Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis

For generations, the "left" was political home for Jews, and it warmly embraced Israel. What happened?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.comThe history books will, without question, see our era as one of great periods of transformation for the Jewish state and the Jewish people. In Israel, years of bitter war without the accomplishments that the government promised and that the country needed, will have long lasting impact on younger generations of Israelis — their politics, their elections, their sense of Jewishness, their decisions about whether or not to stay, and more. Meanwhile, in America, Jews looked to the political right of the Republican party and found an emerging anti-Semitic, Christian-national, isolationist Right marginalizing them in ways they had never expected. On the left, which had long been the political home of the Jews, anti-Semitism seemed to be oozing everywhere one turned. Why? Why had the Jews been so attracted to the American political left, and why did those alliances betray the Jews? No one has thought about this issue more than Batya Ungar-Sargon, and she joins us today to discuss her brand new book, THE JEWS AND THE LEFT. If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.Batya Ungar-Sargon is an American journalist, author, and media commentator known for her writing on class politics, media criticism, and American public life. She previously served as opinion editor of The Forward, a leading American Jewish publication, and later became deputy opinion editor at Newsweek. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.Ungar-Sargon is the author of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy (2021) and Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women (2024). Her work focuses on the relationship between media, class, identity politics, and the challenges facing the American working class. She is a frequent commentator on political and cultural issues and has contributed to publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy.Ungar-Sargon’s newest book, The Jews and the Left, upcoming this June, confronts one of the most painful and consequential realignments in American political life: the rupture between American Jews and the political and cultural Left. The Jews and the Left offers essential historical context and seeks to shed light on how a movement so intrinsically tied to Jewish identity has turned its back on the Jews.To find out more about Batya Unger-Sargon we invite you to visit her Substack.The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.Many Israelis could not travel for months this past year, because the skies were closed, or if they were open because it was not clear that they would stay open so it felt risky to leave, or because we didn’t wish to leave our children and grandchildren when war could break out again.So with things quiet(er) for the moment, many Israelis are traveling more than usual this summer.We, too, will be away the weeks of June 14 and June 21. Podcasts will continue on schedule, as always, for our paid subscribers. But other posts will come at a slower rate during that period.

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Israel and the Palestinians are locked in vicious war. So why are they consciously imitating each other in how they conduct the conflict?

1w ago00:06:38Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.comProfessor Avi Shilon, a widely respected Israeli academic, author and journalist, made headlines in New York during the campus uprisings at Columbia, when his class was interrupted by Columbia students protesting “Israel’s genocide.”But I’d met Avi Shilon long before that, back in the days when I was working on my biography of Menachem Begin for the NextBook series. When I began my work, Avi had already published his magisterial biography of Begin, and when I reached out with questions, requests for advice and the like, he could not have been warmer or more forthcoming. It was truly an act of warm friendship and collegiality to someone he barely knew, and I’ve long been deeply grateful.Avi Shilon writes regularly for the Israeli press, and often, when I read him, I think to myself, “This is someone whom the readers of Israel from the Inside should really get to know. I asked Avi to speak with us about some fascinating research he’s doing with a German colleague, on the ways in which though they are in a vicious and bloody battle, the Israelis and Palestinians regularly imitate each other in how they conduct the conflict.I’m very grateful to Avi for taking the time to have this conversation and for sharing his research in progress with us.If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.Avi Shilon is a lecturer at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. His course, History of Modern Israel, is regularly exceptionally well received. He has been the Visiting Scholar and Israel Institute Fellow at the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University, as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and at Tsinghua University, China. He is the author of The Decline of the Left-Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process (2020), Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (2016), and Menachem Begin: A Life (2012). His articles have appeared in Middle Eastern Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Middle East Journal, and he is a contributor to Yedioth Ahronoth (YNet). Dr. Shilon earned his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, in 2015.The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.Many Israelis could not travel for months this past year, because the skies were closed, or if they were open because it was not clear that they would stay open so it felt risky to leave, or because we didn’t wish to leave our children and grandchildren when war could break out again.So with things quiet(er) for the moment, many Israelis are traveling more than usual this summer.We, too, will be away the weeks of June 14 and June 21. Podcasts will continue on schedule, as always, for our paid subscribers. But other posts will come at a slower rate during that period.

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Arielle Angel, a leading American Jewish anti-Zionist recently profiled by Ha'aretz, joins us in conversation

2w ago00:06:11Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.comThere is a principle in the Talmud (applicable only in certain instances, but still very well-known) which states, in Aramaic, שתיקה כהודאה דמיא. Shtikah ke-hoda’ah damyah. Usually, it’s translated as something like “silence is considered tantamount to admission.” In its more popular usage, the phrase has come to mean, “If you don’t push back, it suggests that you agree.”That principle is most definitely not applicable to today’s conversation, in which I am in dialogue with Arielle Angel, the immediate past editor of Jewish Currents and a leading American Jewish ant-Zionist who was recently profiled by Ha’aretz.Now, I know that some of our readers, viewers and listeners will take exception to my decision to post a conversation with Arielle, and I understand them. I also know that there are serious American Jewish publications that will not only not accept submissions from anti-Zionists, but will not even publish articles about them. I get that, too, even if I chose to act otherwise at this moment.As I’ve noted in the episodes on American Jewish anti-Zionism that we’ve already posted (so far, those episodes are the introduction, “The kaffiyeh on the bimah’s table” and “Did the early DNA of American Judaism give rise to today’s American Jewish anti-Zionism?”, with others to follow), I believe that in hearing why American Jewish anti-Zionists hold the positions that they do, we can learn not only about them, about where the mainstream Jewish community may well have erred, but perhaps most importantly, about the foundational ethos of American Jewish life. That’s why I think the subject is important. And if one is going to discuss American Jewish anti-Zionism, I think it makes sense to hear from someone in that world, much though I disagree with it.It was important for me to illustrate in today’s post that two people who literally could not disagree more strongly about one of the most vital issues in each of our lives can still have a civil and respectful conversation. Of course, there was something that I wanted to say in response to virtually every sentence that Arielle uttered; but had I done that, we would have gotten nowhere, and there would have been no opportunity to hear her and to learn about how she sees the world.So no, in this instance, שתיקה לאו כהודאה דמיא. Shtikah lav ke-hoda’ah damyah. In this conversation, my silence is not anything even remotely approaching admission or agreement – it’s an attempt to let someone I disagree with speak and be heard.I’m grateful to Arielle for having the conversation. Down the road, we can unpack a few of the issues that she raises and what I might think about some of them.Arielle suggested the following links for those wishing to learn more about the world she represents: * On Zionism and Anti-Zionism (podcast about different terms of self-identification): https://jewishcurrents.org/on-zionism-and-anti-zionism* A mailbag episode on the question of how American Jewish anti-Zionists would see Israel/Palestine if there was justice: https://jewishcurrents.org/bonus-episode-mailbag* Here’s Arielle’s piece “We Need New Jewish Institutions”: https://jewishcurrents.org/we-need-new-jewish-institutionsIf you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.Arielle Angel is an editor-at-large at Jewish Currents and the host of On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast.The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.Many Israelis could not travel for months this past year, because the skies were closed, or if they were open because it was not clear that they would stay open so it felt risky to leave, or because we didn’t wish to leave our children and grandchildren when war could break out again.So with things quiet(er) for the moment, many Israelis are traveling more than usual this summer.We, too, will be away the weeks of June 14 and June 21. Podcasts will continue on schedule, as always, for our paid subscribers. But other posts will come at a slower rate during that period.

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"The Jewish March of Folly: The Dramatic Events, Fateful Results, and Unlearned Lessons of Ancient Israel’s Political Suicide"

2w ago00:39:36Tap to summarize

Several years ago, in March 2022, we ran an interview with Amotz Asa-El, a very gifted Israeli author, whose book, The Jewish March of Folly, instantly hit the Israeli bestseller list and stayed there for a long time. At the time of our interview, the book was not yet out in English, though Amotz and I both expressed hope that that would happen. Well, it finally has, and for the English-speaking world, this is an enormous gift. The Jewish March of Folly is still a formidable book, and all that’s happened in the Jewish world since March 2022 makes its prescience all the more unmissable. \After all, the full title of the book in English (linked here to Amazon) is The Jewish March of Folly: The Dramatic Events, Fateful Results, and Unlearned Lessons of Ancient Israel’s Political Suicide. If you’re interested, you can revisit the original post from March 2022 here. We’re reposting that old conversation as it originally appeared, despite everything that has transpired in the Jewish world since. If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.When the conversation above first appeared, we were not yet preparing transcripts to accompany the podcasts, so this episode does not include one. We’re making the full conversation available to all our subscribers. Amotz Asa-El is an Israeli author and journalist. He holds graduate degrees in journalism from Columbia University, in Jewish history from the Hebrew University, and in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. He is a research fellow at Shalom Hartman Institute and the Jerusalem Post’s senior commentator. Formerly the executive editor of the Jerusalem Post, Asa-El’s column “Middle Israel,” a unique attempt to present in English an Israeli view on anything, from politics and foreign affairs to culture and faith, has been running on Jpost.com since the Internet’s inception in 1995, and is thus one of the world’s most veteran online opinion columns.He is the author of The Diaspora and the Lost Tribes of Israel (2004), the bestselling book The Jewish March of Folly (2019) and The Last Jewish Frontier (2025), which is soon to be published in English.Many Israelis could not travel for months this past year, because the skies were closed, or if they were open because it was not clear that they would stay open so it felt risky to leave, or because we didn’t wish to leave our children and grandchildren when war could break out again.So with things quiet(er) for the moment, many Israelis are traveling more than usual this summer.We, too, will be away the weeks of June 14 and June 21. Podcasts will continue on schedule, as always, for our paid subscribers. But other posts will come at a slower rate during that period. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danielgordis.substack.com/subscribe

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For many Israelis, this is going to be a one-issue election

3w ago00:00:11Tap to summarize

Many Israelis are holding their breath today, waiting to see whether a deal gets signed with Iran. No one knows with certainty whether it will happen, and no one who’s talking knows what’s in it. But Israelis have a bad feeling. Screenshots from earlier today: This isn’t good for Bibi’s re-election prospects, and very serious journalists like Hagai Segal raised the possibility this weekend that Netanyahu might not even run. There are many reasons for that, and certain likely preconditions, but who knows? What we do know is that for many Israelis, this is a one-issue election. Israel’s foreign policy, of course, isn’t going to change at all under a new government. Whatever Israel needs to do (after all, we have not defeated Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or the Houthis) might be done with a bit more finesse, a bit less of a finger in the eye of Europe and American Jews, but policies won’t change. Few Israelis want them to. So what’s the issue? Of course, it’s the Haredim. To start off this week with a very, very brief post, two items from Israeli social media. First, above in the video, it’s pretty darn clear. Note that in the video showing on the iPad, the Haredi guy yells Allahu Akbar, which is Arabic for “God is Great.” And, of course, was what the Nukhba terrorists screamed as they slaughtered, raped, kidnapped and pillaged on October 7. And then the Haredi guy says, as they all do, “We will die rather than get drafted.” That’s THE slogan. “We will die rather than get drafted” is the core of this cartoon by Guy Morad, one of Israel’s most watched cartoonists (I got it from someone, but can’t find the original location online): The sign at the Haredi protest says the same thing: נמות ולא נתגייס. Namut ve-lo nitgayes. “We’ll die before we get drafted.” The two dead soldiers, now angels, looking down, make the entire point. What are the chances we get to elections without violence from or at the Haredim? I’m betting it’s pretty low.. That might just be what it’s going to take. We shall see. If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.Many Israelis could not travel for months this past year, because the skies were closed, or if they were open because it was not clear that they would stay open so it felt risky to leave, or because we didn’t wish to leave our children and grandchildren when war could break out again.So with things quiet(er) for the moment, many Israelis are traveling more than usual this summer.We, too, will be away the weeks of June 14 and June 21. Podcasts will continue on schedule, as always, for our paid subscribers. But other posts will come at a slower rate during that period. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danielgordis.substack.com/subscribe

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"Life on the Frontlines": Israelis who fought in this war tell their story—for themselves, their families, and for our collective future.

3w ago00:16:43Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.comOn October 7th, as the worst attacks on the country were still underway, 300,000 reservists answered the call and reported for duty.They asked no questions. They fought for their country. They lost friends. They made impossible choices. And then they came home — to work, to family, to school pickup. And then again, back to the front. Back and forth, neither here nor there.Life on the Frontlines has launched the first-of-its-kind global digital archive to record, preserve, and share the unfiltered testimonies of Israeli reservists, building bridges of understanding, healing, and remembrance across generations, communities, and humanity. Using long-form podcast-setting conversations with professional interviewers, the organization aims to to create the largest oral history archive of Israeli reservists at battle.Inspired by groundbreaking archives like the Shoah Foundation, 9/11 Memorials and others, “Life on the Frontlines” is recording these stories while they’re fresh — with honesty, emotion, and clarity. Today, we meet two of the people at the helm of this project, and emerge with a much more robust sense of the complexities of what soldiers faced when they were called up, when they were at war, and no less — when they tried to come home. If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.If, after listening to the conversation, you are interested in learning more and hearing some of these stories (some of which are in English), here are some links that might be useful. * An article on the project in Israel Hayom: * “Life on the Frontlines” website* Short clips available on: Instagram* Full episodes: Spotify* Pilot: Netanel, Tzvi, Hila, and Ariel* Choice episodes: Lior, Yehuda and Itamar* Barak and Shai (Married couple)* Shaked, Shai and Liori - Tazpitaniot, Dedicated to Capt. Shir Eilat, ZL* Full episodes in English (Shaul/Barak in English, David, Ari, Franky, Josh in English)* PEF Link for donations to the project Yonit Golub Serkin is an Investor and Chief Business Officer at embARC Ventures investing in early-stage HealthTech companies. She has served at the nexus of tech and the public sector leading Israel’s largest tech accelerator, and founding two Venture Capital vehicles. As a frequent speaker and advocate, she has built initiatives bridging Israel and diaspora Jewry that have been featured at AIPAC, UJA, CJP, Brandeis University and others.Before immigrating to Israel in 2010, Yonit served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Economic Development in the Office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and as spokeswoman for the NYC Economic Development Corporation. Yonit holds an MA in International Studies and Economics from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a BA from Johns Hopkins University. Named one of Israel’s “40 Under 40” by The Marker Magazine in 2014.Netanel Ben Shushan is a veteran Journalist, Program Editor and Content Director for leading Israeli television and radio networks. He was among the founders of Kan 11 and Channel 14 and was showrunner for some of the networks most watched shows. Today, Netanel serves as a content director and strategic advisor to non-profit organizations, government ministries and companies.Netanel began his military service as a paratrooper in 2005, and has served in the unit’s reserves since 2008. A native of Sderot, he has served nearly 500 days in reserves since the launch of the October 7th War, in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Netanel earned his MA in Public Policy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a BA in Communications at Ariel University.The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.

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Did the early DNA of American Judaism give rise to today's American Jewish anti-Zionism?

3w ago00:18:12Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.comToday we continue in our series of explorations of the intellectual, religious and historical roots of American Jewish anti-Zionism, which is significant, I believe, for what it tells us about American Jewish life’s DNA writ large. As promised in the first, here a few links to the sources we mention: * EPISODE #1 in this series, “The Kaffiyeh on the Bimah…

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"We're going to have to start shooting them," people now say. And they may well be right.

4w ago00:00:46Tap to summarize

I was sitting down this morning to prepare this post, when I came across a post on X from Nadav Eyal, one of Israel’s most highly regarded and thoughtful journalists. “Break it,” he called the post. He’s right. His post is below. With elections a few months away, people are now beginning to speak about whom they’ll vote for. More and more, I hear people say there’s just one issue. Not foreign policy. Not the war. Not Bibi’s alleged corruption. Not even Smotrich or Ben Gvir, though they are, of course, utterly reprehensible. An Orthodox rabbi visiting Jerusalem this week told me that when Ben Gvir was in the Five Towns this past weekend, he spoke at five Orthodox synagogues and got standing ovations at all of them. Fortunately, I’d already finished my breakfast. No, the issue these people are planning to vote on is the Haredim. I’ve now heard countless people say to me, “I’ll vote for anyone, anyone at all, who’ll break this. This has to stop.” Indeed, it does. People are speaking about more than voting, actually. They’re speaking of shooting. I heard it said on more than a few occasions, even this week alone. Watch the video above, and see the terror — and the determination — in the eyes of the wife of Supreme Court Justice Solberg, after her home was attacked by Haredim who did not like the Supreme Court’s doubling down on arresting draft dodgers. She, too, is right. What, Kristallnacht in Israel? What kind of a self-respecting country puts up with this? There’s a code to what she’s saying, even in the midst of her fear and her rage (she didn’t prepare these remarks). “I have no other country” and “even if the land is burning” are all references to a song that every Israeli knows. It’s part of the canon — religious (like her) and secular alike, everyone knows it. Everyone.And yes, the land is aflame. Which is why some people — more and more people, in fact — are saying, “Shoot them. Just shoot them.” Not to kill, at least at the start. And not many. But shoot them. “They’ll get that we mean business.” This is simply out of control — and what Netanyahu is doing is trying to dance between the raindrops, stopping the Haredim from getting too out of control so he won’t lose votes from his Likud base, which increasingly detests the Haredim, while not coming down too hard on the Haredim so he doesn’t lose the ultra-Orthodox votes. It’s all about the election, for Bibi. It’s not about the country. For many others, it is all about the country. Which is why it’s also about the election. Will this be his undoing? In what kind of a country can Haredim attack a senior officer of the Israeli police, who happens to be a bereaved mother who lost her son in the Gaza war, and get away with it? In what kind of country are the protesters, who are clearly endangering her life, not shot on the spot? In this kind of country.If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.Which is why Nadav Eyal posted what he did, shown here with a Google-generated translation: Jabotinsky was referring to breaking the Histadrut, the enormous and powerful workers’ union, by crossing picket lines. But that was a century ago. The danger isn’t the Histadrut anymore. Even then, by the way, they were at least Zionists. The danger is those who oppose the state, not from outside, but from within. I had to go to Tel Aviv on Tuesday for a meeting, so on Monday evening I went to the train website to decide which train to take. The website had a warning plastered over the home page: Because of Haredi protests, which had spread onto the tracks, trains were not running through Tel Aviv.To see if there were more protests planned for the next day, or if I’d perhaps be able to make it, I turned on the news. A reporter was interviewing a Haredi school principal who had brought his students to the protests. He asked the principal if that wasn’t a bit over the top, stopping school so students could break the law? “It’s a war,” the principal said. “It’s a war.” He, too, is right. It’s a war. We’ve shown over the past few years that we know very well how to fight back. It’s time. It’s been time for a very long time. In the end, the Haredim took a day off from tormenting this country, and I was able to go to Tel Aviv. A few moments along the way struck me as “Israel in a nutshell.” The Jerusalem train station (like some other train and bus stations throughout the country) has the occasional grand piano where passersby can stop to play. Some of the people playing are truly excellent.This was “a moment.” An Air Force soldier, in his Madei Aleph (dress uniform), playing the piano, which has been plastered with stickers of those who were killed on October 7 or the wars that have followed … In Tel Aviv, just outside the HaShalom station, there were two tables set up on the sidewalk. One was this guy, with a sign of the Rebbe that also says משיח, “The Messiah” hanging in the front, with numerous pairs of tefillin for those walking by who might want to put them on. Just a few meters from him (and watching him), a police officer at a police recruitment table. No picture of the Rebbe at this one. The sign behind her says, “Tel Avi District — Where Professionalism meets Service.” The smaller print speaks about recruiting the next young generation of police officers. There were, as you can see, no takers. The police force here is a total mess, and is having a bear of a time recruiting new officers. Under Ben Gvir, police resignations have become an issue. I couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t even have a laptop with her. I get that it can all be done on her phone, but still. Nothing? Nothing to hand out? Nothing to type into other than a phone? Professionalism … When I got out of the station, they were both sitting alone. Within a minute, though, he was swarmed with young kids who wanted to put on tefillin. The group actually grew even larger a minute later, but I’d already started walking to my meeting and didn’t stop again to take another shot. The policewoman, at least while I was there, didn’t get even a single person to go to her table. Between being a police officer and putting on tefillin, at least at that moment and at that spot, there was no competition. Which is precisely what the Haredim are banking on. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danielgordis.substack.com/subscribe

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An Israeli Arab gets murdered almost every day in the Jewish State. Why?

4w ago00:12:50Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.comHere are some basic numbers. The picture is not pretty. In fact, it’s horrifying. * As of early May 2026, Israel’s annual homicide toll stood at 111, with 96 of those victims being Arab citizens — roughly 86% of all murder victims, in a community that constitutes about 21% of the population. Haaretz* The NGO Abraham Initiatives noted that 2026 is the fastest pace at which the Arab community has reached 100 murder victims in over five years. The Jerusalem Post* The Arab community’s murder rate in 2025 was approximately 11 per 100,000 — a figure the Finance Ministry compared to countries like Sudan or Iraq. Haaretz* For context on the Jewish rate: in 2023, the homicide rate among Jews and other non-Arab Israelis was 0.85 per 100,000, meaning Arab Israelis’ violent death rate was more than 13 times higher than that of Jews. The gap has only widened since. In 2024, there were 220 homicides in the Arab population compared to 58 among Jews, whereas until 2015, the ratio was roughly 4:1. Taub Center* Israel Police have solved just 15% of homicides in Arab communities versus 65% among Jewish Israelis, according to Knesset data.What is happening here? How can Jewish Israel be a country in which there is, essentially, almost no murder at all, while in the Arab community, theoretically protected by the same police and same court system, the plague of killing is entirely out of control? What is the cause of all this? What are the police doing and not doing? Are there those in the government who are actually happy to see the murder rate rise? Why would that be? Who is killing whom and why? Is there anything that can be done? We hear today from an Israeli Arab woman, a lawyer and activist, Rawyah Handaqlu. What she has to say isn’t easy to hear—but we need to. If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.Rawyah Handaqlu is a lawyer and social entrepreneur, and the Director of Eilaf –The Center for Advancing Security in Arab Society. She led the Emergency Headquarters for Combating Crime and Violence in Arab Society, operating under the National Committee of Heads of Arab Local Authorities. Rawyah brings extensive experience working with local government, civil society, and multi-sectoral frameworks. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration and Public Policy for Local Government from the University of Haifa. She writes policy papers and articles on social and public policy issues, lectures widely, and is a social activist working to advance equal opportunities and a shared society. She is a recipient of the Peres Center for Peace “Knight” Award, was selected to TheMarker’s“40 Under 40 –Most Promising Young Leaders” list, and received the Rising Star for Human Rights Award from the New Israel Fund UK.The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.

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The kaffiyeh on the Bimah's table

Jun 200:10:17Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.comAs we’ve noted for quite some time now, we’re going to look at American Jewish anti-Zionism over the course of several episodes, not necessarily because it is going to be a long-term feature of American Jewish life — I explain towards the end of today’s video why I believe that will not be the case — but because of what it has to teach us about the DNA …

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Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis

All episodes

For generations, the "left" was political home for Jews, and it warmly embraced Israel. What happened?

Israel and the Palestinians are locked in vicious war. So why are they consciously imitating each other in how they conduct the conflict?

Arielle Angel, a leading American Jewish anti-Zionist recently profiled by Ha'aretz, joins us in conversation

"The Jewish March of Folly: The Dramatic Events, Fateful Results, and Unlearned Lessons of Ancient Israel’s Political Suicide"

For many Israelis, this is going to be a one-issue election

"Life on the Frontlines": Israelis who fought in this war tell their story—for themselves, their families, and for our collective future.

Did the early DNA of American Judaism give rise to today's American Jewish anti-Zionism?

"We're going to have to start shooting them," people now say. And they may well be right.

An Israeli Arab gets murdered almost every day in the Jewish State. Why?

The kaffiyeh on the Bimah's table