The Honest Take

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The Honest Take is HonestReporting's long-form interview series bringing together leading voices to examine how Israel and the Middle East are covered — and what goes into creating and feeding the narratives that target Israel. Each episode features leading experts, analysts, researchers, and journalists who work on media bias, terrorism, NGO accountability, foreign influence, antisemitism, and international institutions. These are professionals directly involved in investigating how narratives are shaped, amplified, and protected across global newsrooms. The conversations go beyond breaking news to unpack: • Media bias and misinformation about Israel • How terrorist organizations exploit humanitarian and civil society frameworks • The role of NGOs and international bodies in shaping public perception • Foreign state influence on Western media and education • Why context disappears in reporting on Israel and the Palestinians This series is for listeners seeking in-depth analysis, evidence-based discussion, and accountability in journalism on Israel and the Middle East.

  1. hace 5 días ·  Video

    The Jews Are Not the Target. The West Is. Can Zionism Save It? | With Alana Newhouse

    Alana Newhouse founded Tablet Magazine in 2009 and has spent the years since arguing that the things holding modern life together have quietly come apart. Her 2021 essay "Everything Is Broken" gave that condition a name — flatness — and her March 2026 essay "Zionism for Everyone" turned the diagnosis outward: Zionism, she argues, is not a slogan or a grievance but a technology for national renewal, and the reason it enrages people has less to do with Jews than with what its success implies about everybody else. Ben Chertoff sits down with her for a conversation that runs from why Gen Z readers demanded a print edition, to the line about envy that lit up Jewish Twitter, to whether the word "Zionism" should be retired, to what she'd tell a 25-year-old journalist trying to build something real in a collapsing media landscape. Her answer to the last one is the same as her answer to the first: figure out what is distinct about you, build a vision around it, and jam on it every single day. Alana Newhouse is the founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, which she launched in 2009 and which relaunched in print in 2025 on the strength of demand from its youngest readers. She grew up in Lawrence, New York, and was educated at the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, Barnard College, and the Columbia Journalism School. Before Tablet she covered religion and then edited the culture section at The Forward, and edited Nextbook. Her 2021 essay "Everything Is Broken" introduced the idea of flatness and gave rise to what's since been called brokenism; her March 2026 essay "Zionism for Everyone" argues that Zionism is a technology of national renewal available to any people willing to use it. Zionism is a technology, not a slogan. Newhouse's argument is functional, not sentimental: national renewal requires distinctiveness, a vision of the future, and ruthless pragmatism about getting there. Israel has all three, which is why it works — and why watching it work is unbearable for societies that have discarded all three. Antisemitism is a symptom of a sick society, not a freestanding disease.When you ask what someone is actually feeling when they say Jews kill babies, she argues, what you find underneath is envy — and envy points at a lack in the person feeling it. The fight is not really about the Jews. "The target here is the West. We are just in the way." The Jewish state is the first line of defense in an argument about whether any people is entitled to be particular. Retiring the word "Zionism" would be a mistake. Against the argument that the term is a liability, she holds that it is not a marketing choice picked up recently and discardable now — it names something real and old. Flatness is the underlying condition. The 2021 essay's diagnosis — systems optimized until all friction and texture are gone — is the same diagnosis she applies to nations that have sanded off their own distinctiveness. October 7, in her reading, was the shock that broke a lot of people out of it. Diasporism is a costume. The revival of Bundist doikayt on the Jewish left is not, in her view, a Jewish argument at all — it's a Jewish door into an ideology the arguer already wanted. The media collapse is an opening, not an ending. Legacy institutions are losing their monopoly, independents are inheriting the audience, and the two sets of norms are merging. She builds tools for the people who will do the work — "I make pens for creative people." The method scales down to one person. Everything she says about nations she means about individuals: know what is distinct about you, build a vision around it, and show up to it daily. Links 🎧 Listen and subscribe: https://podcast.honestreporting.com 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-honest-take/id1896315802 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pCnClcM4jiggKP46YZGjG 🌐 https://honestreporting.com Guest: • Tablet Magazine — https://www.tabletmag.com • "Zionism for Everyone," Alana Newhouse, Tablet, March 2026 — https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/zionism-for-everyone • "Everything Is Broken," Alana Newhouse, Tablet, January 14, 2021 — https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/everything-is-broken • Alana Newhouse on 18Forty — https://18forty.org/podcast/alana-newhouse/ • Alana Newhouse on The Unspeakable with Meghan Daum — https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/p/alana-newhouse-flatness-broken-systems-tablet-magazine Referenced in this episode: • Daniel Gordis's response to "Zionism for Everyone" — https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/i-think-israelis-would-have-a-hard • Irwin Kula's response, via Shaul Magid — https://shaulmagid.substack.com/p/irwin-kulas-response-to-alana-newhouse • "Is jealousy the root of anti-Zionism?", Jerusalem Post — https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-893186 • Gil Troy on the argument for retiring "Zionism," Jerusalem Post, June 18, 2026 — https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-899675 • Columbia Journalism Review on the American Jewish press after October 7, January 2025 — https://www.cjr.org/world/front-row-seat-polarization-american-jewish-press-october-7-hamas-israel-zionist-coverage.php

    The Jews Are Not the Target. The West Is. Can Zionism Save It? | With Alana Newhouse

  2. 9 ago ·  Video extra

    What "Globalize the Intifada" Actually Means, From Someone Who Lived It | With Arnold Roth

    Twenty-five years ago, sixteen people were murdered at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. One was Arnold Roth's fifteen-year-old daughter, Malki. The woman who planned it is free in Jordan, wanted by the FBI with a $5 million reward on her head — and has never once said she's sorry. Arnold Roth on what the intifada actually was, why "suicide bomber" is the wrong phrase, and the thing he built in his daughter's name that is still doing good every single day. On August 9, 2001, a young man walked into a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem carrying a guitar case. It was a school holiday. The restaurant was full. A few minutes before two o'clock he pressed a button on his chest, and sixteen people were murdered — one of them Malki Roth, fifteen years old, a flautist who spent her holidays volunteering with severely disabled children because her own little sister was one. Her father Arnold spent the next twelve hours not knowing where she was. He has spent the twenty-five years since trying to bring the woman who planned the attack to justice, and he is still trying. Ahlam Tamimi was twenty-one. She was Jordanian, from a comfortable family, and she chose the target. She was sentenced to sixteen life terms, released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit exchange, and returned to Jordan to a hero's welcome — where she has lived openly ever since. She is on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. The United States has a five-million-dollar reward out for her. She has never expressed regret; she has said publicly that her only disappointment is that she didn't kill more. In this conversation, Ben asks Arnold to do something he says he doesn't get asked to do often: not to make the legal case — he's made that a thousand times, and he makes it here too — but to describe what the Second Intifada actually was, for the benefit of people who chant its name and could not tell you a single thing that happened during it. More than a thousand Israelis were killed between 2000 and 2005 in a country of six million. Also in this episode: the phone call from the BBC on the Sunday after the funeral, offering to pair him with the bomber's father for "contrasting views"; the four and a half years Tamimi spent hosting a weekly television program on Jordanian soil while already under US indictment; the AP crew that interviewed her in her own home; and why Arnold says he would simply walk away from the student at Columbia in a keffiyeh — not because he's given up, but because he thinks the entire problem has been misdiagnosed and the real fix is generational, unglamorous, and hasn't been invented yet. And then the part he saves for the end. Asked what has kept him going, he doesn't talk about extradition. He talks about the seven days of mourning, sitting in his own house with his children, deciding to build something. What they built helps families keep severely disabled children at home instead of surrendering them to an institution. It is now in its twenty-fifth year. It is named after her. Arnold Roth is an Australian-born lawyer in Jerusalem and co-founder of the Malki Foundation, which helps families keep severely disabled children at home rather than in institutions — the work Malki herself was doing the week she was killed. He has spent a quarter of a century campaigning to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi, who is under US indictment, sits on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $5 million reward attached, and was released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit exchange alongside Yahya Sinwar. 🎧 Listen and subscribe: https://podcast.honestreporting.com 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-honest-take/id1896315802 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pCnClcM4jiggKP46YZGjG 🌐 https://honestreporting.com From this episode: • The Malki Foundation (Keren Malki) — https://kerenmalki.org • "A Beautiful Life" — the family's own account of who Malki was — https://kerenmalki.org/a-beautiful-life/ • FBI Most Wanted Terrorists: Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi — https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/ahlam-ahmad-al-tamimi • Rewards for Justice: up to $5 million — https://rewardsforjustice.net/rewards/ahlam-ahmad-al-tamimi/ • Times of Israel, June 2025 — the Roths deliver a 30,000-signature petition to the US Embassy in Jerusalem — https://www.timesofisrael.com/parents-of-sbarro-bombing-victim-urge-us-to-demand-hamas-terrorists-extradition/ • Times of Israel, June 2023 — the sixteenth victim, Chana Nachenberg, dies after 22 years — https://www.timesofisrael.com/woman-critically-injured-in-palestinian-terror-attack-22-years-ago-dies-of-wounds/ If this episode gave you something, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it genuinely decides who else finds the show. And follow HonestReporting on YouTube, X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

    What "Globalize the Intifada" Actually Means, From Someone Who Lived It | With Arnold Roth

  3. 4 ago ·  Video

    Why Is the Jew the Enemy? How Arab Antisemitism Is Built — And How It Breaks | With Rawan Osman

    She ran out of a Strasbourg grocery store so fast she left her purse in the shopping cart. Rawan Osman was in her mid-twenties, newly arrived from Lebanon, and had just seen four Orthodox Jewish men for the first time in her life. Then she went back down to face the shopkeeper — who smiled, helped her with her bags, and, as she puts it, "converted me from an enemy to an ally." She grew up in Hezbollah country in the Beqaa Valley and never met a Jew; with more than 850,000 Jews uprooted from the Arab world, she argues, there was nobody present to contradict what school, television and Al Jazeera taught her. She joins Ben Chertoff to trace how that machinery works and where it breaks: the Ramadan dramas, her cousins' khaki school uniforms, the seven years of reading it took before she could walk into a synagogue, why she thinks expecting Hamas or Hezbollah to disarm is "laughable" — and why she is nonetheless optimistic. "I cannot bring millions of Arabs. But we can bring Israel to them."Key Takeaways The absence was structural, not incidental. She never met a Jew growing up, and she doesn't treat that as an accident of geography. With the Jewish quarters empty of its Jews, there was nobody in the room to contradict school, television and Al Jazeera. The propaganda worked because it was unopposed.Contact beats argument. Nothing she read broke the worldview. A shopkeeper who helped with her bags did. She frames the whole episode as a single interaction that "converted me from an enemy to an ally."Deprogramming is slow, and takes willingness. It took seven years of study before she could work up the courage to enter a synagogue — and she was willing to do so. That timeline is the basis for her flat rejection of Western assumptions about Hamas and Hezbollah laying down weapons: for men whose profession is fighting, she calls it "laughable."Media is the delivery system, and it's testable. The Ramadan dramas, Al Jazeera's launch, Qana on television. Her proposed test takes ten minutes, and anyone can do it: read the same Al Jazeera story in Arabic and in English.Erbil is the model. She points to Iraqi Kurdistan as the regional model for coexistence: a place that absorbed its minorities rather than erasing them.She is optimistic, and specific about why. The Arab world won't go to Israel, but Israel can be brought to them through social media and automatic translation. In the age of AI, a seventy-year information blockade is collapsing, and she says this plan isn't a far-fetched dream: "We already did it."Notable Quotes "For the first time in my life I was sharing the same space with the Jew, the enemy — and for the first time in my life I asked myself, why is the Jew the enemy?" (0:06, and again at 16:20)"He converted me from an enemy to an ally." (15:54)"We in Hezbollah do not acknowledge political borders." — Nasrallah, in the video she found (17:05)"So it's laughable to listen to Westerners who assert… that Hamas will disarm." (38:47)"Israel is not going anywhere. No matter how much money you invest, no matter how many Al Jazeeras you open, no matter how many lies you tell." (47:49)"Nobody's interested in giving them the mic. The BBC won't talk to them. CNN won't talk to them. Al Jazeera won't talk to them." (56:42)"I have good news for you. We already did it." (58:38)"I cannot bring millions of Arabs… but we can bring Israel to them." (58:45)"The axis of resistance is not invested in the well-being of the Palestinian. If they wanted to liberate Palestinians, they would allow the liberation of their own people." (1:01:54)"Enemy to an ally. That's the whole argument, in a single moment. Contact beats propaganda." — Ben Chertoff, outro (1:03:26)Guest Bio (for the feed) Rawan Osman is a Syrian-born, Lebanon-raised researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. She founded Arabs Ask, an Arabic-language forum where Arabs can ask the questions about Jews and Israel they cannot ask at home, and she is a central voice in the documentary Tragic Awakening. She has addressed the UN Human Rights Council twice, describes herself as an "Arab Zionist" and a recovered antisemite, and is converting to Judaism. Links 🎧 Listen and subscribe: https://podcast.honestreporting.com 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-honest-take/id1896315802 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pCnClcM4jiggKP46YZGjG 🌐 https://honestreporting.com Guest: • Arabs Ask — Arabic-language forum (Instagram) • Times of Israel blog — https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/rawan-osman/ • Jerusalem Center, "Can Erbil Inspire a New Syria?" — https://jcfa.org/can-erbil-inspire-a-new-syria/ • UN Watch testimony — https://unwatch.org/testimony/speaker/rawan-osman • Tragic Awakening (2024, dir. Rabbi Raphael Shore) If this episode gave you something, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it genuinely helps people find the show. And follow HonestReporting on YouTube, X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

    Why Is the Jew the Enemy? How Arab Antisemitism Is Built — And How It Breaks | With Rawan Osman

  4. 28 jul ·  Video

    The Familiar Villain: Gaza, Activist Journalism, and the Unspoken Rules of Reporting on Israel | With Matti Friedman

    Matti Friedman spent five years inside the AP's Jerusalem bureau. He explains the staffing anomaly, the peace offer that was ordered killed, and the Hamas censorship AP readers were never told about. We throw around the phrase "media bias" as though it means a bad headline here, an unfair paragraph there. Matti Friedman is describing something much larger — and he's describing it from the inside. From 2006 to 2011, Friedman was a reporter and editor in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press: the biggest international bureau of the world's biggest news organization, feeding copy, photos, and footage to roughly 10,000 outlets worldwide. He came in from the left of the Israeli political spectrum with no particular critique of the press. It took him about two years to conclude that what the bureau produced wasn't really coverage. The first thing that struck him wasn't ideology. It was arithmetic. The AP had around 40 full-time staffers covering a country that is one one-hundredth of one percent of the world's surface — more reporters than it had in China, and more than it had in all of sub-Saharan Africa. In this conversation with Ben Chertoff, Friedman walks through what that machine actually did: The peace offer that never ran. In 2008, two AP reporters had Ehud Olmert's far-reaching two-state offer to Mahmoud Abbas — one of them had seen the map. They were ordered to drop it, because the story would have subverted the narrative the bureau was already committed to. Reporter Mark Lavie later called it the worst journalistic scandal of his fifty years in the business.The editor's note that never was. During Operation Cast Lead, the AP's correspondent in Gaza reported that Hamas fighters were dressing as civilians and being counted in the civilian death toll. Friedman put it in the story. Then came the phone call, and the detail came out. When Friedman proposed that AP disclose it was conforming to Hamas censorship — exactly as it discloses Israeli military censorship — he was overruled. Readers were never told.Why every outlet lands on the same story by the end of the day, without anyone coordinating anything.Why "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" is the wrong name for the thing, and how the reframing away from "the Arab-Israeli conflict" quietly flipped who looks outnumbered.The Gaza bookshelf — the new literary genre in which Gaza becomes the lens for feminism, the climate, and everything else, and what it means that a very old idea is finding a very new audience.Friedman's diagnosis isn't a conspiracy. It's a bubble, an incentive structure, and a professional identity that changed: reporters who, in his words, "didn't want to cover the circus — they wanted to be dancing bears in the circus." Guest: Matti Friedman is a Canadian-born Israeli journalist and author. He wrote the widely discussed 2014 Tablet essay "An Insider's Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth," and he is the author of five books — The Aleppo Codex, Pumpkinflowers, Spies of No Country, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, and, new this year, Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe, the story of the Jewish parachutists — Hannah Senesh among them — who escaped Nazi Europe for British Mandate Palestine and then volunteered to go back in. He writes from Jerusalem for The Free Press. Mentioned in this episode Matti Friedman, "An Insider's Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth" (Tablet, 2014) — https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-insider-guideOut of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe (Spiegel & Grau, 2026) — https://www.spiegelandgrau.com/out-of-the-skyDavid Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western TraditionThe Free Press — https://www.thefp.comThe Times of Israel — Friedman's pick for a daily news wrapLinks 🎧 The Honest Take: https://podcast.honestreporting.com 📺 Full episode playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLuF-lEHTGTw_RrfN9EP6pdWhgjMX7Fg5 If this conversation gave you something to think about, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it's the single biggest thing you can do to help more people find the show. And follow HonestReporting on Instagram, X, TikTok, and Facebook.

    The Familiar Villain: Gaza, Activist Journalism, and the Unspoken Rules of Reporting on Israel | With Matti Friedman

  5. 21 jul ·  Video

    No One Wants a Jewish Protagonist: Inside Publishing's New Blacklist | With Meg Keene

    PEN America — the country's oldest and most prestigious free-expression organization — put out a report documenting how Jewish and Israeli writers are being frozen out of publishing. Within 24 hours, its own president had resigned over it. Not because the report went too far, but because it suggested, gently and with footnotes, that boycotting Jews might be a form of discrimination. Author Meg Keene wrote the Wall Street Journal piece that took the whole thing apart — and she's the most-quoted voice in the report itself. For fifteen years she wasn't a political writer at all: she built one of the most-read wedding blogs in the country, A Practical Wedding, with two books that sold well over 150,000 copies passed hand-to-hand between brides who'd never met. She was, in her own words, "the dream author." Then Charlottesville happened. Then Tree of Life. And after October 7, she sat down and wrote an achingly Jewish novel in seven days. The Big Five wouldn't touch it. One agent said the problem was a single word — Zionist. Another said the book could survive if she renamed a character from Yael to Sue. So Meg made a choice: if they weren't going to publish her anyway, she'd tell the truth out loud, and light her own fiction career on fire to do it. In this conversation: the free-speech paradox at the heart of the PEN resignation; how the industry's blacklist works without anyone ever having to write it down; the St. Martin's Press boycott and the rise of influencer-driven publishing; and the moment Meg went hunting for a 2024 blacklist in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency archive — and pulled up three articles she couldn't tell apart from the present, all dated 1939, all about the blacklisting of Jewish authors in Germany. Her argument isn't to shrink. It's to write more, document more, and build our own institutions the way we always have — because, as she puts it, "we are not a people for whom culture is the icing on the cake. It's the cake." Meg Keene Substack — "Field Notes for the Brave": https://megkeene.substack.comInstagram: https://instagram.com/megkeeneX: https://x.com/megkeeneSite: https://megkeene.comReferenced in the episode PEN America — "A Silent Moratorium" (July 9, 2026): https://pen.org/a-silent-moratorium-interviews-with-israeli-and-jewish-writers/Dinaw Mengestu resigns as PEN America president (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/arts/pen-america-dinaw-mengestu-resigns.htmlMeg Keene's Wall Street Journal op-ed on PEN and cultural boycotts (July 2026): https://www.wsj.comJewish Telegraphic Agency archive: https://www.jta.org/archive

    No One Wants a Jewish Protagonist: Inside Publishing's New Blacklist | With Meg Keene

  6. 14 jul ·  Video

    There Is Nowhere Else: Israeli Security, Zionist Pride, and the Doctrine That Broke on October 7 | With Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi

    Every American of a certain age remembers exactly where they were on September 11th. For Israelis, that morning was October 7th. Brigadier General Amir Avivi — a thirty-year IDF veteran, former deputy commander of the Gaza Division, and founder of Israel's largest movement of security professionals — saw it coming. Two years before the war, his organization wrote a national-security assessment describing the attack that was coming; six months before it, he published a book about it. Nobody in power acted on it. Ben Chertoff sits down with Avivi to understand how that happened, and what it means going forward. They get into the Cold War doctrine Israel quietly adopted and why it failed; what it's actually like to defend a country forty-five miles wide, where you can see your enemies from the airport; the real history of the Gaza withdrawal and why Avivi says Israel can never repeat it in the West Bank; and his blunt, uncomfortable answer to the question of rising global antisemitism — that the only long-term future for the Jewish people is in Israel. Some of it is hard to hear. That's the point. ABOUT THE GUEST Brigadier General (res.) Amir Avivi is a thirty-year veteran of the Israel Defense Forces. He served as deputy commander of the Gaza Division and as aide-de-camp to the Chief of the General Staff, among other senior commands. In 2020 he founded the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF / Hebrew: "Habithonistim"), a security-establishment movement that has grown to roughly 55,000 members, including dozens of reserve generals and senior defense officials. He handed the chairmanship to Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Wiener on June 1, 2026. He is the author of No Retreat: How to Secure Israel for Generations to Come, whose Hebrew edition appeared about six months before October 7th and which he frames as having foreseen the war and its aftermath. LINKS & RESOURCES Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF / Habithonistim):https://idsf.org.il/en/Book — No Retreat: How to Secure Israel for Generations to ComeGuest on X: @AmirAvivi1THE HONEST TAKE — SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW Podcast (all platforms): https://podcast.honestreporting.comWatch on YouTube: The Honest Take — full episodes playlistApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-honest-take/id1896315802Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pCnClcM4jiggKP46YZGjGFollow @HonestReporting on X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.If this episode gave you something to chew on, subscribe wherever you're listening, and leave a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify — it genuinely helps new people find the show.

    There Is Nowhere Else: Israeli Security, Zionist Pride, and the Doctrine That Broke on October 7 | With Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi

  7. 7 jul ·  Video

    Broken Mirror: Internalized Antisemitism, the Non-Jewish Gaze, and Why Jewish Pride is the Answer to Jew Hate | With Ben M. Freeman

    The founder of the Jewish Pride movement says Jews have spent so long fighting for the right to exist that they've forgotten how to be proud that they do. Ben M. Freeman — a gay Jewish kid from Glasgow who had to come out twice, first as gay and then as an unapologetic Zionist — joins Ben Chertoff to make the affirmative case: that Jews are not a religion but a people, an ancient civilization indigenous to the Land of Israel, and that pride, not defense, is the real answer to Jew-hatred. Along the way: internalized antisemitism and his "three D's," the "non-Jewish gaze," why he reframes "Eastern European Jews" as "Jews who lived in Eastern Europe," the UN's own criteria for indigeneity, and why he says anti-Zionism is antisemitism — no asterisk. Key Takeaways Pride, not defense, is the point. Freeman's whole project is affirmative: "Jewish pride is the root to fighting Jew-hatred." You can't fight antisemitism, he argues, unless you're first proud to be a Jew.Jews are a people, not a religion. His "hill to die on": Judaism is equivalent to Jewishness — an Am, a civilization with a religion — and defining Jews only as a faith is a Christian import that creates endless contradictions.Internalized antisemitism has three forms. Diminishment (making yourself smaller — "I'm Jewish, but…"), denial (disowning your Jewishness), and deployment (weaponizing it, as anti-Zionist Jews do). Diminishment is the most common.Only Jews define Jewish identity — the "non-Jewish gaze." Because the non-Jewish world both isn't Jewish and has been structured against Jews, its definitions of "palatable" Jewishness are illegitimate; allies should amplify Jewish perspectives, not speak over them.The indigeneity case. Applying the UN's criteria (he discards the "non-dominant group" one as post-colonial nonsense), he argues Jews meet them — continuous connection to the land, a land-rooted calendar and festivals, Hebrew beneath every diaspora language, Jews buried with soil from Jerusalem. Reframes "Eastern European Jews" as "Jews who lived in Eastern Europe."He won't litigate Palestinian indigeneity. "I'm a Jew telling a Jewish story." He notes questions about when a collective Palestinian national identity emerged, but says it ultimately doesn't change the reality: "they are still here and we need to deal with that."Anti-Zionism is antisemitism — no asterisk. Criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate; the line, per Sharansky's 3D test, is delegitimization, demonization, and double standards. "Israel purposely kills Palestinian children" or "harvests organs" isn't policy critique — it's blood libel.Head, Hands, Heart. A proudly Jewish next generation needs knowledge (head), practice (hands), and — the hardest — cultivated pride (heart), taught from kindergarten on.Notable Quotes "The greatest achievement of the Jewish people is not Israel. The greatest achievement of the Jewish people is the Jewish people, and Israel is a major manifestation of that.""I was failed in an essay because I would not say that Israel was the worst country in the world — and that was direct feedback given to me by a professor.""Jews are not a religion. We're a people with a religion. The idea that we're a religion comes from Christianity.""We're in an abusive relationship with the non-Jewish world… you try, you try, you try — and then the goalposts move.""You've given me such space to define my own identity — but with my Jewishness, you feel comfortable telling me what I am. That's the progressive world right there.""Grow up. Stop being so entitled. You as an individual do not get to change a 3,000-year-old civilization."📚 Ben M. Freeman — the Jewish Pride trilogy: • Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People(2021) — https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Pride-Rebuilding-Ben-Freeman/dp/1913532135 • Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride (2022) — https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Our-Story-Pursuit-Jewish/dp/1915036321 • The Jews: An Indigenous People (2025) — https://www.amazon.com/Jews-Indigenous-Ben-M-Freeman/dp/1916797474 ✍️ His Substack, The Jewish Pride Press — https://ben126.substack.com/

    Broken Mirror: Internalized Antisemitism, the Non-Jewish Gaze, and Why Jewish Pride is the Answer to Jew Hate | With Ben M. Freeman

  8. 30 jun

    Garbage In, Gospel Out: Wikipedia, Reddit, and the Battle Over Truth | With Ashley Rindsberg

    Episode Description When you ask ChatGPT, Google, or Gemini a question, where does the answer come from? Increasingly, it traces back to Wikipedia — and Wikipedia, investigative journalist Ashley Rindsberg argues, has been captured. In this episode, Rindsberg walks through how a small, coordinated network of editors — a "gang of 40" — has reshaped the way Wikipedia presents Israel, Zionism, and the war in Gaza, and how those edits flow downstream into the AI systems the world now treats as neutral arbiters of fact. He breaks down the tactics: swarming, the 500-edit barrier, severing Jewish historical ties to the land, weaponizing arbitration, and laundering terror-linked content through Reddit and into the models. It's a tour of the machinery behind the "narrative engines" — Wikipedia, Reddit, Google, and AI — and a sober look at what media literacy actually requires when the encyclopedia itself has a point of view. The Honest Take Podcast (all platforms): https://thehonesttake.transistor.fmYouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLuF-lEHTGTw_RrfN9EP6pdWhgjMX7Fg5Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-honest-take/id1896315802Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pCnClcM4jiggKP46YZGjGHonestReporting Web: https://honestreporting.comX / Instagram: @HonestReporting

    Garbage In, Gospel Out: Wikipedia, Reddit, and the Battle Over Truth | With Ashley Rindsberg
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The Honest Take is HonestReporting's long-form interview series bringing together leading voices to examine how Israel and the Middle East are covered — and what goes into creating and feeding the narratives that target Israel. Each episode features leading experts, analysts, researchers, and journalists who work on media bias, terrorism, NGO accountability, foreign influence, antisemitism, and international institutions. These are professionals directly involved in investigating how narratives are shaped, amplified, and protected across global newsrooms. The conversations go beyond breaking news to unpack: • Media bias and misinformation about Israel • How terrorist organizations exploit humanitarian and civil society frameworks • The role of NGOs and international bodies in shaping public perception • Foreign state influence on Western media and education • Why context disappears in reporting on Israel and the Palestinians This series is for listeners seeking in-depth analysis, evidence-based discussion, and accountability in journalism on Israel and the Middle East.

Información

  • Creador
    HonestReporting
  • Años de actividad
    2026
  • Episodios
    19
  • Clasificación
    Explícito
  • Copyright
    © 2026 HonestReporting
  • Mostrar sitio web
    The Honest Take

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