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Haredi Israelis make up some 13% of the population but have extremely low rates of workforce participation and military service. The growing welfare subsidies that sustain their communities have increasingly become a source of tensions and frustration for other Israelis, and the multi-front war that began on October 7 has now made their exemptions from military service a major political issue. Israel needs more workers, less welfar...

Twenty-four people have been killed in Israel since the outbreak of the direct Israel-Iran war. The Air Force is busy hunting launchers inside Iran to constrain Iran's ability to fire missiles at Israeli cities. Parts of Tehran are being evacuated as Israel continues to hunt down the IRGC leadership and demolish the country's nuclear program.

But enormous questions remain unanswered. Can Israel actually destroy the nucle...

The astonishing Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program was the inevitable result of October 7, a day that convinced Israelis they do not actually understand their Islamist foes, cannot deter these foes and therefore cannot allow them to develop the capacity to destroy the Jewish state, no matter the cost.

Israel woke up on October 7. Its enemies had been telling it they plan to destroy it for generations; on October 8 it f...

The Trump administration has been trying to hammer out a deal to dismantle Iran's nuclear program. In the last 24 hours, the rhetoric has ratcheted up on both sides, as both Iranian and US officials have warned about impending military action.

A week ago, we recorded a conversation with Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, on the Iranian regime's strategy, its nuclear aspirations and what it would take to...

Last month marked the 25th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon after an 18-year guerrilla war that presaged everything we now think of as 21st-century warfare.

I spoke to Matti Friedman, veteran of Lebanon and bestselling author of a memoir from that long war, Pumpkinflowers, about the history, the lessons drawn from it and how we're seeing the continuing effects of that conflict in Gaza today.

This episode is spo...

Hamas's rule in Gaza is a theocratic dictatorship. But its roots lie in the 19th-century movement for Islamic reform that believes modernization, science and even political liberalization. How did the great liberalizing theologians of the late 19th century, from Al-Afghani to Abduh to Rida, become Hamas?

Join us for a story that raises the startling possibility that the deradicalization of Gaza could come from within.

This episod...

Jerusalem Day falls on May 25th this year. It is the day of Jerusalem's unification in the 1967 Six Day War, and so a symbol of both Jewish rescue from the genocidal plans of its enemies, a palpable experience of strength and redemption just two decades after Auschwitz, and also a symbol of the perils and moral problems of Jewish power, the day Israel found itself ruling another people.

It is the day of the Jews' homecoming to their...

If the requirements of international law mean that Israel is effectively prohibited from defeating its enemies or protecting its borders, should Israelis turn their backs on international law? Why do we need "law?" Isn't it enough to just do our best to be as moral as possible?

After all, the institutions of international law seem so unfair to Israel. Just this past year, Israel was made to stand in judgment, accused of genocide, be...

After a delay (Haviv got a bad flu), we're happy to share a great panel with Haviv and Prof. John Spencer that took place at the Woodbury Jewish Center in Woodbury, New York on May 7.Thank you to Rabbi Jason Fruithandler and Rob Dwek for hosting, and to the Malin family for sponsoring the speaker series this event was part of.

Haviv and John talked about whether victory was in the cards against Hamas, what it would require, and ...

Qatar has just 330,000 citizens but controls vast wealth due to its plentiful natural gas. It has used that wealth to support radical and violent terrorist groups and regimes throughout the Middle East and to wield enormous influence in the West, including among American politicians and universities.In today's episode, I asked Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and host of its...

As the Trump administration tries to strike a deal curtailing Iran's nuclear program, I turned to Dr. Sharona Mazalian Levi, an Iran expert and proud Persian Jew, to try to take us past the headlines and political elites to the conditions and hopes of ordinary Iranians.

Dr. Mazalian paints a dire picture. Desperate shortages of clean water, electricity and gas, a collapsed currency, a third of the population under the poverty line, ...

Palestinian advocates like to quip that the current war "didn't begin on October 7." That's true, of course, though unhelpful. It didn't begin in any one specific place. There are no singular first causes in history. When we choose the beginning of the story, we choose its framing and meaning.For most Israeli Jews, the story of the current war might be said to have begun in the fall of 2000, in the great colla...

Passover is upon us, the seder is Saturday night.Freedom, the Sages teach, is not an end, it is a path; no mere escape from Pharaoh's tyranny but a becoming, filled with substance and responsibility and devotion; no one-off achievement but a ceaseless struggle to secure and deepen who and what we are.This bonus episode offers a few short thoughts that I teach my children at our seder each year about the meaning of this holiday,...

The Abraham Accords have the potential to transform the Middle East. The very fact that they survived the Gaza war proves their resilience. Indeed, trade between Israel and its Abraham Accords partners has risen dramatically and stayed high through the war.And now the “kit” of dozens of agreements drafted between Israel and the UAE, from the overarching peace agreement to treaties on cellphone network interoperability and double ta...

Is Zionism colonialism? Are Jews an authentic people, or merely a religion? What about Palestinians? What are Zionism’s moral costs, and what are those of opposing Zionism?

I asked one of my teachers, Hebrew University historian Prof. Alexander Yakobson, some of the great questions now being advanced in Western academic and progressive discourses about Israel.

Alex has that special fearlessness of an intellectual who takes the other ...

What if everybody is right on judicial reform? Israel's highest court is immensely and unreasonably powerful. But if it is weakened, what other checks stand in the way of the tyranny of the majority, that great Achilles' heel of democracy since the dawn of Western civilization?

This question is especially urgent for Israel, whose politics are more Middle Eastern than Western, more tribal than ideological.

It's not unreasonable to wea...

Abandoning the Democrats is a losing strategy for Israel, says Rep. Ritchie Torres, perhaps the most outspoken supporter of Israel in the US House of Representatives. The fight over Israel inside American politics is a proxy for a much larger battle over the future of the Democratic Party and the character of America, he argues. Those who don't like Israel, he says, tend to take a dim view of the promise of America.

And who ...

Warfighting has resumed in Gaza. Israel's message is clear: Gaza's future depends on Hamas releasing hostages and surrendering its control of the territory.

But there is a larger pivot underway, a regional strategic realignment. Hamas once hoped its attack on Israel would trigger a broader regional war. In a sense, it succeeded, relegating Gaza to a marginal arena in the larger strategic struggle. That alone, gives Israel a freer ha...

This is a podcast about history, but also about this moment in history.

Today's episode is a special one. Many of you asked about the hostages, about the activism of their families, about their shattering experiences on October 7 and how they have worked to piece their lives back together since.

I can think of no better way to begin to answer these questions than by posing them to our good friend Shaked Haran.

There's no one story of ...