Unholy: Two Jews on the News

The Iran war may be over — or it may not. In the space of a few hours this week, Washington ordered warships into the Strait of Hormuz, paused the operation, threatened to resume bombing at higher intensity, and then declared peace was near. 

Yonit and Jonathan cut through the chaos — and ask the question the ceasefire deal still hasn't answered: what happened to Iran's nuclear stockpile? 

Also this week: Bezalel Smotrich calls October 7th "a tactical failure" and says including Arab parties in government would be a thousand times worse. Gadi Eisenkot and former Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen join forces. Netanyahu's plea deal murmurs get louder. The UK goes to the polls with antisemitism front and center. And the Chutzpah and Mensch awards both go to the same unlikely figure: Nick Cave, who told a hostile fan to go F himself — and blamed his wife's absence.

Watch us on Youtube: https://youtu.be/R-2p4tL6e7E

[00:00] Intro — Jewish American Heritage Month

[06:54] Iran ceasefire chaos — what is Washington actually doing? 

[10:14] The nuclear question the deal still hasn't answered 

[15:21] Israeli politics: Bennett-Lapid merger recap 

[17:43] Eisenkot + Yoram Cohen join forces 

[21:10] Smotrich calls October 7th a "tactical failure" 

[26:46] Netanyahu: plea deal or Saudi peace card? 

[31:05] UK local elections — Jews as political football [37:05] Chutzpah & Mensch: Nick Cave vs. Lee from Bournemouth [41:10] Ted Turner — a different kind of media owner

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Forty days of war with Iran. Four weeks of an uneasy ceasefire. And one verdict that nobody in Washington wants to say out loud: the Islamic Republic came out of this stronger.

Dr. Suzanne Maloney, Vice President of the Brookings Institution's foreign policy program and one of America's most trusted voices on Iran, joins Yonit and Jonathan as US warships attempt to escort vessels through a Strait of Hormuz that Iran still effectively controls. They get into whether the ceasefire can hold, why the nuclear threat was never really addressed, who is actually making decisions inside Tehran now that the supreme leader is gone, and what a realistic deal — if one exists — might look like.

Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/D_P_lca1OzQ

Unholy Conversations drops every Tuesday.

Listen to the regular episode on Friday to get the full Two Jews on the News Experience

 

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Yonit Levi
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As stabbing against Jews in Golders Green rises up, again, the question of security of Jewish communities around the world,  Israel starts the countdown: 6 months to the elections. Yonit and Jonathan discuss the Golders Green knife attack and the wave of antisemitism hitting Britain since October 7th; the Bennett–Lapid merger and what it means for Israel's October elections; whether the Iran–Israel war is on pause or simply reloading; Jake Sullivan's bombshell statement on arms sales to Israel; and — in the awards — Israeli police cutting a Palestinian flag from a Jewish man's kippah, and King Charles delivering a Magna Carta reminder to Congress that Democrats jumped to their feet for. 

Watch us on youtube: https://youtu.be/tCqzaU-DlPM

This week on Unholy Conversations - Howard Jacobson: https://youtu.be/aB-eNbxb41w

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Howard Jacobson has screamed "liar" at the BBC, lost friends over a newspaper article, and started asking his wife whether it's still safe to live in London. Now he's written a novel about all of it.

*Howl* is the story of Ferdinand Draxler — Jewish headmaster, reluctant marcher, man on the edge — who watches the world he believed in applaud the October 7th massacre and descends into a rage that may or may not be madness. Jacobson says he borrowed quite a lot from the last two years of his life.

In this Unholy Conversations episode, Jacobson talks with Yonit and Jonathan about the ungovernable anger behind the novel, why he chose comedy as the only honest vehicle for it, the friends who wrote accusing him of celebrating Palestinian deaths, the Manchester synagogue where he was bar mitzvahed and which was attacked on Yom Kippur, and the question he can't shake: what would we have done in Berlin in 1932?

 

Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/aB-eNbxb41w

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Yonit Levi
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Jonathan Freedland
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Israel's 78th Independence Day arrives in the shadow of a three-year war — and a nation more divided than ever. As US-Iran talks stall and the Lebanon ceasefire holds by a thread, Yonit and Jonathan take stock of where Israel stands: from the parallel ceremonies splitting the country, to Rahm Emanuel's seismic break from past support for Israeli military aid, to Ezra Klein's "one state reality" argument — and why Yonit thinks it misses half the picture.

Then: a joyful detour. Adeena Sussman, author of the forthcoming Zariz: 100 Easy, Breezy, Tel Aviv-y Recipes, joins to talk about cooking through a war, the fusion of Jewish and Israeli identity on the plate, and why every pot of Sabbath stew is a political act.

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🎙️ THE HOSTS
Yonit Levi
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Jonathan Freedland
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📩 Contact: [email protected]
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