a wider context.

"10 years ago, if you arrived in Riyadh as a woman you would probably just go to your hotel and wait there for your next meeting," says Drbal, "but nowadays, there is so much to do in Riyadh...  many Saudis want to prove to the world that it is possible for Saudi Arabia to change and to be the best. If we break it down to the individual Saudi, many Saudis at the moment have the feeling that everything is possible."

Young Saudis, and also middle class and upper class older people, says Derbal, "Have an interest in sidelining politics for prosperity and stability in the region, and for a good future for their own children? they are looking at the economic side of things."

Derbal also discusses the way that the debate over women?s rights, religion and gender segregation in the public sphere parallels that of conversations she hears in Israel. ?I think this is really something where Israelis and Saudis would have a lot to share and discuss and maybe also to learn from each other,? she says.

Also on the podcast, Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Amir Tibon assesses the possible Saudi deal and the reasons that President Joe Biden seems determined to make it happen, and what it would mean for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?s political future.

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How did Tel Aviv?s Dizengoff square become a battleground for religion and gender segregation on Yom Kippur and how did the conflict become so charged and bitter?

In conversation with Allison Kaplan Sommer on the Haaretz Weekly podcast, Orly Erez-Lizhovski, executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center and the country?s leading attorney on gender segregation cases, explains the background to the disturbing pictures that dominated Israeli media over Judaism?s most solemn holiday.

The sight of Jews battling each other in the first Hebrew city were ?heartbreaking? and ?hard to watch? she said, and were caused by the ?failed decisions? of the Israeli police and the Tel Aviv municipality, who refused to intervene when an illegal gender separation barrier was erected in the center of a public square.

At the same time, she believes, this moment may represent a turning point, since it ?marks a tremendous change in the attitude of this very liberal public toward both issues of religious pluralism and gender segregation. I think it's a very hard and difficult period, but it also signals change into what may be a better future.?

This ?awakening? she says is happening in the context of the battle against the Netanyahu government?s judicial overhaul. ?What people may have been willing to accept up until a few years ago, or up until basically the last few months, they are not willing to accept anymore.?

The far right anti-liberal group that organized the prayer in Dizengoff square - Rosh Yehudi - "holds extremist views and has been trying to bring these views into the public sphere of Tel Aviv for years," adds Erez-Lizhovski, "But now they were confronted with a reality they have never met before."

Israelis like the ones who went out on Yom Kippur eve to confront the extremists who are trying to force a certain kind of Judaism on society, she says, now ?understand that this is not only a fight for the democratic structure of Israel, it's a fight for our Jewish identity.?

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On this week?s podcast, Haaretz New York correspondent Judy Maltz talks to Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?s trip to the U.S. and the unprecedented demonstrations against him on American soil.

Thousands of Israeli expats calling the Prime Minister of the Jewish state a ?fascist? and a ?dictator? on the streets of New York is not a site American Jews are used to, and as Maltz notes, many of them still haven't understood ?the gravity, the severity, and the existential crisis? that the judicial overhaul represents for Israelis.

?For American Jews, it is much more difficult to make sense of it all,? explains Maltz. ?One woman I met at a meeting with Brothers and Sisters in Arms said: 'Israelis are always crying for help, there's terror attacks, or wars, missiles, or an election, there's always some crisis going on.' In a way, they are crying wolf? so Americans don't understand yet that this is something different, something we haven't seen before, an attack on the people from within. But it is starting to seep through."

The expats, says Maltz, ?understood from day one what this judicial overhaul means... Israelis in the diaspora want to know that there is a place to go back to. I think, that since the Yom Kippur war, there has not been an event that has shaken them up as much as the judicial overhaul."

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Constitutional expert Prof. Yaniv Roznai, an associate professor and Vice-Dean at Reichman University's Harry Radzyner Law School - and one of the leading academic voices in the protest movement against the judicial coup - attended the historic hearing at Israel's supreme court this week.

After watching the sides debating the petitions against the first judicial overhaul law that the Netanyahu government had passed, Roznai joined Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer for a discussion about the anti-reasonableness law, the "inappropriate political speech" by judicial overhaul architect MK Simcha Rothman, the attacks by the coalition's attorney on Israel's Declaration of Independence and what the different outcomes of the court session could mean for Israel.

Speaking about how the court ruling will impact Israel's future, Roznai finds it hard to believe that the government won't abide by it, but said "It's difficult to predict if the judges will strike down the anti-reasonableness law. It seems there is a majority of judges that would accept the proposition that the court has the authority to strike down basic laws. And this is the most important issue. But then the second part is whether this is the case they will intervene in. And here it's quite difficult to predict".

If the government really does decide to ignore a supreme court ruling, Rozani warns, "That would mean complete anarchy." Because, "If the government doesn't abide by the ruling, why would ordinary citizens abide by it? Just imagine what it would mean for our partners in the EU and the U.S. I can't see it happening. It would be a complete destruction of the rule of law".

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After dominating political conversation in Israel for the past eight months, the protest movement against the judicial coup ? which has brought millions of Israelis out to the streets ? made a strategic decision.

In the nationwide municipal elections on October 31, various protest groups will field candidates in mayoral and city council races, hoping that voters will use the local political sphere to send a resolute national message against the Netanyahu government?s attempts to change Israeli democracy.

On Haaretz Weekly, two Tel Aviv City Council candidates join host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the bold move.

Noah Efron is head of the Green Party ? which, together with Meretz and a list of protest activists, is running as the ?New Contract? slate in Tel Aviv. He says on the podcast that he believes when we wake up in Israel on November 1, ?there will be council members and a number of mayors whose identity was forged primarily politically in these protests. It will be dramatic.?

Efron, who served on the Tel Aviv Municipality in the past, also discusses the complexities of integrating the protest movement into the framework of local politics, calling it ?an extremely exciting challenge to turn the big words with capital letters like ?Freedom? and ?Democracy? into policy.?

Together with Efron is Inbal Orpaz, a high-tech marketing executive and active member of the tech protest. She talks about what has driven members of her industry ? who were previously politically uninvolved, focusing instead on their world of startups and company sales ? to become some of the most outspoken and active leaders of the protests. She discusses her motivations for becoming active in the protest movement ? and her recent decision to run for city councilor alongside Efron.

?When this government was elected, I felt as if all of my identities were under attack: as a woman, as a secular person, as someone who?s part of the tech sector. I understood if I want to live here ? and I want to live here ? to live in Israel and to live in Tel Aviv, I must fight for the future of this country. Living in the place they want this country to become is not an option for me.?

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As Israel wrestled with the assault of COVID-19 on its health care system, politics and public life, Professor Haggai Levine, an epidemiologist and chairman of Israel?s Association of Public Health Physicians, became a familiar face on Israeli television screens.

Today, Levine has moved from battling the coronavirus to fighting the Netanyahu government?s judicial overhaul. He is a founding member of the ?White Coats? collective, a grass-roots organization of doctors fighting the judicial coup, and has, each week, spoken at the mass protests against the overhaul, delivering the message that ?in order for Israel's citizens to be healthy, we need a healthy government and a healthy democracy.?

Speaking to Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Levine said that in his view, the threat to democracy - and the related threat to public health - ?feels worse than the pandemic in terms of how we feel and in terms of what the future looks like.? He attributes this to the fact that this time, the country is facing an ?internal threat? instead of battling together against a hostile nation or a rampaging virus.

Levine notes that he wasn?t totally taken by surprise by the current crisis since ?we know from history, that after pandemics, there are often aftershocks? I expected that we would have several very tough years in Israel, and that there would be an unstable government.?

In addition to other reasons that the overhaul is bad for health in Israel, he discusses the alarming brain drain statistics regarding the number of young doctors planning to emigrate after their training if the overhaul moves forward, and his colleagues who are training abroad ?and are now extending the fellowship because they feel it's not a good time to go back to Israel.?

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As settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank continues to intensify, Haaretz West Bank correspondent Hagar Shezaf joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer to share her experiences covering the deadly incidents in Hawara, Turmus Aya, Um Safr, and, over the past weekend, the clashes in the village of Burqa that resulted in the killing of 19-year-old Qosai Jammal Mi'tan. Two settlers are suspected in the shooting.

Friction between settlers living in the outposts that ring and encroach on Palestinian villages is nothing new, Shezaf explains, but their level of violence has been on the rise since the ascendance of the Netanyahu government, whom she says seem to be emboldening the perpetrators.

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Israeli democracy is facing its biggest challenge since the founding of the state, after the Knesset passed the first law in its package of legislation designed to cripple the judicial branch.

Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, joins Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss what comes next in the battle between Benjamin Netanyahu?s government, which appears determined to move forward with its ?radical and extreme? judicial overhaul, and the protest movement that has been battling the move for the past 30 weeks.

Plesner looks ahead to the Knesset session in the fall and, before that, the upcoming petitions against the law in the Supreme Court (sitting as the High Court of Justice). He also reacts to Netanyahu?s refusal to state ? in response to a question he was asked on both CNN and Fox News ? that he would abide by any potential Supreme Court ruling striking down the reasonableness law that was passed last week.

?I think it?s despicable and a new low,? he says of Netanyahu?s remarks. ?Israel is a democracy and the basic character of democracies is the rule of law, human rights, an independent judiciary, and everyone in the land ? including the politicians ? obeying court decisions. And Netanyahu was elusive. I think this is very bad.?

The fact that the prime minister ?is conveying such a message is extremely reckless and disappointing,? he adds.

Plesner, a military reservist in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, also discusses the ?heartbreaking? choice by his fellow soldiers to suspend their service due to opposition of the overhaul, as well as his recent call to the United States and American Jews not to give up on Israel.

To American Jews who insist that internal Israeli affairs are none of their business, he counters that ?of course it's your business if Israel ceases to be a Jewish and democratic state, and it turns into a religious ethno-nationalistic state ? this will end the relationship between Israel and the majority of Diaspora Jewry.?

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As former US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk experienced one of the most devastating moments of the country?s history - the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, during the time of Israel?s deep divisions over the Oslo Peace Accords. 

And yet, Indyk tells Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, the current split over the judicial overhaul, following the passage of its first piece of legislation on Monday, is a ?more fundamental? crisis. One that he says has left him ?heartsick.?

?Israel was born as a Jewish and democratic state. And throughout its history, for 75 years, there has always been that tension between its Jewish nature and its democratic nature and they remained in balance for those 75 years. Now they are out of balance.?

Indyk said he is ?deeply worried? both for the future of the US-Israel relationship and for Israel?s security after it has become clear that that the government?s unilateral actions have ?undermined Israel's deterrent capability? given the decision of crucial fighter pilots to suspend their military service in protest of the overhaul. 

?I think it's a very dark day in Israel's history,? Indyk said. ?And I know that the Iranians in particular and their proxies around Israel's borders, and Israel's other enemies, were just sitting back and watching this in amazement, as Israel tears itself apart.?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he says, has been ?taken hostage? by the far-right parties in his coalition. On the podcast, Indyk also discusses his statements in a recent New York Times column in which he endorses an end to the $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid that Israel receives annually.

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Among the numerous mass protests against the Israeli government?s controversial legislative moves to weaken Israel?s judicial system, the most influential effort has come from reservists in the country?s elite military units threatening to refuse to report for duty.

One of the reservists, Yiftach Golov, tells Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer that he and his comrades in the group Brothers and Sisters in Arms ? who are visibly on the front lines of the protest movement ? are determined to do all they can to fight what he calls Benjamin Netanyahu?s ?government of destruction.?

?We haven?t even moved our queen yet in this chess game,? Golov warns. ?The fact that we are threatening not to volunteer in Israel?s elite special units is only the beginning. We have much more ammunition in our arsenal.?

Golov rejects critics in the government camp who say the defense of the country shouldn?t be put at risk for political goals. As a soldier, he says, he vowed to fight any force that was putting the survival of the country at risk ? even when the threat isn?t an external one. ?It?s a crazy situation, but right now, our enemy comes from within. ... I feel that I?m serving my country for exactly the same values? as on the battlefield.

Also on the podcast, Haaretz defense analyst Amos Harel talks about the reservists? actions, and their impact on the government?s behavior.

Harel says Netanyahu is ?extremely concerned? about the reservists? actions ? particularly those of its elite fighter pilots, who are vital to the Israel Defense Forces? combat readiness in case of attack, and the coalition is struggling with its response to a phenomenon that he says is ?getting bigger? by the day.

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As the Israeli streets explode in protests against the renewed effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?s government to ?neuter the judiciary,? Haaretz English editor-in-chief Esther Solomon joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz for an overview and explanation of the charged state of Israeli politics.

The current push in the Knesset to eliminate the ?reasonableness standard? which allows the High Court of Justice to block irrational government decisions has been a dramatic turning point, Solomon says, and is just the first step in executing a full overhaul to weaken Israel?s courts in favor of its politicians.

It is all part of Netanyahu?s efforts ?to try and appease the most extreme members of his government ever since he set up? the most theocratic and ideologically pro-settler government that Israel has ever seen. And what happens if you sit down with the far-right is that you end up being pulled towards where they are.?

Also on the podcast, Haaretz writer Anat Peled tells the story behind the kidnapping of high-profile Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli citizen who is being held by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, why Israeli academics like Tsurkov take the risks they do when researching the Middle East, and the efforts underway to bring her home safely,

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Despite the weakened position of Russian President Vladimir Putin following the weekend?s aborted coup, chances that Israel?s government will change its policy in the Russia-Ukraine conflict are extremely low, says Haaretz senior correspondent Anshel Pfeffer, who has covered the war from the ground.

?Israel has - both on a moral level and on a strategic level - been making a mistake by staying on the sidelines and keeping its relationship intact with the Russians,? Pfeffer tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz Weekly podcast.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Sommer and Pfeffer, author of the book ?Bibi: The Life and Turbulent Times of Benjamin Netanyahu? discuss producer Arnon Milchan?s testimony in the Prime Minister?s corruption trial that kicked off in Brighton, England this week, his sinking numbers in the polls, and the renewed effort to reboot the controversial judicial revolution.

He also addresses the violent attacks on Palestinian towns by West Bank settlers in the wake of a deadly terror attack, and the response by far-right ministers in the government ?who openly support this kind of vigilantism.?

While they pay lip service against settlers taking the law into their own hands, ?We know what Minister of National Missions Orit Struck, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have said in the past. And you can see it now in their body language when they're not saying it: that they're perfectly okay with, with the settlers going on rampage. So the only difference between this government (and those in the past) is that it's out in the open.?

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In a special podcast in honor of Israel?s annual Book Week celebration, Haaretz Weekly is spotlighting two female Israeli journalists turned authors: Dina Kraft, co-author of Hannah Pick-Goslar?s memoir ?My Friend Anne Frank?; and Ruth Marks Eglash, a journalist who reported from Israel for the Washington Post for eight years before writing her debut novel, ?Parallel Lines.?

The world knows Anne Frank as a spirited teenager through her diary recounting her years in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam. But her childhood friend Hannah Pick-Goslar knew her entire story from its hopeful beginning to its tragic end.

?My Friend Anne Frank? ? currently a New York Times best-seller ? was written by Pick-Goslar and Kraft. In an interview with Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Kraft recounts her experience interviewing the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor during the last six months of her life. Pick-Goslar died in 2022, before the book was completed.

Kraft shares how Anne and Hannah met as young children in Amsterdam, after their Jewish families fled Hitler?s Germany, and were inseparable friends as they grew into teenagers. Until one day, following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, when Hannah went to see her friend and was ?completely shocked to see breakfast dishes still in the sink and beds left unmade, which was never the case in a very orderly Frank household.?

Years later, as Kraft describes, the two friends had a heartbreaking reunion at the fence separating them in Bergen-Belsen. Pick-Goslar remembered finding her once-vivacious friend ?freezing, starving, with just a filthy blanket to keep her warm.?

***

Also on the podcast, Ruth Marks Eglash tells the story behind her novel ?Parallel Lines,? which follows modern-day Jerusalem life and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the eyes of three young women: one Jewish secular Israeli, one ultra-Orthodox Jew and one East Jerusalem Palestinian, who live side-by-side but in entirely different worlds.

Her book ? inspired by having to make sense of the roller-coaster of conflict and violence in Israel?s capital to her own teenage daughter while working as deputy bureau chief for The Washington Post ? focuses on ?how this conflict that we write about as journalists and that we read about as adults is impacting young people.?

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The Trump indictment rocking the United States contains numerous references to foreign countries and military battle plans that many believe relate directly to Iran and Israel ? and may have even originated in Israeli intelligence sources. 

Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Amir Tibon joins Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the indictment as well as the similarities between Trump?s latest legal headaches and those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was elected to Israel?s highest office while on trial for corruption.

?If you?re an American watching anxiously and wondering what it?s like to have a clash between a former president running for [office] again and the legal authorities, I don?t think there?s a lot of good news we can bring you from Israel,? Tibon said.

If the documents squirreled away in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom were indeed Israel-related, ?it wouldn?t be the first time that Trump revealed secret information related to Israeli activities,? he added, recalling the 2017 incident in which the-then president reportedly gave Mossad intelligence to the Russians. 

If they were, he predicts that ?it won?t be good for Israel to be part of the legal and political circus that will happen around this indictment.

Tibon also gives an update on the U.S.-Iran negotiations to revive a nuclear deal over Israeli objections ? and the continuing signs that full diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia may come sooner than we think.

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An unprecedented number of Israeli ministers and governing coalition lawmakers flew to New York City last week to participate in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade and the conferences and meetings surrounding it.

Haaretz Washington correspondent Ben Samuels joins Allison Kaplan Sommer with all the highlights of what happened next ? from the historic ?inflection point? of progressive American Jews and Israelis joining forces to bring pro-democracy and anti-judicial overhaul voices to the parade, to MK Simcha Rothman grabbing a megaphone from a protester following him on the street, to Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli giving the middle finger to the crowd. 

?It all showcased just how much of a fault line Israel has become, particularly under this government, in the conversation here,? Samuels said, speaking from New York. ?And the optics of Israelis protesting the Israeli government at the Israel Day Parade? That?s the worst PR you can get.? 

Also on the podcast, a look at the Israeli under-20 soccer team that shocked and delighted the nation in a come-from-behind victory against powerhouse Brazil in the quarterfinals of the FIFA world championship last Sunday. Haaretz sportswriter Ido Rakovsky joins the podcast to discuss the unique qualities of a dream team made up of both Arabs and Jews, what their success means to Israeli soccer and what their coach has in common with Ted Lasso.

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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 rabbi who offers its opening blessing this year, has been part of the parade since it began in 2002.

In this episode of Haaretz Weekly, she shares her memories of the early years, when the men who are today the country?s national security and finance ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, waited for the revelers with donkeys on the parade route ? ?to send the message that homosexuality was the equivalent of sex with animals.?

?These people are mean and they are vicious,? she says in conversation with host Allison Kaplan Sommer. ?They?re using fascist metaphors and ideas, and spreading hate. And this person [Ben-Gvir] is supposed to be in charge of my safety while I?m marching in this parade??

Despite the challenges, Nir Keren says she is determined to raise children who can ?celebrate their Judaism but also the fact that they have two moms and not be ashamed of it.?

Haaretz correspondent Linda Dayan also joins the podcast to describe the protests surrounding an event honoring U.S. author Abigail Shrier, who has written a book warning that a predatory transgender movement ?is coming for? young girls.

Dayan then shares her experiences at similar events where North American social conservatives Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson addressed Israeli audiences, and her observation that ?suddenly very American, very British and very Western ideas about gender identity are making their way here? ? sparking ?a kind of discussion different from those I had ever heard before? in Israel.

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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 offer basic education, to turf wars over a yeshiva in downtown Tel Aviv and an indoor playground open on Shabbat, to a firestorm around a television talk show host calling ultra-Orthodox Israelis ?bloodsuckers.? These days, the public discourse is all about the secular-Orthodox divide.

Uri Keidar, CEO of Israel Hofsheet ("Be Free Israel") and Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz join host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz Weekly to discuss the growing rift, how it relates to the wider struggle against the judicial coup, and the increasing frustration in the secular public.

"I think we are starting to see the majority wake up," says Keidar, who believes that this majority is "over and done with" an ultra-Orthodox political agenda which "are not up to speed with the fact that we live in the 21st century."

"A lot of angry, secular people are saying: enough is enough. We're sick and tired of sending our kids to the army, while ultra-Orthodox kids don't have to go, we're sick and tired of paying more and more taxes for things that we not only don't believe in, but that we are vehemently opposed to. And this is it. We're not going to put up with it anymore," observes Maltz.

"A year ago, if somebody secular in Israel spoke out against the ultra-Orthodox sector, they would have been called anti-Semitic or a self-hating Jew - and that would have shut them up. Today, it's not shutting them up."

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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 President Joe Biden on his win, Trump said of Benjamin Netanyahu in their 90-minute interview for the book: "Fuck him," making a point of declaring "I haven?t spoken to him since."

In a conversation with Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Ravid reports that two full years later, Trump and Netanyahu still haven?t exchanged a word.

On the occasion of the publication of his book in English - with new chapters updating the state of the Abraham Accords under the Biden administration, Ravid offers a look behind the scenes of his two lengthy interviews with Trump and how eager he was to express his unhappiness with Netanyahu?s behavior.

When Trump used the F-word, "It was at the end of a 20-minute monologue about all the bad things he thought about Netanyahu," Ravid shared, saying the interview revealed to him that the Trump-Netanyahu bromance "was like watching a show for four years. And then you realize that everything you saw was just BS, because the reality between those two was completely different."

Also on this week?s podcast, Haaretz English Editor in Chief Esther Solomon and correspondent Simon Waldman in Istanbul assess the political situation in Turkey after the election results leading to a second-round face-off for the presidency between incumbent Tayyip Erdogan and opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. According to Waldman, the first round outcome is ?the worst-case scenario? for the opposition.

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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 national security analyst Amos Harel joined Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Tuesday to assess what has been dubbed Operation Shield and Arrow. On the podcast, they discuss Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?s political motives for greenlighting the assassinations.  

The operation, Harel says, ?is mostly a result of Israeli domestic considerations. Last week, after the death of jailed Islamic Jihad terrorists in an Israeli jail after a long hunger strike, Islamic Jihad reacted by launching more than 100 rockets and mortar bombs towards Israeli towns and villages around the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu hesitated, receiving a lot of criticism from both the opposition and the protest movement, and from within his government. So I don't think he had much choice.?

Harel addresses the many questions Israelis were asking themselves Tuesday: should Israel batten down the hatches for a major extended military conflict with both Islamic Jihad and with Hamas in Gaza? What are the chances the conflict could extend to the West Bank and Israel?s northern border? How aggressively will the Biden White House move to lower the flames and could the tense relationship between Washington and Jerusalem affect the US reaction to this crisis?   

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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, and provocative, article that was published in Foreign Affairs.

Two of the authors, Profs. Shibley Telhami and Marc Lynch, joined the Haaretz Weekly podcast to explain why they are calling on decision makers in Washington and elsewhere to ?drop the façade? and recognize an ?uncomfortable reality?, and what could be the policy consequences of such a step. In their conversation with host Amir Tibon, they also discuss the prospect of violence and instability in the region, the impact of Netanyahu?s new government, and the political crisis in the Palestinian national movement.

Read more on the one-state reality and the two-state solution, on Haaretz.com:

Israeli-Palestinian poll shows support for two-state solution at all-time low

So You Don?t Like the Two-state Solution? Meet the One-state Model

CIA chief sees ?unhappy resemblance? between current tensions and leadup to second Intifada

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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 tells Haaretz Weekly, she no longer recognizes Netanyahu. He's not the same leader. The prime minister has ignored the alarm bells that she and other experts have been ringing regarding the harm his controversial judicial overhaul will cause Israel's economy. 

?The warnings by experts on the economic effects and the effects on our national security are not falling on ears that are listening,? she tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer. ?It?s very hard to understand.? 

Countries that have passed laws weakening their judicial branches, like Hungary and Poland,  have paid economic consequences. However, Flug stresses that the price is likely to be far higher in Israel. Not only will an expected decline in international credit ratings lead to ?really detrimental long-term effects,? but the harm to the country?s high-tech sector would be particularly devastating. Unlike Poland and Hungary, she notes, Israel?s tech companies account for 10 percent of employment, 50 percent of exports and 25 percent of tax revenues. 

Moreover, high-tech is ?a very mobile sector? where companies can - and do - easily move to other countries.  ?Our vulnerability is very, very strong,? says Flug, admitting that she is feeling ?anxiety about what kind of country will be here for my children and for my grandchild.?

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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 government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu a host of far-right, ultra-religious parties.

The judicial overhaul led by Netanyahu, Halperin-Kaddari explains, poses great risks to Israeli women, since ?the weakening of the power of the High Court of Justice will have a devastating impact on the ability of women to fight back against discriminatory laws.? 

In a conversation with host Allison Kaplan Sommer, she adds that ?We have the clear examples of states in Europe who have been through this. It is exactly the way that Poland had gone, as well as Hungary and Turkey. And in each of these states, it was - and it still is - women who are paying the highest price.?1

She applauds the use of the image of the women in Margaret Atwood?s dystopian novel-turned-TV series ?The Handmaid?s Tale? as having been effective in focusing the Israeli public?s attention on these imminent threats. ?The intentions of this government regarding women are very clear,? she says. ?I truly fear that all these dystopian visions of the future are totally realistic.?

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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 and very concerned about this judicial revolution and the impact it will have on Israel?s democracy ? and therefore the impact it will have on U.S.-Israel relations,? Indyk told hosts Amir Tibon and Allison Kaplan Sommer on the latest episode of Haaretz Weekly. 

?Undermining the basic tenets of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the idea of being Jewish and democratic goes against everything American Jews believe in and support, and that?s deeply troubling to the vast majority of them,? he added. 

While the United States has in recent years been acting like an ?indulgent uncle that is not willing to hold Israel to account when it acts against U.S. interests,? Indyk warned that this may not last forever. ?The United States is a dinosaur that you can poke and poke, but it doesn?t respond until one day it wakes up. And then it lifts its tail and comes down with a mighty thump.?

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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 (Dis)Order, and is now presented in audio version for our listeners to enjoy.

Efraim Halevy, former chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, recalls his first-ever meeting with Vladimir Putin, and explains why it is a humiliation for the Russian autocrat to beg Iran for help in his disastrous war on Ukraine.

Ksenia Svetlova, a former Israeli lawmaker, discusses the similiarities between Putin and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Our national security analyst Amos Harel shares what Israel's intelligence got wrong in the war's early stages, and Israeli journalist Yair Navot, a former Moscow correspondent, describes the dilemmas of Russia's remaining Jews.

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