Times Of Israel Podcast

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. In a post-October 7 Israeli reality, is any new security threat outside the realm of imagination? This week, when over 300 projectiles were sent from Iran to Israel, we pose this question to journalist and hit Israeli drama "Fauda" co-creator Avi Issacharoff. Legions of fans around the world know of Issacharoff’s fiction writing from the popular television series, loosely based on his experiences in the IDF’s elite Duvdevan unit, that is written alongside "Fauda" star Lior Raz. (We'll hear a story of their post-October 7 real-life bravery during our conversation.) But Issacharoff is first and foremost a long-time, die-hard journalist and analyst of the Arab world -- one who has put his life on the line in the past to cover a story. We pick Issacharoff’s brain as we unpick the knotty situation Israel is currently facing with enemies on our borders, an

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. Speaking in our Jerusalem office, The Times of Israel editor David Horovitz offers a rare in-depth look at the professional challenges and personal conflicts he’s faced in covering the war against Hamas for the past half year. Horovitz gives a candid survey at what it is to run a site that, following the surprise October 7 Hamas infiltration of southern Israel and massacre of 1,200 people, jumped 600% in its readership to become, according to news site Press Gazette, the fastest-growing news website in the world in October and November. The Times of Israel's 24/7 coverage remains unabated as we mark six months of war. So this week we ask Times of Israel editor David Horovitz, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Po

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. In six months of war, Israel has systematically broken down Hamas’s battalions in the Gaza Strip. But in achieving terrible success in its aim to defang the terrorist army, the Jewish state is no longer seen on the world stage as the attacked underdog David, but increasingly reviled as a cruel Goliath. According to many in the West, it is up to Israel to immediately stop the war regardless of Hamas’s clear ability to regroup and again attack, just as the terror group has publicly vowed to do. This week, What Matters Now again speaks with public intellectual and philosopher Dr. Micah Goodman. We revisit the raw conversation we held six months ago, mere days after Hamas’s murderous attack, and see just how right Goodman’s predictions were. In our conversation this week, Goodman explains the completely different framings of the war held by the West and

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Days after his 32nd birthday, on Saturday, October 7, Hayim Katsman was killed by terrorists from Gaza in his neighbor’s home in Kibbutz Holit while shielding her with his body. His body was identified and the family was notified the next day. He was buried on Thursday of that week. Born to American immigrant parents and one of six children, Hayim was a scholar of philosophy and earned a PhD in political science. He was active in several local peace organizations. He was also a musician, mechanic and a gardener. Hayim’s mother, Hannah Wacholder Katsman, a writer and women’s rights activist, joined Amanda Borschel-Dan this week in The Times of Israel’s Jerusalem office for this week’s What Matters Now. As Hannah wrote in an essay for The Times of Israel, “I realized early on that because Hayim’s death was part of our national story, the mourning would be public.” We hear about her way of

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. In his US Senate floor speech last week, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer called for new Israeli elections as the war winds down and branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as one of four obstacles to peace along with Hamas, the Israeli far-right and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Throughout the past week, Times of Israel podcast listeners have shared their views on Schumer's speech -- and offered overwhelming support for the most senior elected Jewish politician's "hard truths." For context, a 2020 Pew Research Center survey shows that among the US population, Jews are among the most consistently liberal and Democratic groups with about 70 percent voting Democrat. As Netanyahu increasingly becomes a partisan issue, the prime minister is also increasingly the face of all US Jews detest in how Israel is prosecuting the war in Gaza.  This week on What Matters

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. On Tuesday, aid for 25,000 people reached Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip for the first time in weeks, according to the UN World Food Program. “With people in northern Gaza on the brink of famine, we need deliveries every day and we need entry points directly into the north,” tweeted the UN agency after the aid's successful entry. Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) confirmed that a convoy of six aid trucks entered the northern Gaza Strip through the new military road. The route, stretching from the border near the southern community of Be’eri to the coast of the Strip, is used by the Israel Defense Forces to carry out operations in northern and central Gaza. The successful delivery of the aid was “part of an experimental pilot in order to prevent Hamas from taking over the aid,” said COGAT. UN World Food Program chief Cindy McCain said on Monday

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. ToI's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur recently gave a series of lectures at North American college campuses. At some, including Harvard, his lecture was met with a performative walk-out from a contingent of pro-Palestinian protesters. Since Hamas's October 7 murderous onslaught, accounts of campus antisemitism have filled the pages of newspapers, from The Times of Israel and to mainstream international media. On this week's What Matters Now, Rettig Gur and host Amanda Borschel-Dan look at a series of data sets, analyses and essays on the topic of campus antisemitism to get a fuller picture of what's happening on the ground. One large-scale study was started in August 2023 by the ADL Center for Antisemitism Research (CAR), in partnership with Hillel International and facilitated by College Pulse. The groups conducted a nationally representative survey of over 3,084 American college stud

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This year, in what is reportedly a record-high number, some 66,000 young men from the ultra-Orthodox community received a deferral from military service. Of those tens of thousands of military-age men, following Hamas's murderous October 7 onslaught on Israel and the war it launched, 540 men voluntarily signed up for military service. On Monday, the High Court of Justice determined that the state has until March 24 to explain why its June 2023 resolution -- which instructed the IDF not to draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students for nine months -- is legal. The court determined in 1998 that executive action cannot be used as a legal basis for something so far-reaching as military service exemptions for an entire sector of the population. But of course, in June 2023, the government appears to have done just that. That resolution expires on March 31.  Will Israel's haredi society begin to s

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict is giving all appearances of turning into a "forever war." But in other parts of the world, Russia's influence has arguably grown. This week on What Matters Now, former MK Ksenia Svetlova, an expert in the Middle East and Russia, speaks about how Russia's forces remain throughout the Middle East and how its reach has deepened in Africa. Born in Moscow, Svetlova immigrated to Israel at the age of 14. She is a journalist and analyst and was a member of the 20th Knesset on behalf of the Zionist Union coalition.  Unlike most Western countries, Russia sees Hamas as a legitimate political player on the global stage. Next week, Moscow is potentially set to host a peace summit in the hopes of a reconciliation between the terrorist rulers of Gaza and the leadership of the West Bank's Palestinian Authority. Why? Svetlova also shares how Russia

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. The Israel Defense Forces revealed this week that beneath the Gaza Strip headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the controversial aid organization known commonly as UNRWA, the Hamas terror group hid one of its most significant assets, a subterranean data center. As witnessed by ToI military reporter Emanuel Fabian, cables were discovered running from a UNRWA server room to the Hamas data center underground. According to ToI senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur, however, Hamas's infiltration of UNRWA should be taken as a given. The great "evil" behind the United Nation's outfit, the only humanitarian aid on the ground, is the fact that it is more of an ideology than an aid organization. We hear about UNRWA's origin story and how its mission will only be fulfilled when the State of Israel no longer exists. So in this week of proof o

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he told visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel is “within touching distance of absolute victory,” and that Hamas’s defeat will be the “victory of the entire free world.” In a rebuttal to the prime minister, five women released from captivity in Gaza during a weeklong truce in late November stated that "absolute victory" for Israel would only come with the release of the remaining 136 hostages. At the same time, Saudi Arabia is hosting a summit of foreign ministers from five countries in the region -- Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, along with a representative from the Palestinian Authority -- to advance a united Arab stance regarding the war in Gaza as well as political initiatives for when the fighting ends. The united front that Israel’s Arab partners and potential allies are building is i

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Israel often prides itself on being the most moral army in the world. Whether you subscribe to that or not, there is a long history of ethical thinking that influences its operations on the ground. This week on What Matters Now, we speak with Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Brody, the author of the new and extremely timely book, “Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish View on War and Morality.” With rabbinic ordination and a PhD from Bar-Ilan Law School, Brody is the executive director of Ematai, an organization dedicated to helping Jews navigate dilemmas regarding aging, end-of-life treatment, and organ donation. His previous book, "A Guide to the Complex: Contemporary Halakhic Debates,” was a National Jewish Book Award winner. In our wide-ranging conversation, we speak about the history of Jewish military ethics, starting from the Bible, through rabbinical literature and the blossoming of thinking from j

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week we're bringing excerpts from a Behind the Headlines video interview with author and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, conducted exclusively for our Times of Israel Community. A senior fellow and the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Klein Halevi is the author of books including, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor” and “Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist.” Drawing on themes from both of those books, as well as his other work, we asked Klein Halevi to answer five big questions about the war. We touch on topics including, what "Never Again" means to Israelis today and how the Jewish community should relate to the anti-Zionist Jewish youth protesting on university campuses. So this week, we ask thinker Yossi Klein Halevi, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Auth

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, over 24,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel declared war on Hamas in retaliation to the bloody invasion by 3,000 terrorists from Gaza who massacred 1,200 -- mostly civilians -- and took over 240 hostages to Gaza.  And while it is clear that Hamas began the war, it's also clear that Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are being used as human shields to tactically and cynically generate public outcry against Israel. In a difficult and sensitive conversation, ToI's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur delves into Israelis' awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the death toll, and how much this is taken into account by Israelis, who are still overwhelmingly supportive of the stated goal of toppling Hamas.  Rettig Gur shares conversations he's had with staunch pro-Israel supporters in the United States and United Kingdom

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week on What Matters Now, we're again handing the mic to Mishy Harman, the co-founder of The Times of Israel’s podcast partner, Israel Story, the premiere narrative English-language podcast from Israel. Since the October 7 massacre across southern Israel by Hamas of some 1,200 individuals, mostly civilians, Harman and his team at Israel Story have pivoted from their long-form, carefully nurtured episodes to producing almost daily Wartime Diaries. We at The Times of Israel asked the Israel Story team to compile a few episodes and after much deliberation, together we selected three: Wartime Diaries: Shira Masami More than 200,000 Israelis – from both the South and the North – have been forced to leave their homes since the start of the war. Some have relocated to hotels or kibbutzim, others have opted to move in with family or friends, or else even rent apartments in entirely new su

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week the Supreme Court delivered a long-awaited decision on whether or not it would repeal the one piece of judicial overhaul legislation passed by the so-called pure right coalition under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Held on September 12, the hearing in front of a full bench of all 15 Supreme Court justices made for a day-long media event. Citizens across the country became armchair legal experts and held watch parties. Since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, the existential discussion about Israel's democracy has been sidelined. But with this ruling, along with a second Supreme Court decision this week, the judicial overhaul and all of its surrounding debate have again made headlines. To parse out the ruling and how it may — or may not — rekindle fears of a societal schism, Times of Israel senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur joins this week's podcast for an informal,

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Within days of the murderous October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, headed a mission of 50 heads of Jewish legacy organizations back to Israel, where he was when the massacre occurred. In conversation with The Times of Israel this week, he describes how following the brutal slaying of 1,200 mostly citizens and hostage-taking of dozens of others, a second punch in the gut awaited him back in the United States. "While we were punched in the gut by what you experienced here, we get punched in the gut by what we experienced in America -- an incredible disconnect, a moment of cognitive dissonance where our allies, our neighbors, the people we work with, the people that we have marched with -- seemed to not get it, seemed to not understand the tragedy that had occurred. And continue to not get it.” We sp

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. The past several weeks have seen the publication of a slew of high-profile opinion surveys on the war with Hamas. They include deep looks into the psyche of the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza and a probe into how Israeli Jews and Arabs differ in perspectives. Out of the United States, there are a few surveys that take the temperature of the American electorate during the war with Hamas. Among those with findings featured in the podcast is the poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). Between November 22 and December 2, questions were asked of 1231 adults, of whom 750 were interviewed face to face in the West Bank and 481 in the Gaza Strip. The findings are eye-opening. Next, we speak in depth about the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, an online survey within the United States from December 13-14 among 2,034 registered voters. Rettig Gur notes th

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Is the IDF acting legally and ethically in Gaza? We at The Times of Israel recently held an hour-long webinar on this topic for our Times of Israel Community with Prof. Amichai Cohen of the Israel Democracy Institute. Cohen is a recognized expert in the International Law of Armed Conflict, National Security Law, and Civil-Military Relations. International pressure is building on Israel to lessen the impact on Palestinian civilians while the IDF prosecutes this war against Hamas in all of Gaza. During this webinar, we ask Cohen about the legal legitimacy of Israel's right to self-defense, the international bodies that determine laws of warfare and how to try Hamas for international war crimes. It’s a long and fascinating discussion as we ask Prof. Amichai Cohen, what matters now? What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week on What Matters Now, we're again handing the mic to Mishy Harman, the co-founder of The Times of Israel’s podcast partner, Israel Story, the premiere English-language podcast from Israel. Since the October 7 massacre by Hamas of some 1,200 individuals, mostly civilians, Harman and his team at Israel Story have pivoted from their long-form, carefully nurtured episodes to producing almost daily Wartime Diaries. We at The Times of Israel asked the Israel Story team to compile a few episodes and after much deliberation, they selected three: Wartime Diaries: Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, the parents of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped from the Supernova Party, have in many ways emerged as the face of the hostage families. They’ve met with US President Joe Biden and the Pope, they were on the cover of Time Magazine, and Rachel has s