Haaretz Podcast

With a high-profile conflict between IDF soldiers and a CNN crew, the establishment of five new Israeli settler outposts on territory meant to be under Palestinian Authority control in a single night, and skyrocketing settler violence aimed at erasing Palestinians from their land, the situation in the West Bank has “definitely worsened” during the Iran war, Haaretz West Bank correspondent Matan Golan told the Haaretz Podcast.
Golan joined her colleague, Yarden Michaeli, for a podcast conversation focused on what is unfolding in the West Bank and Gaza while the world’s attention is diverted to the major regional conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States.
“It’s hard to count how many incidents of cars set on fire, and raids of settlers on Palestinian villages” have occurred over the past month, Golan said.
What the West Bank and Gaza have in common, Michaeli noted, is a situation in which steps designed to be interim measures – such as the Yellow Line separating Gaza – don’t appear to be temporary.
Since last autumn’s cease-fire, the IDF has maintained control of more than half of the Gaza Strip, and, as Michaeli explained, a Haaretz investigation has revealed the construction of military outposts and infrastructure that point to plans for an entrenched long-term presence.
“All of this is happening in the context of the government pushing in a certain direction,” he explained, “and what makes us so concerned about it is the experience we have from the West Bank.”
In the rest of the Strip, which remains under Hamas’ control, he said, the humanitarian crisis continues.
“We have 2.1 million people now in Gaza that are crammed to less than half the size of the land that they had prior to the war” with hundreds of thousands living in tents or makeshift shelters amid destroyed buildings with no access to power, fuel or running water – and over 18,000 severely ill people who have been denied entry to the West Bank and Jerusalem to receive medical care by Israeli authorities, Michaeli explained.
Read more:
32 Outposts, 10 Miles of Ground Barrier: IDF Builds New Border Line Inside Gaza. Here's How It Looks
Gaza Aid Reduced by 80 Percent Since Start of Iran War as Food Prices Surge
IDF Suspends Reserve Battalion Whose Soldiers Detained CNN Crew in West Bank
Palestinian Man Shot Dead, 14 Wounded in West Bank Settler Raids as Five New Outposts Established in One Night
Analysis by Dahlia Scheindlin | Don't Buy the Israeli Right's Sudden Concern for Settler Violence
Who Gets to Decide What Counts as an Accident in the West Bank?
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As Israelis continue to run to bomb shelters for protection from deadly Iranian missile attacks, the prospect of hosting Passover meals has felt overwhelming.
On the Haaretz Podcast, acclaimed food writer and cookbook author Adeena Sussman offers her best advice and coping tips and shares recipes that are easy and fun to execute, even in wartime. Cooking for the holidays can be stressful, she said, but in challenging times, becoming immersed in what is happening in the kitchen “can be a little bit of an escape”
“This year, let’s focus on what is meaningful and what will keep us sane,” she suggested.
Sussman is the author of three cookbooks – the first was published as the COVID-19 epidemic was sweeping the world, the second on the eve of October 7. Now her upcoming cookbook is due to be published this month in the shadow of the war with Iran.
This makes her, she says, experienced with “simple cooking for complicated times,” which is the theme of her new book, "Zariz," the Hebrew word for “speedy.”
Also complicated: being one of the most prominent representatives of Israeli cuisine in the U.S. at a time when Israel is such a hot-button issue that mainstream media outlets balk at writing about her work. Despite that, she said, her audience continues to grow, particularly online.
As she prepares to tour to promote her new book, she said, “I'm not trying to hide where I live or who I am, and I'm neither trying to defend nor indict a political situation for which I personally have no control.”
On the podcast, Sussman shares her tales of running an informal “WarBnB” where she cooks for friends and family camped out at their home because of the lack of a bomb shelter where they live, plus the most popular bomb shelter snacks, and how the war has transformed the atmosphere of Tel Aviv's Carmel Market near her home.
Read more:
Adeena Sussman Offers You Something for the Weekend in Her New ‘Shabbat’ Cookbook

This Love Letter to a Tel Aviv Food Market Is Getting a Lot of Love in America
Only the Shelves Remain: Inside Tel Aviv Wine Bar Shattered by Missiles
Tel Aviv-born Top Chef in London: 'It's Best Not to Say the Word 'Israel' Right Now'
Sex, Wine and Sacrifice: Jewish Holidays Used to Be Wild, Dramatic Affairs
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While at war with Iran and a civilian population under missile attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “has been working relentlessly towards the goal of making the public sphere of Israel more religious, its governance more autocratic, and the chances of replacing its leader slimmer,” Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn said on the Haaretz Podcast.
The push for the anti-democratic judicial coup and empowerment of ultra-Orthodox autonomy “hasn't changed despite October 7,” Benn said. He observed that it had slowed significantly on that date, but today, the massacre and ensuing war has given Netanyahu “even more motivation” to “escape any responsibility and accountability for October” as he looks ahead to the election scheduled for this fall.
In Benn’s wide-ranging conversation with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the four-week-old war and its impact on Israeli politics and society, Benn pointed out that the effort was not unusual, with many examples of wartime leaders taking advantage of “less public resistance” to consolidate their power.
“Governments at war use it to limit civil liberties. We see it in Russia in the past four years, very visibly, where the last remaining bastions of some sort of opposition to President Putin have been wiped out.”
Read more:
Netanyahu Says Israel 'Expanding' Lebanon Buffer Zone as Country's Death Toll Crosses 1,000
Stand-in Justice Minister Formally Recommends That President Herzog Pardon Netanyahu
Israel Preparing to Shift Pace, Targets of Iran Strikes if Trump Announces Cease-fire
Op-ed by Aluf Benn: The Strange Case of Dr. Bibi and Mr. Benjamin
Analysis by Anshel Pfeffer: In Iran, the Netanyahu Doctrine Is Now Facing Its Ultimate Test

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The U.S.-Israeli goal of initiating war in order to prevent Iran from going nuclear may result in a boomerang effect, according to former senior Mossad official Sima Shine, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast.
After the war, “if the regime stays in power, and there are good chances that it will,” Shine said, it will be far weaker, but it will possess “high emotional revenge” for what it has suffered and reinforce a belief that “only nuclear capability will deter future attacks, and I think they will do anything they can do to get to a nuclear bomb.”
Shine says that Western countries and Israel both fail to understand that “Iran is a system” – not driven by individual leaders, which is why the targeted assassinations of the country’s top officials have not harmed the country as much as expected.
While Iran would surely like the war to end sooner or later, she said, they have staying power and will only do so if they can exact a “high price,” and Tehran’s threats to disrupt world energy markets must be taken seriously.
In her conversation on the podcast, Shine categorized Iran’s hold on Lebanon through Hezbollah as a “tragedy” for Israel’s neighbor. She said it appeared that the strength of Hezbollah when it joined the war in Iran came as a “surprise to Israel. They have more capabilities than we saw before.”
The group, she said, will fight with all they have to preserve their political and military position in Lebanon. A buffer zone in southern Lebanon may be the only way to keep residents of northern Israel safe, “not from rockets and missiles, but from special forces of Hezbollah invading kibbutzim and cities” as Hamas did on October 7.
Read more:
Trump: U.S. in Truce Talks With Iran Aimed at 'Long-term, Guaranteed Peace for Israel'
Tehran's Next Top Leader? The Rise of Iran's Hardline Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf
Despite Iran's Denials, Israeli Officials Believe the U.S. Is Talking to Tehran Directly
Survivors of the Iranian strike in Arad: 'We Came Out of the Shelter and Saw Everything Destroyed. Like What We Do in Lebanon'
Israel to Hold Southern Lebanon, Block Residents' Return, Defense Minister Says
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is getting high marks from the Israeli public regarding his performance leading the country in its war against Iran – but for now, these sentiments are not giving his coalition a significant boost in political polling, according to Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast.
Scheindlin, a Haaretz columnist and political analyst, noted the war’s “overwhelming support” among Israeli Jews – reaching over 92 percent.
Despite the “near consensus” supporting the war and high personal approval of Netanyahu as a war leader, she points out, “poll ratings for the Likud and for the coalition government have been flat and stuck at 40 percent, and Netanyahu does not have a majority,” which does not bode well for the election scheduled for October.
While support for the war cuts across partisan lines in Israel, despite attitudes towards Netanyahu, Scheindlin says that surveys in the United States paint a different picture.
"If you look at the results of the question: ‘Do you approve or disapprove of Trump's handling of Iran?’ Scheindlin said, “it basically mirrors his approval ratings in general.”
She added that poll numbers point to the fact that the talk of a split among Trump’s base – especially “America First” Republicans – may be overly “hyped.”
Instead, she observed that U.S. opinion surveys reflected “overwhelming support from Republican voters… close to 80 percent."
Read more:
Analysis by Dahlia Scheindlin: Why Israelis Aren't Giving Netanyahu an Iran Bump in the Polls
Most Israelis Back Iran War but Support Low Among Arab Citizens, Poll Shows
Just One in Four Americans Supports U.S. Strikes on Iran, Poll Finds
Analysis by Joshua Leifer: The post-October 7 Wars in Iran and Lebanon Are Turning Into Netanyahu's Vietnam
Netanyahu's Likud Party Makes No Gains Amid Iran War, Poll Finds
A Billion Shekels a Day: The Number That May Decide When Israel's War With Iran Ends
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