Israel Story Israel Story

For the last nine-and-a-half months, we’ve been experiencing different kinds of battlefields: There are actual battlefields, where people fight and are wounded and killed. And then, of course, there are secondary battlefields - on college campuses, in the court of public opinion, on social media, on TV, in newspapers, via text messages. And while no one has, thankfully, been killed on those battlefields, they are - in disturbing ways - no less vicious. This reality is so pervasive that for many it’s become the haunting soundtrack of the entire period. But today we want to share one small story, one of countless similar ones that have crossed our radar - about trolling, virtual bullying and Israel bashing.
The end song is Kol Ha'Olam Kulo ("The Whole Wide World") by the Djamchid Sisters.

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Arab-Israelis, or Palestinian Citizens of Israel, or Palestinian-Israelis - all these definitions are obviously complicated and personal and have hefty connotations - found themselves in a very difficult place following the attacks of October 7th. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of suspicion and mainly - a lot of fear. Any statement, any post, any tweet came under extreme scrutiny. Most people chose, therefore, to remain silent. They figured that the benefits of speaking up seemed to be dwarfed by the possible outcomes - being fired, arrested, accused of treason or support of terrorism. 
But Ibrahim Abu Ahmad and Amira Mohammed are not most people. They’re both peace activists who live in between the two societies: They’re Muslim and proud Palestinians, on the one hand, but they are also Israeli citizens, speak Hebrew, have many Jewish friends and either live or work in predominantly Jewish cities in the center of Israel.
So when many people around them retreated into a self-imposed post-October 7th silence, they did the exact opposite: They started a podcast called “Unapologetic: The Third Narrative.” On the show they explore their complex identities, and talk to a wide range of guests - Jews, Arabs, Gazans, Israelis. The podcast has taken off, and Amira and Ibrahim have come to model a different kind of discourse, one that challenges the binary and dichotomous definitions we’re so accustomed to hearing.
The end song is Bahlawan ("Acrobat") by Mira Awad.

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On Saturday, four hostages - Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan and Andrey Kozlov - were heroically rescued by the Israeli security forces, and safely brought home alive. Still, 120 hostages remain in Gaza - 43 of whom have already been declared dead - and the pressure to sign a deal that will bring them home is mounting from day to day. 
Such a deal, of course, has two sides: We tend to focus on what we stand to get, i.e. the hostages. To many, that’s really all that matters. But there are also those who emphasize the other side - what we’d be forced to give, the price we’d need to pay and the people we’d need to release. Our episode today brings us that part of the story. 
Moriah Cohen is 29 years old. She and her family are part of the small Jewish settlement of Shimon HaTzadik, inside the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarah in East Jerusalem. For years this neighborhood has been a focal point of legal battles, demonstrations and violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians. On December 8th, 2021, Moriah was stabbed right outside her home. Her attacker was Nafoz Hamad, her next door neighbor's 14-year-old daughter. Hamad was apprehended, tried and sentenced to 12 years in prison. But then, in November 2023, as part of the prisoner swap between Israel and the Hamas that brought 80 Israeli hostages back home, she was set free. And not only was she released, Hamad moved back home, right across the street from her victim, Moriah. We visited Moriah in her home, and talked about this complicated and utterly surreal reality.
Maya Thomas is our dubber.
The end song is Hacheder Ha'Intimi Sheli ("My Intimate Room") by Taarovet Eskot.


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Lihi Lapid is a celebrated photojournalist, columnist and best-selling author - of children's books, cookbooks and award-winning novels. She’s also married to Yair Lapid, the former Israeli Prime Minister and current Leader of the Opposition. In 2021 Lihi published Zarot, a sweeping tale that explores a complicated mother-daughter relationship, the tolls of immigration and the reality of marginalized groups within Israeli society. When it came out, it received glowing praise, especially from the notoriously harsh critics at Haaretz who called the novel, “a wonderful work written with restraint and wisdom.” And this spring, three years later and in what is an entirely different world, the English translation - On Her Own - was published by HarperCollins. We sat down to talk about October 7th, feminism, special needs, and what it’s like to have a major work of fiction - written by the former Prime Minister’s wife - come out in the middle of a war.
The end song is Hey Shketa ("Hey Quiet One") by Ivri Lider.
Photograph by Jennifer Bukovza, courtesy of Lihi Lapid.

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It’s Yom HaZikaron again, Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror. Since the start of the war, 1511 Israeli civilians and members of the armed forces have been killed. That's 1511 families who have joined the dreaded circle of grief and bereavement. 1511 families whose lives will never again be the same. 
Today, we share the story of one such family. A small family. One that was just starting off, really. Thirty-year-old Yuval Halivni was a reserve officer who was killed on October 9th. He left behind a wife, Amit Halivni Bar-Peled, who is a pastry chef and makes amazingly elaborate wedding cakes, and a little boy, Jon-Jon, who was less than two when his dad was killed.
The end song is Hatishma Koli ("Hear My Voice") by Rivka Revivo.

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Forty-seven-year-old Tzvika Mor is from the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. His son, Eitan, was kidnapped from the Nova Festival, where he had been working as a security guard. In fact, Eitan was only kidnapped in the afternoon of October 7th, after spending nearly nine hours evacuating injured party-goers to safe locations nearby. During that whole time Eitan heroically returned to the festival grounds again and again, under fire, to save complete strangers. At around 15:30 he was himself taken by terrorists and driven into Gaza, where he’s remained ever since.  
Tzvika, is an outlier among the families of the hostages. As campaigns across the country and throughout the world call upon the leaders of Israel and the Hamas to reach a deal that would release the hostages, Tzvika believes that the Israeli government should keep on fighting, and reject any offer that includes a ceasefire, even if it comes at the cost of his son’s freedom, perhaps even his life. He established a small group of like-minded relatives of hostages called Forum Tikvah, or the Hope Forum. They stress the importance of the nation and the state over the life of any individual, even if that individual happens to be your loved one. And in that, ironically, their right wing position echoes the left wing socialist and collectivist sentiments that were dominant in the early days of the state.
The end song is Akedat Yitzchak ("The Binding of Isaac") by Naomi Shemer.


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