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In her first visit to Israel since October 7, Berkeley-based author and screenwriter Ayelet Waldman made the news carrying a sack of rice on her shoulder, she was arrested with a group of rabbis participating in a symbolic march to the Gaza border to deliver humanitarian aid.

Neither she nor members of the group, Waldman tells Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, were under the illusion that they would actually get through the Erez checkpoint to feed Palestinians - but she felt it was important to her, while in Israel, to take an action in line with her values "and this struck me as an action that would feel personally meaningful, because the news of the famine has been particularly horrific."

Waldman, the parent of two children in U.S. universities, also weighs in on the "obsession" of the American Jewish community - and Israelis - with antisemitism on campuses in the midst of the pro-Palestinian protests taking place in Columbia University and colleges all over the States. "I really do believe that [the antisemitism] is overstated," she says.

Also on the podcast, Haaretz senior defense and security analyst Amos Harel gives a pessimistic view of the chances of progress when it comes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government reaching a deal for the release of hostages and a cease-fire, that would stave off an IDF operation in Rafah.
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If support for Israel becomes a truly partisan issue and political football in the United States, it will be "a disaster" that the people and the leaders of the Jewish state don't fully comprehend, says Professor Noah Feldman in a conversation with host of the Haaretz Podcast Allison Kaplan Sommer.

Feldman is a Harvard Law School professor and public intellectual who has written ten books on law, politics, religion and Middle East geopolitics. In his new book, "To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People," he applies rigorous thinking to the foundational question of what it means to be Jewish, with a special emphasis on how the founding of the state of Israel fundamentally transformed the religion.

Feldman says much of what has unfolded since October 7 reinforced the thesis of his book as to the key role Israel plays in Jewish religious identity. "I know a lot of American Jews who went from being once in a while, vacation on the beach Zionists to very intensely committed active Zionist because of October 7 – that's one form of engagement."

"And then on the other side, you have people who were kind of trying to put their heads in the sand and never think about Israel, lest they be forced to criticize it, who basically felt after October 7: 'I have to say that what is happening in Gaza is not in my name.'" For Jews around the world, he says, "Israel has become a central part of their Jewishness that they must react to, whether positively or negatively."

In the wide-ranging interview, Feldman, who is also an expert on constitutional and international law, addresses the hot button issue of accusing Israel of genocide, which has gripped college campuses like Harvard.

"There is no evidence that would satisfy an international court engaged in an ordinary criminal evaluation of genocide to support the charge that Israel has engaged in a genocide in Gaza," he asserts. "To emphasize that charge, over time and aggressively, in the absence of such evidence, has the possibility of crossing into a type of antisemitism that imagines Jews as always and everywhere the oppressors, and never as victims."

At the same time, he stresses, "one can hold the view that I just described, of rejecting the genocide charge, and still believe that Israel's conduct in Gaza is excessive, even under international law potentially. But the genocide charge is so richly embedded in a discourse of definitional evil. And it's so associated with the Holocaust, that it's worrisome to me when, for example, the South African government goes to The Hague and says Israel are actually the genocidal actors because I think there's a conscious desire to flip a narrative here."
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Iran's firing of hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel on Saturday night marked a new escalation in a simmering war usually fought by proxies miles from Tehran. Iran's strike, which was largely intercepted by Israel and its allies, leaves lingering questions of global significance.

On a special edition of the podcast, Haaretz reporter Linda Dayan speaks to Haaretz Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn, who explains how this unprecedented attack came to be – and what might follow. Although this particular barrage failed to inflict mass casualties, in its aftermath, "Israeli decision-makers" must now think "not twice, but ten times, about the consequences" of striking Iranian targets or their proxies in the future. "After October 7, I think we all need to be very skeptical of premediated military outcomes, both for Israel and for Hamas as well."

If you want to fight Iran, Benn says, "you need the early warning capabilities, if not the defensive capabilities, of your allies in the region and first and foremost the United States." But the same alliances that helped Israel are absent for Hamas. Iran's actions "shows Hamas that, at this stage at least, they're still friendless. Nobody is going to come help them," Benn says. "They did not say once that if Israel would be willing to stop the fire in Gaza… they would not retaliate."

As Israelis are worrying about a new front to this war, so, it seems, are Iranians. Arash Azizi contributing writer at The Atlantic and author of "What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom," explains how average Iranians are responding to the threat. "Average Iranians have a lot of problems – economic, the repression they face from the government," he says. "The last thing they can afford is to enter a war with Israel, a country for which there is very little hostility amongst the Iranian public."

"Iranians don't have that hostility to Israel that I think you do have in other Arab countries – it's just not the same thing for us." The warmongers and champions of the regime's aggression toward the Jewish State are a small minority, he says.

The very day of Iran's launches at Israel, the regime ramped up its persecution of women who do not cover their hair, Azizi notes. "The regime will use whatever this conflict is going to be to repress critique," he says, but at the same time, "it's a new vista for the Iranian opposition to oppose the war – and also to oppose this regime that has brought nothing good for Iranians, and has threatened our country with a war that none of us want."
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Six months into Israel's conflict with Hamas, the solid support U.S. President Joe Biden's White House gave to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has taken a serious hit.

Following the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian aid workers, a clash over a possible military operation in Rafah, and Israel's failure to provide a vision for the "day after" the war in Gaza, there has been a "precipitous drop" in the standing of the Israeli prime minister both in the White House and Congress, Haaretz Washington correspondent Ben Samuels tells Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer.

"World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres is a close friend of Joe Biden. And when seven of his employees are killed, that made it personal for the president in a way that unfortunately 30,000 Palestinian casualties has not been," he said, sparking an unprecedented tough phone call from the president to Netanyahu in which Biden "really put his foot down."

Behind the scenes at the White House, Samuels said, officials are "incredibly frustrated, and I think they feel a little personally betrayed by Netanyahu as well.

"I think they really believe that they have been going out on a limb providing coverage and support when it is becoming extremely unpopular both within the United States and in the international community. So I think there is a very real sense of resentment," Samuels said.

Also on the podcast, Hadar Susskind, President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now discusses his organization's support for Congress conditioning aid to Israel, a stance that has traditionally been controversial within the world of American Jewish advocacy groups but is gaining traction on Capitol Hill.

As Susskind sees it, "aid to Israel is endangered" because Israel's behavior in Gaza and the West Bank "often does not align with American policy and American values. When that happens, you will see far greater pushback, as we are seeing right now [with] people saying aid should be cut."

As a result, "if you want there to be a path for U.S. aid to Israel to continue, that aid, like all the other aid we give every other country, "needs to be conditioned."

Susskind, a longtime progressive activist in Washington, also discussed the perception that there is an epidemic of antisemitism on the U.S. left.

"I still think it is overwhelmingly actually on the far right," he contends. "That's not to say it doesn't exist on the left. It does, and I've seen it, but... so much of what is reported breathlessly as horrible antisemitism on college campuses is college students chanting 'Free Palestine.' You may dislike that – it might make you or your kid on campus uncomfortable – but I personally don't believe that saying 'Free Palestine' is itself an antisemitic act."
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The controversy in Israel over the exemption of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from military service "has reached a boiling point," former Haaretz journalist and author Yair Ettinger tells host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the Haaretz Podcast.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continually delayed confronting the issue in his years in power, Ettinger notes. But this week, the High Court's deadline for either enshrining exemptions in legislation or enlisting yeshiva students expired. And it did so during a war in which Israelis serving in the army have made tremendous sacrifices, and amid severe discontent with Netanyahu's coalition, which depends on ultra-Orthodox support.

And so, Ettinger says, Israelis who disliked but tolerated the ability of the ultra-Orthodox to avoid army service in the past have now "run out of patience."

"There is a big dissonance in Israel right now regarding the Haredim. Why? Because they are at the peak of their political power, and yet they don't share the duties [of defending the country]." On one hand, "they are the government. They have been the senior partners of Netanyahu for many, many years. And now, when we have an existential moment, and we are fighting a really difficult war, they don't pay any price."

Ettinger, author of the book, "Frayed, the Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionists," also looks at how the judicial overhaul battle is inextricably intertwined with the military exemption controversy, and discusses the growing rift in Orthodox society over religion and society, the role of women and tolerance of LGBTQ individuals.

That rift, he says, is exemplified at the Pride Parade each year, where "you can see many religious Zionists marching and many others [among] them protesting against the parade."

He also notes that while the Gaza war has underlined the cracks between secular Israelis and their Diaspora counterparts, "the opposite is true" among the Orthodox. "Today, they are closer than ever," Ettinger says.
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Haaretz journalist Sheren Falah Saab has been covering the unfolding disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza for months. Even now, aside from reporting on the lives of Gazans as the war rages, she manages, from time to time, to deep dive into Arab culture, and write the kind of articles that she used to send in all the time before October 7.

But, she confesses in this week's conversation with Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, the things she hears from Gazans often break her heart.

In the first of three special episodes in which Haaretz subscribers from around the world were given the opportunity to ask Haaretz journalists their questions, Falah Saab responded to a wide range of queries from readers and talked openly about her life as a Druze citizen working as a journalist in Israel, before and after October 7.

She talks about the complex identity issues embedded in the question whether minorities prefer to be called "Israeli Arabs" or "Palestinian citizens of Israel," and the challenging process of sourcing and verifying information inside Gaza, almost six months into the war.
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