On the Nose

Josh Nathan-Kazis, Jewish Currents’ news director, and Alex Kane, a senior reporter covering Israel, Palestine, and US foreign policy, examine Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan Senate victory. They discuss the Jewish vote, AIPAC spending, Islamophobic attacks, Nonnegotiable’s failed pressure campaign, and the apparent limits of pro-Israel establishment power.

Molly Crabapple, artist and political writer; Harriet Clark, author and organizer; and Irena Klepfisz, poet, activist, and scholar, explore what radical Jews inherit from family and movement ancestors. They discuss Bundist memory, lesbian feminist organizing, prison communities, coalition politics, mourning, Holocaust memory, and how defeat can shape new forms of collective life.

Rozina Ali, journalist and author of Seasons of Fury, traces the history of American Islamophobia through four Muslim families. She explores how surveillance of Arab and Palestinian activists expanded into broad Muslim targeting, how terrorism was redefined around Islam, and the role of pro-Israel organizations in shaping anti-Muslim policies and narratives. She also examines Park 51, Muslim political candidates, and the fraught pairing of antisemitism with Islamophobia.

Dan Sinykin, an Emory professor who studies publishing, and Josh Lambert, a Wellesley scholar of Jewish literature, investigate claims of antisemitism in the book world. They scrutinize PEN America, ADL, and Meg Keene’s evidence, examine Hebrew translation markets and event cancellations, and explore the difference between political backlash and censorship. Opaque publishing data, ideological ventures, and shifting cultural politics round out the conversation.

Rami Younis, a Palestinian journalist and filmmaker, and Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, discuss Naza’s disturbing testimony from Israeli intelligence officers. They explore perpetrator cinema, the psychology of mass violence, and whether humanizing killers risks excusing them. The conversation also examines whose testimony the world believes, backlash in Israel, Jewish responsibility, and cinema’s power to confront denial.

Theater critic and scholar Alisa Solomon joins Russian-American journalist and author Masha Gessen to dissect Slam Frank, a provocative Anne Frank parody steeped in identity politics and Jewish grievance. They debate what the satire targets, whether its Gaza climax and Holocaust humor punch up or down, how Zionism shapes the drama, and whether its slippery interpretations signal artistic success or political evasion.

Xava De Cordova, a rabbi and queer Jewish educator, joins writers and organizers Shelby Handler and Maia Brown, an artist and liturgy translator. Together, they explore Kol Nidre’s tangled history, melodies, and contested meanings. The conversation moves through prison, forced conversion, communal accountability, queer interpretation, and the tension between promises, change, and forgiveness.

Ryvka Barnard, deputy director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign; Emily Hilton, Diaspora Alliance policy director; and Maya Rosen, Jewish Currents editor and West Bank reporter, examine the UK’s unprecedented sanctions on Israeli settlements. They explore loopholes, arms cooperation, the contradictions of a two-state framework, backlash from British Jewish institutions, repression of Palestine activism, and whether wider European pressure could curb annexation.

Yotam Marom, a writer, organizer, and movement strategist shaped by Occupy Wall Street and IfNotNow, examines why progressive movements turn on themselves. He explores leadership, accountability, horizontalism, despair, belonging, and the challenge of building organizations that can actually win. Marom also discusses political isolation after October 7th, identity, solidarity, and the role of love and strategic boundaries in collective struggle.

This episode of On the Nose is for subscribers and members only. Subscribe for $4/month here. If you’re already a subscriber, check your email for instructions on accessing this episode.A recent article in Haaretz announced that a left-wing youth group called Hamahanot Haolim, part of the socialist Zionist movement, is planning a kibbutz-style settlement in the Jordan Valley, in the occupied West Bank. According to the article, organization director Ilan Gazit said that “he is aware of the damage West Bank settlements do to Palestinian rights, but argued that since new settlements will be built in the Jordan Valley in any case, it’s preferable to have as many of them as possible populated by leftists.” Gazit elaborated: “We aren’t ashamed of this and we aren’t hiding it. This is in line with our worldview: A strong security border is needed in the east that will be defensible and create a necessary condition for peace. We are leftists who believe in equality between people and are guided by a humanistic, socialist, democratic worldview.”On this premium episode of On the Nose, Israeli American social worker and co-founder of the Unsettled podcast Asaf Calderon talks to Arielle Angel about the fallacy of the “good guy at the checkpoint,” and what this announcement says about the shifting relationship between Israel’s so-called left and the settlement enterprise.Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for editing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Media Mentioned and Further Reading“Israeli Left-wing Youth Group Plans Kibbutz-style Settlement in West Bank,” Yair Foldes, Haaretz“What the Soldiers Did in Gaza,” On the Nose, Jewish Currents“The Anti-Politics of Disengagement,” Elisheva Goldberg, Jewish Currents“Revising the Dream,” Mari Cohen, Jewish CurrentsTranscript forthcoming.