Haaretz Podcast

In this special edition of the Haaretz Podcast, recorded during the first hours of the dramatic joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, and as Tehran began its retaliatory strikes on Israel and on U.S. targets across the Middle East, Haaretz senior analyst Amos Harel joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer for a real-time update and discussion.
"The stakes are much higher than last time," Harel said, referring to the 12 day Israel-Iran war in June 2025. For Israelis, "there is a certain amount of danger," although it is impossible to say at this point how hard the country will be hit by Iran and its proxies. For Iranians, "this is going to get messy and bloody," not only because of the military strikes, but also because of growing clashes between government forces and those hoping to throw over the regime.
Read more on the escalating situation:
How the First Day of the Israel and U.S. War with Iran Unfolded
War for Regime Change in Iran: U.S. and Israel Have Ambitious Aims, but Will Trump Stay the Course? / Amos Harel
'Unnecessary, Idiotic, and Illegal' | After Strikes on Iran: U.S. Lawmakers Split on Party Lines As Congress Left in the Dark
Larnaca or Sharm el-Sheikh: Can Israelis Stuck Abroad Amid Iran War Get Back Home?
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For Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, the financial support and professional opportunities afforded by her fellowship at the Wexner Foundation, which plugged her into a network of the “the most powerful Jewish professionals in the country,” were substantial.
But as a feminist rabbi whose most recent book is titled “On Repentance and Repair,” she felt she could not ignore the disturbing reality of the close personal and financial ties between Leslie Wexner, the benefactor of the foundation, and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, she tells the Haaretz Podcast.
In a personal act of accountability and repentance, in 2019, Ruttenberg – “shocked, disturbed and unsettled” by the early revelations regarding Epstein and Wexner – donated the funds she took from the foundation to an organization confronting sexual violence and challenged others to take similar steps.
There was little reaction to her call at the time. Now, with new details revealed in the Department of Justice release of the Epstein files, she says “my only regret is not speaking out earlier and more forcefully, no matter the cost.”
She warned that “when we try to pretend that none of this is happening, we feed every conspiracy theory. And when we say that who matters are raped children, and when we center the people who are harmed, and when we live the values of our Torah and of every other teaching that we claim is holy, then we dispel those theories, because we become the people who we are supposed to be … the people who are living our values.”
Read more:
Island Visit, NYC Flat and 'Belarusian Girls': Ex-Israel PM Ehud Barak Addresses Jeffrey Epstein Ties
The Ferrari, the Meetings and 'The Redhead': Latest Jeffrey Epstein Files Reveal Ties With Popular Israeli-American Researcher Dan Ariely
Memorializing Jeffrey Epstein? Pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 Confuses Convicted Sex Offender With Beloved Israeli Singer
Life After Harvard: What's in Store for Wexner Foundation's Israeli Leaders Program?
From 2020: Wexner Foundation Named After Billionaire Philanthropist Distancing Itself From Founder
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When an ultra-Orthodox mob attacked two women soldiers in the city of Bnei Brak earlier this week, Israelis were shocked and horrified.
But for Uri Keidar, CEO of Free Israel, this violent expression of ultra-Orthodox opposition to being drafted into the military did not come as a surprise.
“It’s not the first violent occurrence we have seen, and unfortunately, it probably also won't be the last incident. But it's definitely a sad moment for us as a country,” Keidar said, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast.
As the Netanyahu government continues to seek a way to pass legislation exempting tens of thousands of able-bodied ultra-Orthodox men from mandatory military service in order to preserve their political coalition, Keidar sees the country at a “historic” crossroads in which Israelis will stand up and refuse to let it happen.
“It's a very basic idea, I think, that the law applies to everyone,” he said on the podcast. In a post-October 7 reality alongside the IDF in a manpower crisis, he said, “the Israeli public just will not accept the fact” that “there are tens of thousands of young haredi men who are totally healthy, who can join the IDF at any given moment, and are refusing to do so.”
That refusal, he said, represents the country’s “biggest civil disobedience movement since its history” and Israelis “from the right, left and center” are uniting to oppose it.
Read more:
Explained: The Military Conscription Bill Driving Riots in Haredi Cities
Overturned Cars, Motorcycles on Fire: Police Arrest 26 in Haredi Riot Sparked When Two IDF Soldiers Visit Bnei Brak
Bnei Brak Riots Break From Ideology and Become an Outlet for Aimless Rage
Israel Police Tells IDF They Will Not Assist in Arrest of ultra-Orthodox Draft Dodgers
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Even by the most extreme “Romeo and Juliet” standards, Sari Bashi’s romance and marriage to her partner, Osama, has overcome impossible odds.
When the two met in 2006, she related on the Haaretz Podcast, “It was very confusing for both of us, both because of the overwhelming social taboos, and the fact that it was also literally illegal for us to meet up together.”
The two met after he had been “trapped” for six years in the city of Ramallah, where he was pursuing a career in academia. Registered as a resident of Gaza, where he was born, travelling elsewhere in the West Bank – or abroad – meant that the authorities would send him back to Gaza. Bashi had recently founded the human rights organization Gisha, and was assisting him gain permission from the Israeli authorities to study for his doctorate abroad.
Bashi’s new book “Upside-Down Love” – written diary-style from both Bashi’s and Osama’s perspective – chronicles the story of the logistics of their courtship, like a date in which they took a hike in a West Bank countryside and “as we encountered more and more settlers with guns, it became apparent that I had an identity and a language that was common with the people who terrified him.”
But despite the ongoing identity and security challenges, their love persevered. Bashi, who is also the newly appointed executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, talks about their life as a family in the West Bank – and the evolving complicated identities of their two Palestinian Jewish children, as she watches them “engage more in a process of trying to assert who they are. I think it'll change probably a million times before they become adults.”
Read more:
A Jewish Mom and a Palestinian Dad Raise a Family Full of Endless Contradictions
Browse the Umm Forat column (2019-2022) in Haaretz
Israeli Human Rights Groups Tell UN That Israel Increased Use of Torture During Gaza War
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Following the hastily arranged three-hour meeting between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, it still remains unclear whether a military attack on Iran is in the cards, but the two leaders appear “more aligned than not” on their positions, Haaretz’s Washington D.C. correspondent Ben Samuels said on the Haaretz Podcast.
“Whether or not that turns into a world war remains to be seen,” he added, in view of the “Armada in the Middle East and more military assets on their way” that the United States has positioned around Iran to keep the option of a military move on the table.
Netanyahu rushed to Washington to lobby Trump to hold firm in his negotiations with Iran to include demands beyond a halt to their nuclear program. The Israeli position is that in order to forestall an attack, Iran must be forced to limit their ballistic missile capabilities and support for regional proxy organizations – in addition to a commitment from Tehran to improve its treatment of protesters, who have been killed in the tens of thousands by the regime in since late December.
“What you're seeing from Israel is a very articulated view that any sort of negotiation at any deal has to be all inclusive,” Samuels said.
The Trump administration’s position, by contrast, he said, is far from clear.
“Part of this is intentional misdirection on Trump's part, but part of it is also very unintentional. Trump is doing diplomacy by the seat of his pants and by whatever whims are taking over him at that very moment.”
Read more:
Analysis by Ben Samuels | Trump and Netanyahu Prioritize a United Front Over Rocking the Boat on Iran
Trump Says He 'Insisted' That Negotiations With Iran Continue in Meeting With Netanyahu
Netanyahu Joins Trump's Board of Peace Set to Discuss Gaza Reconstruction, Hamas Disarmament Sidelined
Why This Iranian Revolution Scholar Won't Encourage Iranians to Topple the Regime
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