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The conversations that matter, unfiltered. In a world where headlines tell only half the story, "JPost sits down with..." brings you face-to-face with the voices shaping our reality. From Israeli leaders navigating existential challenges to global figures wrestling with the Middle East's complexities, we go beyond the soundbites to explore the stories behind the headlines. Each episode features candid, no-holds-barred conversations with politicians, thought leaders, activists, and newsmakers who are driving change—or standing in its way.  If you're seeking to understand the nuances of one of the world's most scrutinized regions, these intimate discussions reveal the motivations, struggles, and hopes of those at the center of it all. This isn't about easy answers or comfortable narratives. It's about real talk with real people making real decisions that affect millions. Join us as we sit down with the figures who matter most, when their stories matter most. New episodes drop when news breaks and voices need to be heard. Get more from The Jerusalem Post at JPost.com

  1. 16h ago

    '55% of new olim don't feel welcome in Israel' | Alex Rif, Yashar

    Alex Rif spent her childhood trying to erase her Russian accent. Now she's running for Knesset on Gadi Eisenkot's list to make sure no immigrant has to. Rif is a poet, founder of the One Million Lobby, and architect of Yashar's immigration absorption platform, and brings numbers that rarely make headlines: of olim who arrived in 2025, only 18% studied in ulpan and 17% found work in their field.  "55% feel that they're not welcomed in Israel," she says. She lays out the plan for the 30,000 Holocaust survivors living in poverty, the scams targeting elderly Russian speakers, and a bureaucracy that sends new arrivals to ten offices for one answer. The conversation turns personal on what Israeli politics avoids: why she has three children with a partner she can't legally call her husband, why families of October 7 victims discovered their children would be buried in separate plots, and why she defends the Law of Return's grandchild clause. She also answers the Likud campaign attacking Eisenkot's English: "We should evaluate people not by their English, but by their actions." With Israel voting on October 27, this is one of the few detailed English-language conversations about what a change of government would mean for olim.

  2. Aug 5

    Haredi, Zionist, Palestinian: three Israelis, one conversation

    A Haredi writer, a religious Zionist philosopher and a Palestinian Israeli from Nazareth sit in one room and talk about the conflict, without pretending to agree. They are part of TEMA, a cross-sector Israeli leadership network that deliberately has no solution to sell. Its method is unusual: participants first meet in homogeneous groups, Haredi with Haredi, Palestinian Israeli with Palestinian Israeli, and only later cross over. Kholoud Abu Ahmad, who grew up in Nazareth, describes how engaging with politics became an obligation rather than a choice from childhood. Prof. Benjamin Ish-Shalom draws a hard distinction between diplomatic agreements and human contact, pointing to more than fifty years of peace with Egypt that produced almost no ordinary traffic between the two societies. Tzippy Diskind describes a Haredi upbringing in which contact with non-Jews was bounded by halakhic norms, and recalls Rav Shach's position during the Oslo years that the questions could not simply be refused. What makes this conversation different from most Israeli dialogue programming is that it began roughly three years ago, before October 7, and that nobody in it is representing an official position. The participants also describe discovering something they hadn't expected: that the internal disagreements inside each of their own communities are as wide as the gaps between them. Chapters: 00:00 - What TEMA is, and why it has no solution to sell 02:30 - Growing up Palestinian in Nazareth: when politics stops being optional 08:00 - A Haredi childhood in Jerusalem during the First Intifada 13:30 - Prof. Ish-Shalom on Gesher, Beit Morasha and the limits of state-to-state peace 20:00 - Rabin's assassination and Oslo: two communities, two memories 26:00 - Inside TEMA's method: homogeneous groups first, mixed groups later

  3. Aug 5

    Why some new olim leave Israel, and what makes aliyah stick

    Most olim aren't lost on the way to Israel, they're lost the week after. Ofer Nachshon and Rabbi Sid Slivko explain why so many go home. Olim Paveway doesn't try to convince anyone to make aliyah. That's the point. Co-founder Ofer Nachshon, an Israeli entrepreneur, and Rabbi Sid Slivko, an American oleh of 30 years, sat down with the Jerusalem Post's Batsheva Shulman to talk about the part of aliyah nobody prepares for: the day after the plane lands. "Aliyah doesn't stop when you get the taxi back from Ben-Gurion," Slivko says. "Aliyah just starts when you do that." Their argument is that the return rate, still significant even as it declines, is driven less by ideology than by bank forms, bureaucracy, and a culture gap that can't be understood from abroad. The conversation gets specific about what actually helps: a personal guide who walks olim through the supermarket, the cell phone contract and the school registration; a vetted network of service providers held to fair pricing; and weekly Toolbox Talks with experts. It also gets blunt about expectations. "Israel is not an escape," Slivko warns, and there is "no carbon copy aliyah," the friend who got a driver's license in two days is not a benchmark. Nachshon adds a challenge aimed squarely at Israelis: most, he argues, don't grasp what it costs to abandon a career, a status and a community and start from zero.  What makes this interview unusual is that both men are inside the problem from opposite sides: one a native Israeli watching olim collide with his own country's systems, the other still calling himself "an oleh with 30 years of experience." Slivko closes with the advice that rescued his own aliyah three decades ago: don't try to carbon-copy your American career, turn what you love into your profession. For anyone weighing aliyah, in year one of it, or quietly wondering how much longer they can last, this is the honest version.

  4. Jul 31

    'We are a country in trauma': Israel's youngest Knesset candidate

    At 23, Yonatan Shalev could become the youngest lawmaker in Israel's history. He fought a year in Gaza, buried his best friend, and now wants the Knesset. Shalev founded the reservists' movement Shoulder to Shoulder weeks after his closest friend from Maglan, Yonatan Deutsch, was murdered in a Hamas terror attack in the Jordan Valley. He explains why he left advocacy for Naftali Bennett's Together list, and what he wants from a seat: a state commission of inquiry into October 7 in the coalition's "first hour," a NIS 1 million benefits package for those who serve, and an end to stipends for those who don't. "We're going to tilt the pyramid." Shalev also calls Israel "a country in trauma," says the current government is "flaming" Judea and Samaria, backs declaring Qatar an enemy state, and rules out any coalition with parties that reject mandatory service. His argument is generational: hundreds of thousands of Israelis aged 18 to 30 carried the war, and none of them sit in the Knesset.

  5. Jul 29

    'It's an immoral law': Why Sharren Haskel quit the government

    JPost sits down with...

  6. Jul 15

    Gadi Taub: 'October 7 proved the pessimism of the right was prophetic'

    He grew up in the triangle between the Knesset, Hebrew University and the Israel Museum, the son of a Bank of Israel official. At 12, he cried when Menachem Begin won. Today Gadi Taub is one of the most influential intellectuals of the Israeli right. In this interview with The Jerusalem Post, historian Dr. Gadi Taub retraces the defection that took him from Peace Now demonstrations to the front line of the fight over Israel's Supreme Court, its media and its national identity. He dates the break to Camp David in 2000, "Why would they not take it, even if they want the whole?" and says October 7 closed the case: "The optimism of the left was unfounded and the pessimism of the right was prophetic." But he is no loyalist. He calls Itamar Ben-Gvir "a lot of noise and not enough substance," faults Netanyahu for letting the judicial problem fester for decades, and admits there is "a lot" of sloppy journalism on the right.

  7. Jul 13

    Ten years without Elie Wiesel: his son on the fight he inherited

    Ten years after Elie Wiesel's death, his son answers the American politician who told Israel it has become a pariah. Elisha Wiesel, chairman of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, former Goldman Sachs executive, and the only child of the Nobel laureate, sat down with the Jerusalem Post at Yad Vashem. He explains why he refuses to say what his father would think today ("there are very few privileges to being dead"), and why he believes the fight over the word "genocide" is a war Holocaust museums are uniquely obligated to enter. It is a rare interview that moves between the intimate and the geopolitical without flattening either.

  8. Jul 13

    Iran's cyber war on Israel never stopped: 'There is no ceasefire in cyberspace'

    Iran's missiles have stopped. Its cyberattacks haven't. Former Unit 8200 intelligence officer Julia Kogan Ehrlich explains the war nobody sees. Israel's national cyber chief, Yossi Karadi, says hostile cyber incidents tripled to roughly 4,800 in a single month and that unlike the kinetic realm, there's no ceasefire in cyberspace. Kogan Ehrlich, a cybersecurity executive who served nearly nine years in the IDF's elite Unit 8200, tells Yonah Jeremy Bob why she agrees. "The ceasefire is only for the missiles," she says. "Our infrastructures are constantly under attack." Each of those incidents, she explains, is a potential strike on water, power, rail or hospitals, the 2020 Iranian breach of an Israeli water system being the case study nobody forgot.

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About

The conversations that matter, unfiltered. In a world where headlines tell only half the story, "JPost sits down with..." brings you face-to-face with the voices shaping our reality. From Israeli leaders navigating existential challenges to global figures wrestling with the Middle East's complexities, we go beyond the soundbites to explore the stories behind the headlines. Each episode features candid, no-holds-barred conversations with politicians, thought leaders, activists, and newsmakers who are driving change—or standing in its way.  If you're seeking to understand the nuances of one of the world's most scrutinized regions, these intimate discussions reveal the motivations, struggles, and hopes of those at the center of it all. This isn't about easy answers or comfortable narratives. It's about real talk with real people making real decisions that affect millions. Join us as we sit down with the figures who matter most, when their stories matter most. New episodes drop when news breaks and voices need to be heard. Get more from The Jerusalem Post at JPost.com

Information

  • Creator
    Jerusalem Post Podcasts
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    73
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Jerusalem Post Podcasts
  • Show Website
    JPost sits down with...

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