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There is "an abyss" between how the U.S. and Israeli governments treat the families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, says Prof. Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui, 35, was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 while trying to protect his family and other residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz. Sagui Dekel-Chen's wife, Avital, gave birth to the couple's third daughter in January.

Speaking with Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, the dual Israeli-U.S. citizen – who hasn't received new information about his son in eight months – compared the "inexplicably infuriating" behavior of members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government with their American counterparts.

Dekel-Chen said he has felt "privileged" to receive the attention and sympathy offered by U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration – along with the other dual citizens caught in the hostage nightmare. He also noted that he felt similar "wall to wall" support from members of Congress, "regardless of what their views are on the conduct of Israel's war."

In Israel, by contrast, "we've had no direct communication from senior ministers, nothing – it's unthinkable in a small intimate country like ours." He suggested that perhaps more sympathy and support would be forthcoming if those whose communities and lives were "destroyed" by the events of October 7 had come from the right-wing religious constituencies that make up Netanyahu's governing coalition.

While Biden has put another cease-fire and hostage deal on the table, urging Netanyahu and Hamas to agree to its terms, "Israel's government has a distorted view of what victory is," according to Dekel-Chen. "This war is more like a crusade ... its goals are dictated by the fringe, radical, far right."

On the podcast, Dekel-Chen also explains why, as a Hebrew University history professor, he feels that comparisons between October 7 and the Holocaust are inaccurate and dangerous. "Other than the death on that day, there are no real similarities," he says, "and it simply serves as a much too-easy-explanation for a horrific day and lets people off the hook who should be held accountable. It invokes some greater force that's so far beyond our control that it was almost inevitable. That's absolute nonsense."
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Rabbi Delphine Horveilleur, considered one of the most powerful and prominent voices of French Jewry, spoke with Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer during her first visit to Israel since the October 7 attacks and the beginning of Israel's war in Gaza, and discussed the way in which for Diaspora Jews, the attacks meant "that our refuge isn't safe anymore."

Horveilleur describes 'a feeling of vulnerability and exile that came back to us. And even in Israel, there's a feeling that we're all in a way in a kind of 'galut" - exile - and there is an awareness of brokenness in us."

At the same time, she says, the current situation presents an opportunity for a "renewed conversation" between Israel and the Diaspora. She feels Israelis, who are usually "focused on strength," are currently more able to relate to feelings of "fragility and the vulnerability," that Diaspora Jews deal with more openly.

Contemplating the rise of antisemitism around the world, Horveilleur says confronting people about their antisemitism is "totally useless."

"It never even makes them aware of the problem," she expands. "Many people say 'I am not an antisemite' but they speak in an antisemitic language, it's almost an ancient antisemitic tongue that people use without knowing."

Also on the podcast, Hebrew University professor Tamar Megiddo, an expert in public international law, lays out the challenges that face Israel in the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. Megiddo discusses the likely consequences of the request for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of violating international humanitarian law.

 
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Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn understands the incredulity abroad regarding the political survival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his grip on power despite the failures of October 7, terrible poll numbers, thousands of Israelis in the streets protesting weekly and his policies creating unprecedented tensions with the United States.

In the second in a series of special podcast episodes in which subscribers from around the world were given the opportunity to ask questions, Benn emphasized in his responses Netanyahu isn't going away anytime soon.

"Netanyahu did lose a lot of his popularity after October 7 - and rightly so. But he has been able to hold on to his coalition. And there is no sign of any imminent collapse of this coalition, or any cracks within it that might bring him down." Benn noted while answering a range of questions on security and political issues.

"We have to bear in mind that while his government is unpopular, it's leading a very popular policy. There is very strong support in the Israeli Jewish society to continue the war until the defeat of Hamas and hopefully also of Hezbollah, the return of Israelis to live along the borders in the south and the north, and a more quiet future."

Worryingly, Benn points out that the only clear-cut vision for post-war Gaza without Hamas rule is a long-term occupation of Gaza, coming from the the government's far right flank, with tacit cooperation from Netanyahu.
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As Israel prepares to celebrate Memorial Day, or Yom Hazikaron, on Monday and Independence Day, or Yom Haatzmaut, the following day, the abrupt transition from commemoration to celebration will look different in the shadow of October 7 and the war in Gaza.

Abbey Onn lost two members of her family in Hamas' murderous attack, while three were taken hostage (two of them, 12-year-old Erez and 16-year-old Sahar, were released in November). She tells Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer that she's helping to organize an alternative memorial ceremony powered by a group of families of hostages as a way "to say that we're building a new reality together, that we need to strengthen one another."

While Onn doesn't discount the efforts of the army which is "fighting on our behalf," rather "than commemorating or talking about heroism, which we absolutely believe has happened," the event is an "effort to try to heal and rebuild."

"We can't move forward until these people come back," she says. "[My family] needs to know that there is a strong movement of civilians who are willing to acknowledge that things are not as they were."

Also on the podcast, Carly Rosenthal, from the pro-peace, anti-occupation NGO Combatants for Peace, talks about the organization's 19-year-old tradition of offering an alternative memorial ceremony to the government-sponsored event, which allows "Israelis and Palestinians to mourn together, to grieve for their loved ones that they've lost throughout the conflict."

This year, she says, the theme centers on children during war. "Too many children, too many people, have been killed and are suffering. And the ceremony is an opportunity to honor them and to remember them, and to also say that we don't want this for them. We want a better future for them."
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Journalist and public intellectual Masha Gessen is dismayed that the Biden White House has been condemning, not supporting, the numerous tent protests against Israel's war in Gaza on American campuses and worried that this decision will hand the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump.

Speaking with host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the Haaretz Podcast, Gessen said that the fact that "Biden and his administration are willing to sacrifice the election, effectively, to its ongoing engagement with Israel is shocking, heartbreaking and very dangerous for this country."

Gessen is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a senior lecturer in journalism at the City University of New York. In a wide-ranging conversation, Gessen recounted experiences on their recent reporting trip to Israel – including a visit to relatives living in a West Bank settlement – discussed the recent controversy over their comparison between the Gaza and Nazi-era Jewish ghettos and their views on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who they described as "very much in the mold of all contemporary autocrats."

While they expressed "empathy" for the "fear, pain and terror" elicited by their Holocaust analogy, they said "I'm very critical of the way that [the Holocaust] is being used politically," especially by "creating a sort of blindness to everything but that experience of fear and victimhood."
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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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