Haaretz Podcast

Nearly three years since Israel’s war in Gaza began, and despite a lengthy case brought before the High Court of Israel, journalists remain unable to enter the Strip to report independently on the widespread destruction, the ongoing humanitarian crisis and the IDF’s occupation of more than half of the Strip.
Histadrut national union official Peter Lerner, who served as the IDF’s Spokesperson to International Media until 2024, says the IDF’s reluctance to allow journalists in is a symptom of the war being drawn out and Israel’s increasing isolation from the global community.
“The time passed two years ago,” to let journalists enter Gaza, Lerner said. “I recommended it to my superiors, that holding out this long is not beneficial to Israel; it just superimposes the fact that people will say that you're hiding something. …The fact is that there will be negative stories about the negative consequences of war.”
Lerner and host Amir Tibon also discussed the reasons why Israeli soldiers passively watch – or even partake – in settler-led attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, and the ways in which the government fuels the total lack of accountability. “When I watch the attacks of these families in their homes, and they’re so helpless – as someone who experienced October 7 very, very close, it’s traumatic to watch," shared Tibon, a longtime resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz.
State-backed settler violence has also accelerated against journalists in the West Bank, where Haaretz correspondent Matan Golan and photographer Itai Ron were attacked this week by settlers that have besieged homes in Qusra, near Nablus, as IDF soldiers looked on.
Abby Seitz, a features editor at Haaretz, joins the podcast to recount the threats, illegal orders from soldiers and right-out lies that she and reporter Nagham Zbeedat encountered in a single day in the southern West Bank last month. Zbeedat and Seitz reported from Umm al-Khair as the community marked one year since Awdah Hathaleen recorded his own death at the hands of internationally sanctioned settler leader Yinon Levi.
When asked for comment on why Border Police, with the army, dispersed the village’s memorial ceremony, a police spokesperson told Haaretz that it was an “unlawful gathering, which was intended to serve as a demonstration of support for a terrorist who was neutralized” – a statement that contradicts the state’s own stance, as prosecutors filed reckless manslaughter charges against Levi last week.
“This is not uncommon, and it’s increasingly happening against international and Israeli journalists, but it's also been happening against Palestinian journalists for a long time. There are Palestinian journalists right now in administrative detention, held for months and months and months without charges, simply for filming what's been going on” in the West Bank, Seitz said.
Read more:
Taghreed El-Khodary: International Media Is Failing Palestinian Journalists in Gaza
West Bank correspondent Matan Golan: I Was Attacked by Settlers as a Journalist. What the IDF Lets Them Do Will Get Palestinians Killed
IDF Removes Palestinian Families in Qusra as Israeli Settlers Resist Army Operation to End Siege
'Lords of the Land': Israeli Soldiers Describe How Settlers Manage Military Reality in the West Bank
One Year Later: Israel Issues Rare Indictment Against Settler Who Killed Palestinian Activist
A Year After a Settler Shot Awdah Hathaleen, His Village Still Can't Mourn in Peace
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While the polls in Israel have been relatively stagnant, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal standing has faltered. “The minute that Netanyahu's stock seems weak, people will start selling it, and that has begun to happen,” said Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast.
Joining Leifer on the podcast, Haaretz correspondent Linda Dayan observed that in her conversations with mainstream Israelis who “don’t identify as leftists,” they see a real alternative leader in challenger Gadi Eisenkot.
“People have said of Netanyahu in the past that there's no one who can replace him, who has the experience and the gravitas that we need. Now, for the first time in a very long time, people are saying it looks like there's someone who can actually do it.”
The two panelists joined host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the debut of new right-wing parties who eschew Netanyahu and their “machinations” attempting to engineer a government coalition that would include the anti-Netanyahu center-right – while excluding Yair Golan’s Democrats Party, and, of course the Arab parties.
"There is maybe a hope or a fantasy of finding some way of creating a government that excludes Yair Golan and the Democrats, and that closes the door definitively on having a potential Arab party in the coalition,” said Leifer, referring to the right’s growing fear of the prospect of an Eisenkot-led government that includes Mansour Abbas’ United Arab List.
Read more:
How to Actually Read the Israeli Election Polls
Israel's Opposition Parties Are Courting New Immigrants With a New Set of Priorities
In Haifa, the 'Putin Aliyah' and Despairing Arab Citizens Warn of A Dire Future
Analysis by Joshua Leifer | Eisenkot Keeps Running Away From What Everyone Knows He Believes
Most Israelis Fear Upcoming Election Could Be Compromised, New Poll Finds
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Haaretz senior defense columnist Amos Harel joins the Haaretz Podcast to discuss Trump's latest U-turn on Iran, from threatening to bomb the country's infrastructure to once again negotiating with the Islamic Republic over reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Does the president have a plan, or is he just responding to pressure from different directions? How likely is a resumption of full-scale war between Tehran and Jerusalem? And is there truly a lack of interceptors protecting Israel from Iranian missiles? Amos answers all these questions, as we await the president's next step.
Meanwhile in Gaza, a new agreement has been announced by the Board of Peace, the international body overseeing the coastal enclave's painfully slow recovery. On paper, it looks great: Hamas will voluntarily disarm, Israel will then withdraw from the areas it occupied after October 7, and reconstruction will move ahead at a faster pace. There's just one problem: No one believes the deal will actually be implemented, and the two sides are already disagreeing over its content and interpretation.
Harel and guest host Amir Tibon will discuss the chances for success there, and also the growing danger of escalation in the West Bank after another wave of violent attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinian villages. At what point will the Palestinian population, and perhaps some of the Palestinian Authority's security forces, respond in kind to those attacks and throw the whole region into another round of fighting? And is such a scenario a foregone conclusion, or can it still be avoided?
Read more on Haaretz.com
The Art of the Deal – or the Art of Bullshit? Trump's Wariness of Another Iran War
Hormuz Deal Would Hand Iran an Unprecedented Geopolitical Victory
How Much Longer Can Lebanon Withstand Israeli and Hezbollah Obstruction?
How Netanyahu Convinced Trump's Board of Peace to Rewrite Its Gaza Deal With Hamas
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Gadi Eisenkot "hasn't finished his rise" in the polls after his party, Yashar, has overtaken Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party for several weeks in a row, while the potential coalition of opposition parties is soaring past that of the current government, said Haaretz columnist Dahlia Scheindlin, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast.
Scheindlin, a veteran political strategist and analyst, noted that even the right-wing pollsters, who are heavily biased in favor of Netanyahu's coalition, are showing numbers that point to "a decline ever since the ceasefire and the war with Iran," reflecting perceptions among supporters who once "saw him as a great global statesperson."
The podcast panel, including Haaretz correspondent Nagham Zbeedat and host Allison Kaplan Sommer, reviewed the noteworthy political events of the past week, most prominently the intriguing news that could shake up the coalition mathematics: the Arab Islamist Ra'am Party's plans to invite a former senior police officer and centrist Jewish politician to claim the number two position on its list.
"Having a Jewish Israeli politician join an Arab party, especially an Islamist political party," would represent a "significant milestone," Zbeedat said, predicting that the move would boost support for Ra'am and increase the chances that an anti-Netanyahu coalition would invite the party into a coalition, which could well be its key to winning power.
Zbeedat herself, however, is not lending her vote to Ra'am or any other political party. She explained on the podcast why, like many other Palestinian citizens of Israel, she chooses not to participate in elections. She does not believe, she said, in taking part in a "performance" of democracy and granting "legitimacy" to a government that "enables the daily occupation struggles" and "doesn't accept my existence."
Read more:
Game Changer? What if This Jewish Lawmaker Joins an Israeli Arab Party
Why I, a Palestinian Citizen, Don't Vote in Israeli Elections
Arab Parties Are Talking Unity. Their Voters Have Much Bigger Issues
With Confidence, Conviction and Even Talking Occupation: The Democrats Are a New Sight in Israeli Politics
How Arab Party Leader Mansour Abbas Changed Israel's Political Game
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On this week’s Haaretz Podcast, guest host Joshua Leifer talks to Pnina Pfeuffer, a liberal, feminist ultra-Orthodox social activist. The Jerusalem-based Pfeuffer, CEO of the New Haredim, recently petitioned against a Knesset bill that would permit gender-segregated study tracks for master's and doctoral degrees in Israeli academic institutions.
Pfeuffer represents a growing minority inside the Israeli ultra-Orthodox public that is interested in “full citizenship, with full obligations and rights” in the Jewish State. This is a public that wants the Israeli government to enforce the military draft on Haredim and teach math and English in Haredi schools, instead of continuing the de facto Haredi autonomy in which many Israeli rules and norms are absent.
According to Pfeuffer, the Haredi community reflects Israel as a whole, and younger Haredim - like their secular and religious Zionist counterparts - are radicalizing, and are more right wing than their parents. Some, as Leifer notes, are part of a “far-right Haredi street movement that is in the Ben-Gvir camp or even more right wing.”
Addressing the American Jewish community, Pfeuffer asks that those giving money to Israeli causes “educate themselves” about who they are supporting, “because a lot of liberal funding and good intentions” end up promoting gender segregation and far-right politics.
Read more:
Can Israel's New One-line Law Shield Haredim From IDF Service?
Israel Advances Bill Legalizing Gender Segregation in Universities
Gender Segregation in Academia Is the Government's Divide and Conquer Strategy
The Israeli Town Where Itamar Ben-Gvir Ranks Second Only to the Messiah
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