What Matters Now The Times of Israel

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan.

This week, we speak with The Times of Israel's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur about the controversial Netzah Yehudah battalion that is on the docket for blacklisting by the United States under the 1997 Leahy Law.

In August 2022, Israeli troops from the religious Netzah Yehuda battalion were filmed beating two Palestinian detainees in the West Bank in a video posted to the TikTok video-sharing site. Three soldiers were seen repeatedly kicking two Palestinian men near Ramallah as a fourth soldier stands nearby. They were suspended and investigated.

This well-publicized beating came months after the death of Omar As’ad, a 78-year-old Palestinian-American who died after being detained, handcuffed, blindfolded, and later abandoned in near-freezing conditions by soldiers of the battalion.

As Washington is increasingly clamping down on extremist Jewish settler violence in the West Bank, the State Department probed Netzah Yehuda and several of the other units in the Israeli security forces for well over a year due to alleged human rights violations.

While the State Department looks into thousands of allegations of Leahy Law violations each year, it created a special panel known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum that exclusively vets allegations against the IDF and Israel Police due to the political sensitivity of the issue.

So this week in which an IDF unit may be defunded by the United States, we ask Haviv Rettig Gur, what matters now? 

With contributions from Jacob Magid. 

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. 

IMAGE: Israeli soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda Battalion patrol near the Israeli-Gaza border, October 20, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan.

In a post-October 7 Israeli reality, is any new security threat outside the realm of imagination?

This week, when over 300 projectiles were sent from Iran to Israel, we pose this question to journalist and hit Israeli drama "Fauda" co-creator Avi Issacharoff.

Legions of fans around the world know of Issacharoff’s fiction writing from the popular television series, loosely based on his experiences in the IDF’s elite Duvdevan unit, that is written alongside "Fauda" star Lior Raz. (We'll hear a story of their post-October 7 real-life bravery during our conversation.)

But Issacharoff is first and foremost a long-time, die-hard journalist and analyst of the Arab world -- one who has put his life on the line in the past to cover a story.

We pick Issacharoff’s brain as we unpick the knotty situation Israel is currently facing with enemies on our borders, and Iran as a puppet master who is coming increasingly closer to a nuclear bomb.

So this week, we ask journalist Avi Issaharoff, What Matters Now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. 

IMAGE: Mideast analyst Avi Issacharoff, one of the co-creators of the Israeli TV drama 'Fauda,' (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP)
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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan.

Speaking in our Jerusalem office, The Times of Israel editor David Horovitz offers a rare in-depth look at the professional challenges and personal conflicts he’s faced in covering the war against Hamas for the past half year.

Horovitz gives a candid survey at what it is to run a site that, following the surprise October 7 Hamas infiltration of southern Israel and massacre of 1,200 people, jumped 600% in its readership to become, according to news site Press Gazette, the fastest-growing news website in the world in October and November.

The Times of Israel's 24/7 coverage remains unabated as we mark six months of war.

So this week we ask Times of Israel editor David Horovitz, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. 

IMAGE: David Horovitz, editor, The Times of Israel (Amanda Borschel-Dan/ToI)
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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan.

In six months of war, Israel has systematically broken down Hamas’s battalions in the Gaza Strip. But in achieving terrible success in its aim to defang the terrorist army, the Jewish state is no longer seen on the world stage as the attacked underdog David, but increasingly reviled as a cruel Goliath.

According to many in the West, it is up to Israel to immediately stop the war regardless of Hamas’s clear ability to regroup and again attack, just as the terror group has publicly vowed to do.

This week, What Matters Now again speaks with public intellectual and philosopher Dr. Micah Goodman. We revisit the raw conversation we held six months ago, mere days after Hamas’s murderous attack, and see just how right Goodman’s predictions were.

In our conversation this week, Goodman explains the completely different framings of the war held by the West and Israel, and how they influence both sides’ actions and words.

And we hear about how Israelis, forever changed by the war, are now standing at a crossroads. Can civil society regroup and reemerge from this war stronger, saner and more united?

Goodman spent the past six months writing his seventh best-selling book, "Hayom Hashmini" ("The Eighth Day"), which was published in late March. He sees the end of this war as an opportunity for restructuring and revitalizing Israelis, as long as they embrace a new paradigm.

So this week, six months to the war, we ask Dr. Micah Goodman, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. 

IMAGE: Philosopher and public intellectual Dr. Micah Goodman. (Yonit Schiller)
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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now.

Days after his 32nd birthday, on Saturday, October 7, Hayim Katsman was killed by terrorists from Gaza in his neighbor’s home in Kibbutz Holit while shielding her with his body.

His body was identified and the family was notified the next day. He was buried on Thursday of that week.

Born to American immigrant parents and one of six children, Hayim was a scholar of philosophy and earned a PhD in political science. He was active in several local peace organizations. He was also a musician, mechanic and a gardener.

Hayim’s mother, Hannah Wacholder Katsman, a writer and women’s rights activist, joined Amanda Borschel-Dan this week in The Times of Israel’s Jerusalem office for this week’s What Matters Now.

As Hannah wrote in an essay for The Times of Israel, “I realized early on that because Hayim’s death was part of our national story, the mourning would be public.”

We hear about her way of openly mourning and how it has helped others with their national grief and of the continuing ripple effect of Hayim’s murder.

As the world increasingly forgets what spawned the ongoing war in Gaza, we focus on one son and ask his mother, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. 

Check out the previous What Matters Now episode:

https://omny.fm/shows/times-will-tell/what-matters-now-to-haviv-rettig-gur-is-netanyahu

IMAGE: Hayim Katsman, left, and his mother Hannah Wacholder Katsman, in Tel Aviv in 2018. (Tamar Abramson)
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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now.

In his US Senate floor speech last week, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer called for new Israeli elections as the war winds down and branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as one of four obstacles to peace along with Hamas, the Israeli far-right and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Throughout the past week, Times of Israel podcast listeners have shared their views on Schumer's speech -- and offered overwhelming support for the most senior elected Jewish politician's "hard truths."

For context, a 2020 Pew Research Center survey shows that among the US population, Jews are among the most consistently liberal and Democratic groups with about 70 percent voting Democrat. As Netanyahu increasingly becomes a partisan issue, the prime minister is also increasingly the face of all US Jews detest in how Israel is prosecuting the war in Gaza. 

This week on What Matters Now, ToI senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur explains how, to a very strong degree, most Israelis don't disagree with Schumer on several of the points made in his 45-minute speech.

However, in many key areas, Israelis sharply diverge from liberal US Jewry's thinking, including the need for humanitarian aid in Gaza even as the Israeli hostages are still held by Hamas.

A distrust of Netanyahu is hampering the war effort -- especially on the international stage -- but also fraying domestic cohesion, argues Rettig Gur.

So this week, we ask Haviv Rettig Gur, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. 

IMAGE: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a gathering of Jewish leaders at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, February 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
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