Haaretz Podcast

Rabbi Sharon Brous, progressive Judaism's leading voice, discusses the need for empathy towards Palestinians and the tension between tribalism and universal understanding. She reflects on her controversial Yom Kippur sermon and the changing responsibilities of clergy. Brous emphasizes the importance of supporting vulnerable communities and being allies to one another.

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.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.”  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While attention is on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank face unprecedented violence. Settler violence has increased, resulting in mass arrests and Palestinian villages evacuating. Olive harvest season is fraught with threats and attacks from settlers. The blurring of lines between military, authorities, and settlers has caused confusion and violence. The escalating violence in the West Bank has led to increased IDF raids and destruction of infrastructure. The Biden administration's response, settler violence, and the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority are also discussed.

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."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a former UN Committee member, discusses the horrific sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7. The terrorists filmed their actions, broadcasting them to victims' families and on social media. Lili Ben Ami, a domestic violence advocate, expresses concern over the expansion of access to personal weapons in Israel without background checks, which may pose risks for domestic violence cases.

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.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.