Haaretz Podcast

The most recent attempt at a show of unity by the Jewish Zionist parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was only partially successful.
With the election less than a month away, their leaders may have agreed not to campaign against each other and save their fire for Netanyahu – but they failed to explicitly commit to backing whichever party leader garners the most votes to head the bloc, said Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz, speaking on the Haaretz Election Podcast.
"For most of the people who support the parties in the opposition bloc, it was a big disappointment that they couldn't say what seems so obvious to most people," Maltz said of the meeting between the four major parties opposed to Netanyahu.
"There was a lot of hope that they would emerge ... and say, 'We have a leader. It will be Eisenkot against Netanyahu,' but they could not reach an agreement on that."
Maltz was joined on the podcast by fellow Haaretz journalist Linda Dayan and host Allison Kaplan Sommer to discuss the fallout of the Central Elections Committee's decision to disqualify Arab parties along with individual members of the party, and the controversial decision by left-wing Democrats leader Yair Golan to support barring Balad party head Sami Abu Shehadah, who made comments following October 7 that were interpreted as supporting the Hamas attack.
"What he wrote is disgusting," Dayan said. "The question is whether it's actually illegal, and there are a lot of figures saying that it isn't," and noted that such votes to disqualify candidates is an "Israeli election tradition."
Maltz, who has been traveling across the country over the past months, reporting on the mood of Israeli voters, spoke on the podcast about her visit to Kibbutz Be'eri, where 132 people were massacred and 35 taken hostage on October 7, to find out how that trauma has affected their politics.
"Overall, most of them have moved to the right. But they will not vote for any parties in the current coalition, because much as they hate Hamas, they hate the current Israeli government even more, and blame them for October 7."
Read more:
Opposition Leaders Agree to Decide Who Will Lead Next Government Only After Elections
Banned Arab Party Leader to Challenge Knesset Disqualification in Court Despite Internal Opposition
Israel's AG Urges Court to Disqualify Arab Party Leader Over Post-Oct. 7 Remarks
Eisenkot Says No Arab Party Meets Demands to Join Government Led by Him
'Not Once Did You Use the Word Peace': In English, Yair Golan Strikes a Centrist Tone
Did Kibbutz Be'eri Lose Faith in the Left?
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On the eve of the New York premiere of their film, "NAZA," co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor sat with Haaretz U.S. senior writer Etan Nechin to talk about the journalistic investigations behind the film, the unprecedented criticism of them in Israel – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat to strip them of their citizenship – and why it’s important to them to come back home and engage with Israelis.
In this episode of the Haaretz podcast, you can listen to Abraham discuss what he thought of Netanyahu likening the documentary to “dozens of missiles” being fired at Israel; the Trump administration's material support of the Gaza war and U.S. debate about arms sales to Israel; the film’s title and thematic association with Nazi Germany; why so many specific details were taken out of the film; and his plan to return to Israel and continue his work.
“I don't want to be an exile,” he said, declaring that “there are no grounds” to revoke his or Szor’s citizenship.
“We're journalists. We're filmmakers. … The storm will pass, and we will come back and move on to the next thing.”
The full interview with Abraham and Szor will be available on haaretz.com on Sunday.
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After rapper Macklemore cried "Free Palestine!" as he took the stage as the opening act for music superstar Ed Sheeran, opened a Pandora's box of controversy over free speech and the place of politics at a music concert "that is not dying down any time soon," said Philissa Cramer on the Haaretz Podcast.
Cramer, recently appointed senior Jewish Life correspondent for Haaretz, recounted on the podcast how, when Gillette Stadium and New England Patriots billionaire owner Robert Kraft refused to have Macklemore at his venue later in the Sheeran tour, and the rapper was removed as an opening act for Sheeran, the incident "turned from a story about was Macklemore doing something that his audience found objectionable - to a story about cancel culture."
In addition to telling the story of the war of words and promises of donations, Cramer discussed with podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer whether the episode carried lessons for the embattled organized U.S. Jewish community as the list of prominent celebrities speaking out publicly Palestinian rights continues to grow.
Read more:
Pro-Israel Group Petitions Ed Sheeran to Drop Macklemore for Saying 'Free Palestine'
Ed Sheeran Apologizes for Macklemore Controversy, Says Gaza Devastation Is 'Unjustifiable'
Robert Kraft vs. Macklemore Reveals New Reality in 'Free Palestine' Debate
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The violence of extremist settlers on the West Bank as they systematically terrorize, attack and even displace Palestinian communities is a “perversion of Judaism” and a desecration of God’s name,” said Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast in the week between the Jewish New Year and its Day of Atonement.
Joining Weiman-Kelman on the podcast is Loui Ridi, a Palestinian American who flew from Ohio back to his home in the West Bank village of Qusra, after settlers laid siege to his neighborhood and the IDF declared a closed military zone. Ridi has been unable to leave his house for a month due to the order, and says the closure has been selectively enforced against Palestinians, while the army refuses to remove the settlers.
Ridi is flying the American flag on his house, he said, “as a message to the U.S. government, to the U.S. officials, that I need protection and I need help.”
Weiman-Kelman, a former president of Rabbis for Human Rights and retired spiritual leader of Kol HaNeshama, a Reform synagogue in Jerusalem, reflected on the situation in the West Bank and the overall state of the country following Rosh Hashanah and ahead of Yom Kippur – a day on which, he said, “I want to atone for still feeling the effects of October 7, for the nationalist part of me overcoming the universal vision that is also part of me.”
Israel today is not only threatened by external enemies, but “threatened from within by the moral center of this country beginning to shatter and disintegrate before our eyes,” he said.
“We live in a country where people feel encouraged and empowered to express their darkest sides through acts of physical violence,” he said, including repeated vandalism to the Reform synagogue in Jerusalem he founded in 1985.
Read more:
One Month and One IDF 'Outpost Evacuation' Later, Qusra Remains Besieged by Settlers
Palestinian-American Returns to West Bank Home Besieged by Israeli Settlers
B'Tselem Says Israel Is Implementing a 'Project of Elimination' Against Palestinians in the West Bank
IDF Dismisses Commander Over Praying With Settlers at West Bank Outpost
American Rabbis Confront a Fraught Question This High Holy Day Season: How to Talk About Israel
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The intensifying Israeli election campaign encompasses a long list of issues, but at its heart, the results of the vote on October 27 will be “about the transition out of the Netanyahu era,” contended Anshel Pfeffer, Israel correspondent for The Economist, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast.
Pfeffer said that many have done their best “to be the next Netanyahu,” attempting to project his confidence, authority and leadership, while consciously or unconsciously replicating the current prime minister’s style. The front-runner, former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, he noted, has a “big advantage is that he’s the first ‘wannabe Bibi’ who is not a ‘wannabe Bibi’” in looks and behavior.
Pfeffer returned to Haaretz for the podcast, where he worked as a correspondent and columnist for over 25 years and continues to contribute, for a reunion with columnist Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin, with whom he co-hosted the “Election Overdose” podcast during the run-up to the 2022 elections.
In the first Haaretz Election Podcast since the party lists were finalized on September 8, Scheindlin and Pfeffer assessed the chances of each party and bloc, as well as grappling with the larger issues: most importantly, the legacy of October 7.
Netanyahu’s newest challenge from the far-right former general Ofer Winter “is saying this election is about October 7, and that’s something that Netanyahu really doesn’t want the election to be about. For him, October 7 is kryptonite,” Pfeffer said.
But, Scheindlin said, it is inescapable.
“The sense that there has been no accountability for what happened on October 7 is not a marginal issue,” she emphasized. Israelis whose lives were upended by the events on that day and their aftermath “feel betrayed not only by the government, but by the state itself.”
Read more:
Israeli Elections Poll Projects Tie Between Blocs as Eisenkot Bloc Slips
Poll: Most Israeli Voters Say October 7 Will Be Main Consideration at Ballot Box
Netanyahu's Likud Seeks to Disqualify Arab Party From 2026 Knesset Election Run
Analysis | Netanyahu's Terrible Tuesday Left Him Almost Unscathed in Election Polls – for Now
Analysis | The Quiet Radicalism of Mansour Abbas and Yoav Segalovitz
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