US-Iran talks, women in the Israeli military and antisemitism in America - with Coleman Hughes

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Unholy: Two Jews on the News"

Episode: US-Iran talks, women in the Israeli military and antisemitism in America - with Coleman Hughes
Date: February 5, 2026
Hosts: Yonit Levi (Channel 12, Israel) & Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, UK)
Guest: Coleman Hughes (American writer & public intellectual)

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Episode Overview

This week’s episode covers three major topics shaping headlines in Israel, the US, and global Jewish life:

• The uncertain trajectory of US-Iran relations amid volatile Trump-era diplomacy
• The mounting violence in Israel’s Arab sector and debates over representation
• Deepening divides over the role of women in the Israeli military
  The episode also features an extended and insightful interview with Coleman Hughes exploring the changing faces of antisemitism in America—both left and right wing—along with a meta-discussion of how media, politics, and identity interact.
  The trademark chutzpah and mensch awards close out the show with pointed commentary on news media and Jewish achievement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. A Literary Start: The National Library in Jerusalem

[00:54-04:47]

• Yonit shares her overdue visit to the new National Library, marveling at its architectural beauty and symbolic placement near Israel’s Supreme Court and parliament.
• The building physically embodies Israel's diversity: “Inside...all walks of Israeli life are in there, thousands of students every day. But also...the Jews, the Arabs, the religious, the secular, all of them kind of coming together.” (Yonit, 01:27)
• Anecdote about the legal ritual of depositing books by Israeli authors, sparking a lighthearted exchange over who’s followed the rule.

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2. US–Iran: “A Nervous Holding Pattern”

[07:08-14:47]

• Current negotiations in Oman between US advisors (Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff) and Iran’s foreign minister recall the genesis of the JCPOA but come with massive skepticism over genuine progress.
• Trump’s unpredictability is a running theme:
  • “He gives conflicting signals day by day, hour by hour...you just have to wait till the actual thing happens rather than trying to interpret the tea leaves...” (Jonathan, 09:09)
  • Yonit: “Sanity is quite 2015, don’t you think?...Trumpology needs to be a whole new analysis...”
• The Israeli perspective:
  • Even minor US moves against Iran risk triggering direct attacks on Israel.
  • Iran is currently weaker, having lost about 50% of its precision missiles and launchers since June, but that could make its responses unpredictable.
• US pressures Israel to open the Gaza-Egypt Rafah crossing for medical evacuations—resulting, so far, in just a handful of patients assisted. According to the WHO, the impact is “a drop in the ocean compared to the 18,500 Gazans who they say need medical evacuations.” (Jonathan, 16:26)
• Hamas is rapidly reasserting itself as Gaza’s de facto authority, seen even at medical evacuation points, underlining the limits of externally imposed new governance structures.

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3. Israeli Society’s Internal Faultlines

Arab Sector Violence [19:56-29:17]

• Israel’s Arab community is facing a dramatic surge in violent crime: “35 Arab Israelis have been murdered since the beginning of the year—only three this morning.” (Yonit, 19:57)
• Blame is often placed on far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose neglect or calculated indifference is suggested as a cause:
  • “The murder rate in the Arab community has doubled since Ben Gvir became National Security minister...248 murders last year.” (Jonathan, 21:12)
• Demonstrations in both Arab towns and Tel Aviv signal a push for deeper integration, political participation, and safety—yet major obstacles persist, including reluctance by mainstream Jewish parties to partner with Arab politicians.
• Anecdote: Nas Daily (Nuseir Yassin) “told us that the first time he actually met Jews was when he went to Harvard”––underscoring the lack of integration between Arab and Jewish sectors. (Yonit, 25:37)

Women in the IDF [29:17-33:05]

• Right-leaning media launches a new campaign against women in combat roles, singling out the veritable hero Lt. Col. Orban Yehuda (first female commander of a mixed battalion, who helped repel Hamas at Sufa base).
• Yonit points out the persistence of this debate: “Why are we having this argument? Like that combat ship has sailed...There have been...60,000 women in combat roles...you’re opening up the issue of women’s votes, right? This discussion will actually outlive Netanyahu because the fault line here is between the very religious or the devout religious and the secular." (Yonit, 29:59)
• The absence of women in Israeli political party leadership diminishes advocacy for such issues.
  “Politics does make a difference. The fact that there aren’t women leading those political parties means there isn’t an obvious locus for this point…in the political arena.” (Jonathan, 32:20)

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4. Antisemitism in America – Interview with Coleman Hughes

[33:33-60:01]

Origins and Expressions from the Left

• Distinguishes “old” right-wing antisemitism (familiar, Faurean) from the newer resurgence on the left:

  • “The source of it is this philosophy ... intersectionality ... which says...the way you have to understand the entire world is through the lens of race, gender and sexuality...The first and last question you ask is, who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed?” (Coleman, 34:54)
  • Within this framework, “For them, Jews are white people and Palestinians are people of color. And that is all you need to know...That’s how they come to the issue.” (Coleman, 36:52)

• Notably, this logic fails to activate moral outrage against nonwhite-on-nonwhite violence (e.g., Iran’s regional actions): “Intersectionality would say, well, that’s people of color killing other people of color. And therefore it’s all a bit too confusing.” (Jonathan, paraphrasing Coleman, 38:25)

The Right’s Resurgence

• Historically, the American right harbored antisemitic pockets, but “guardrails” in media kept such voices marginalized (e.g., William F. Buckley blocking bigots).
• The internet has enabled a new unfiltered marketplace of ideas, favoring the rise of conspiracists and antisemites:
  • “What we’re learning is that when you get rid of guardrails on the right, what’s left is that people do gravitate in great numbers towards conspiracy theories and anti Semitism...” (Coleman, 44:12 & [00:02])
  • “As media opens up, you have to take the good, the Coleman Hughes with the bad, Alex Jones...” (Yonit, 44:21)

On “Moral Equivalence,” Israel and Journalism

• Hughes rejects the rhetoric of genocide against Israel, arguing that the evidence from how the war ended disproves it:
  • “The moment Trump was able to secure a deal in which Hamas ... agreed to give back the hostages while the war ended. What does that tell you? ...the goal of this war was getting the hostages home and disarming Hamas so it could never again do an October 7th. That was the goal. ...It proved all of the critics wrong.” (Coleman, 45:54)

American Progressives and “Jim Crow” Analogies

• Hughes unpacks why the American left is drawn to see Israel/Palestine in terms of America’s civil rights history.
• Emphasizes disanalogies:
  • In the US, “there was never ... an organized black political movement which sought to take control of the entire country ... never a sense that violence against civilians was a totally legitimate tactic.”
  • Those projecting this historical lens on Israel “are bound to misfire and actually become useful idiots as a result...” (Coleman, 50:34 – 56:45)

On Trump, Policy, and the 2024 Election

• Hughes voted for Democrats twice in 2024, sat out Harris v. Trump as “unconvinced” by either. Assessment:
  • “Trump has been...a little better on foreign policy than I expected and worse on domestic policy than I expected. ...His ego and incompetence and self-aggrandizement leads him to push it so far that he actually loses popularity.” (Coleman, 56:59)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Media & Antisemitism: “When you get rid of guardrails on the right, what’s left is that people do gravitate in great numbers towards conspiracy theories and anti Semitism, which is the mother of all conspiracy theories.” (Coleman Hughes, [00:02]/44:12)
• On Gaza Aid: “We are talking about a trickle of a trickle. This is a tiny, tiny thing that’s happened. It’s symbolic really more than anything.” (Jonathan Freedland, 16:36)
• On Iranian Threats: “If the US jabs even lightly at Iran, it’s Israel that gets punched in the face.” (Jonathan, 12:18)
• Israeli Social Fabric: “It’s really within reach. And that is why I think the protest, as you say, in Tel Aviv, was so important.” (Yonit, 25:37)
• On Women in the IDF: “That combat ship has sailed...There have been in this war...60,000 women in combat roles...this whole argument is in the past. ...I think what we need to be looking at...is between the very religious or the devout religious and the secular. And that is a conversation and an argument that will continue long after Netanhayu.” (Yonit, 29:59)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• National Library anecdote: 00:54–04:47
• US–Iran, Trump unpredictability: 07:08–14:47
• Gaza/Rafah opening & Hamas vacuum: 15:00–19:55
• Arab sector violence & political consequences: 19:56–29:17
• Women in IDF debate: 29:17–33:05
• Interview: Antisemitism in America (Coleman Hughes): 33:33–60:01
  • Left-wing antisemitism: 34:29–39:12
  • Right-wing, media guardrails: 39:36–44:12
  • Israel, Gaza, war and journalism: 45:14–49:25
  • American civil rights analogies: 50:34–56:45
  • US politics, Trump/Harris: 56:45–59:54

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Awards

Chutzpah of the Week:

• Jeff Bezos for laying off a third of Washington Post journalists, including the entire Middle East desk, despite vast personal wealth.
  “He is among the two or three richest people in the world. There is no way that he can’t afford to maintain...a newspaper like the Washington Post...” (Jonathan, 62:21)

• Runner-up: Gregory Bevino, US Border Patrol, for reportedly anti-Semitic comments—mocking an orthodox prosecutor for keeping Shabbat. “Remember, I’m available 24/6.” (Jonathan, 67:15)

Mensch of the Week:

• Steven Spielberg for finally achieving EGOT status–– “And we also need to mention that out of 22 people who won the EGOT, nine were Jews. So good for us.” (Yonit, 68:23)

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Episode Tone

Lively, incisive, at times wry. The hosts blend gravity and humor, balancing sharp concern for justice and democracy with their ongoing, friendly banter. The guest interview is rigorous but accessible, offering frameworks to make sense of headline issues for both Jewish and broader audiences.

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For New Listeners

This episode is a rich, nuanced primer on pressing faultlines in Israeli and American politics, with a particular focus on the evolving nature of antisemitism and the interplay of identity, media, and power. If you’ve missed recent developments—or want a clear, thoughtful, and sometimes funny guide—you’ll find it here. The timestamps make it easy to dip into areas of special interest.

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Transcript

[Coleman Hughes]

I think what we're learning is that when you get rid of guardrails on the right, what's left is that people do gravitate in great numbers towards conspiracy theories and anti Semitism, which is the mother of all conspiracy theories.

[Yanit Levy]

It's unholy. I'm Yanit Levy in Tel Aviv.

[Jonathan Friedland]

And I'm Jonathan Friedland in London.

[Yanit Levy]

And this week we will be talking to Coleman Hughes, who is one of the most influential young thinkers in America today. We're looking forward to that conversation later in our show. Before we get to that, however, Jonathan, can we talk about books? It's been a while since we've done that.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yes.

[Yanit Levy]

About five minutes, perhaps?

[Jonathan Friedland]

It's about. In about five minutes. Yes. It's a regular feature.

[Yanit Levy]

I just wanted to tell you about my experience at the National Library in Jerusalem last week, which, being a library aficionado, it's kind of embarrassing that I haven't been there since it opened. The new building of the library in 2023, I have to say. I mean, it's gorgeous, right? It's designed in a way that looks like an open book with a lot of respect to, you know, playing with the idea of the Kotel and the Wailing Wall and how the sort of wall of this library is made. Inside. It's this beautiful place in which kind of all walks of Israeli life are in there, thousands of students every day. But also you can see in the sort of large reading hall, there's going to be the sort of, you know, the Jews, the Arabs, the religious, the secular, all of them kind of coming together. It's this beautiful, beautiful building. I can tell you I was there because I sort of wanted to adhere to the law. There's a book law in this country that says that you have to deposit every publication that comes out. In Israel, you have to deposit two cop the library. You know, a little caveat. My book didn't come out in Hebrew yet. It was just a trial run with Don't Feed the Lion in English. But still, it was this moment where I kind of, you know, used the opportunity to deposit these books and meet very interesting people. And I thought to myself, your books, at least two of them, were translated into Hebrew. I do hope that you adhered to the law in this land and did deposit or your publisher deposited books for you in the national library among 4 million other books.

[Jonathan Friedland]

I would absolutely comply with that law eagerly and readily. My understanding, because there's an equivalent law here. Every book written has to be deposited with there's several deposit Libraries. British Library is one in London. There's the Bodleian Library in Oxford, there's several. But I always thought this happens automatically, that the publishers just send them in. So it never crossed my mind to do what you've done, which sounds like a beautiful ritual to go personally, did you have a copy in your hand and hand it to the librarian?

[Yanit Levy]

How does that sound? I indeed had two copies and my dear friend Wendy Singer, who's also a strategic advisor to the library, kind of gave me the tour and showed me the place to deposit the books.

[Jonathan Friedland]

I love that.

[Yanit Levy]

But I have, you know, sir, I will not co host a podcast with a man who's a book delinquent and did deposit his books to the National Library in Israel. So I'm just telling you that I would make sure you actually did that. Jonathan.

[Jonathan Friedland]

It's fine. It's a bit like the thing about people who borrow a book from a lending library and don't return it. This is a different kind of book delinquency. It never, truthfully never crossed my mind. I always assume this is something the publishers do automatically. I will look into it because you're quite right, the Escape Artist has been published in Hebrew. And my first Sanborn novel, the Righteous Men, was published in Hebrew as well. And so I will make sure that they are there and take that as an excuse to do a simple. Because it's obviously a wonderful ritual. Very much in favor of it.

[Yanit Levy]

It really is. There's one more thing I have to tell you about the building itself. It nestles. I mean, it's in the neighborhood of other institutions and monuments in Israel. So it's the Supreme Court in the Knesset and Har Herzl, which is the Arlington of Israel.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Yanit Levy]

The military cemetery and where dignitaries are buried as well. And there's a story that when Ruby Rivlin, who was then the speaker of the House when they planned the library, he then became the President of Israel, he said that he wants a direct line between the Knesset, where the and the military cemetery, the national cemetery, to see the price you pay for decisions like war and peace. So they asked for the national library building to actually be lower than the Knesset and the cemetery. So you could have see that direct line. So it stands in the middle. And that's, you know, quite a beautiful story, I thought, to lead us perhaps into the gravity of the news. But, you know, that makes you think.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yeah, line of sight in every way, metaphorically and literally. That's a good intervention innovation by the former president. We should mention A few bits of housekeeping before we plunge into the news and those decisions made. We are, of course, on YouTube where if you're watching, you can see a permanent forever plug for your needs book. Since we're talking about books, I'm staring at a copy right now on the shelf behind her.

[Yanit Levy]

Do you want me to put your book instead? Is that what you're. I can do that. I can do that. We'll alternate one week mine, one week yours.

[Jonathan Friedland]

That would be nice. I can't do it because people who are watching YouTube will see that I don't have a shelf directly behind me. I have a sort of.

[Yanit Levy]

What they would notice is every week we dress in the same color. How did that happen to us? Again, blue. Again, different shades, but still blue.

[Jonathan Friedland]

No, that's purple, isn't it? You're wearing.

[Yanit Levy]

I think it's not purple. It's blue. This is why people need YouTube. They have to decide if it's purple.

[Jonathan Friedland]

They can decide that. The other thing is two things for you to check out. One is we are, we do have a Patreon and you can become there. A subscriber to. To the podcast bonus episodes coming thick and fast. You'll definitely want to be on there. I think in our last bonus episode, we did have a look at some of the politicking around the upcoming election. We went deep into the different forces amassing the BB camp, the anti BB camp and so on. That's all there, details of all that are in the show notes. But also we had a role reversal in the last few days in which we were not the askers of questions, but the answerers of them. We were the guest on a different podcast, Johnny.

[Yanit Levy]

We were quite apprehensive, right. For journalists, they always were that moment where they have to answer questions, at least for me. But we had a lovely time with Jessica Steinberg of Times of Israel on their podcast what Matters Now. So if you want to hear even more of me and Jonathan, if you're not tired after this weekly episode, you're very welcome to listen to that.

[Jonathan Friedland]

And we did that, didn't we, as a sort of look back five years, very generously. Times Israel marking the fifth anniversary of Unholy. And they actually asked us things that we hadn't thought about before, hadn't talked about before, really, about the origin story of the podcast and in some ways how it's affected the rest of our working lives. So that's all there. Again, we'll have a link in the show notes, but we should. And we Ought to get to this week.

[Yanit Levy]

Indeed. I mean, look, I think it's not a coincidence this week, February 2nd was also groundhog Day. And it kind of feels that way when you discuss the story of President Trump and what he plans to do vis a vis Iran. Right. Is it going to be an attack or there going to be negotiations? First of all, there are going to be negotiations as we speak now on Thursday afternoon in Oman between Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, his trusted advisors and foreign Minister of Iran, rfg. They're going to meet there. Oman, obviously, being the place that kind of ignited the jcpoa, the first Iran deal. So that signals something. The differences in the gap between the sides are huge. Most experts look at this and say, look, this is not going to be bridged in any way. If the United States says we must talk about not only about the nuclear program and everything about enriched uranium, et cetera, but also we need to talk about the ballistic missile and Iran sponsoring terror around the world, and Iran saying, no, no, we're not going to be talking about that. So even before they enter the room, there is a bit of skirmish around that. We will see what, what comes from it. Yesterday, President Trump saying that Khamenei, the leader of Iran, the spiritual leader, needs to be very concerned. We will see where this leads. But as we sit here, and I think it's been a couple of weeks, I feel a bit like a broken record saying we don't know if what we're going to see is an American attack, when, what scale and if at.

[Jonathan Friedland]

All the crucial words in that sentence, we don't know. And that's always true of events in world, events in the Middle east and so on. It is especially true in the Trump era. He gives conflicting signals day by day, hour by hour. So as you rightly mentioned, he gave what sounded like a warning to the Supreme Leader of Iran. In a normal presidency, that itself would be the big sign and everything would flow from that. But, you know, hours later, he could be saying, we're having very good talks and, you know, a deal is imminent. It's not our immediate subject. But just as an illustration, la last night would be Wednesday night. Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform a gushing eulogy to Xi Jinping of China, talking about how they'd had a wonderful phone call and they understand so much together and they're going to have a great relationship. That's the big adversary we're meant to believe. But one phone call turns on a dime, and so it is wholly Plausible that by the time you hear this, the armada, the beautiful armada that Donald Trump referred to that has been sailing close to the region ready for action against Iran may have been unleashed. It is equally possible and to me totally plausible that Donald Trump will be on truth social saying, announcing a big breakthrough deal. And I love the Iranian regime. You just can't know with him and therefore why I think, you know, for your preservation of one's own sanity, you just have to wait till the actual thing happens rather than trying to interpret the tea leaves of this statement that post that reading because it goes back and forth, hour by hour, minute by minute.

[Yanit Levy]

Sanity is quite 2015, don't you think? I think we're not doing sanity anymore. Jonathan, you didn't get the memo? Yes, I think there was one point I was trying to read to you the horoscope of the president who's a Gemini in and tried to say that Trumpology needs to be a whole new analysis of what the president plans or not.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Look in his country as good a guide, as good a guide as any other. Forget the geopolitics and the Kremlin ology, look at the stars. That might will be just as useful, I think, indeed.

[Yanit Levy]

Look, sadly, we can't really just put all of our trust in the stars because we are a country that is targeted by Iran. And indeed Iran did say more than once that if the United States hits Tehran, any other city, the response will be attacking Tel Aviv. Of course that also serves as trying to deter an American attack. But I think it might be useful to try and say that if we are looking at indeed an American attack on Iran and a subsequent attack from Iran to Israel, then this is going to look different than what we saw in all the last skirmishes. I remind you, April and October of 2024 and of course the 12 day war in June of 20. What will be different this time? If this all, you know, rolls down the hill is first of all the United States initiating it. And that coming from, from the President Trump. So that means that Iran could also attack military targets or American targets in the Middle east or perhaps in other places around the world. It's also important to say Iran is weaker than it was in June. Right. It according to reports has less, about 50% less of its ballistic accurate missiles. It has more of the not accurate Shihab missiles. This is both bad and good news, but that is the arsenal and of course less launchers and all of that adding to this mix. It's all a mixed bag, but adding to this mix is that if the regime is desperate, then all kinds of things could open up. So nothing that I said right now is not known to the Israeli public. But I think that it does kind of perhaps drive home the fact that we're still quite apprehensive here. I mean, we don't know what will happen. It's a pretty long time to hold this kind of level of tension, even in a country that knows how to do this. It's been implied.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yeah. I mean, my observation about the unpredictability, in a way, that's fine for people who are watching this from a distance and watching it as a news development and thinking, okay, I'll react when we know something firm, very different. If it's Israel, which absolutely is sitting there knowing that if. If the US Jabs even lightly Iran, it's Israel that gets punched in the face. And so it's a very, very different situation. You know, there are all these different data points. One that would be troubling is people inside the Trump administration, Trump White House do say that since January 3rd and the capture of Maduro in Venezuela, Donald Trump has become sort of entranced with the power of the US Military and what it can do. And I'm not quite saying he's got an itchy trigger finger, but he's excited by the possibilities. This was not really part of the makeup of Trump before, who, for all his many other, you know, qualities, a sort of instant bellicosity wasn't one of them. He was somebody who was quite wary and had got. Part of what had powered him to his position politically was the appeal to his base of no more foreign wars. No more I'm going to be the guy who ends wars, not starts them. Something may have changed in his mindset since what happened in Venezuela, where he saw he gives an order and something very big happens and changes in the world within hours. That's appealing to some part of him and that's in the mix. But equally, we know he can do a deal and all bets are off. So, yeah, it's Israel that's in that nervous holding pattern.

[Yanit Levy]

I remembered. Somehow my mind threw back to Jake Sullivan, former national Security advisor of President Biden, who was on this podcast a few months ago, and he said, president Trump likes peace and he likes deals. And I listened to that a few weeks ago and I said, well, he was. Perhaps he moved on from that because as you said, there's something's different. I think you commented last week, and it really is true that at the beginning, it was about, you know, help is on the way and we're going to help the Iranian people. Now it's about a good deal, which doesn't really fit with the original idea of what you were trying to do, right? Help the Iranian people, perhaps help them topple the regime. You know, all of that. How does that work, all of that together, we still don't know. Again, we began this discussion about Iran with we don't know. And I'm kind of ending it with was the same kind of point.

[Jonathan Friedland]

It's true. And even by the way, within that it shifted. So the first thing was help is on the way, we're coming to the rescue. Second thing is we need to do a deal on nukes. People then said, oh, right, so you've forgotten now about the people. Then he said, we need to do a deal on nukes and for them to stop killing people. So it just moves all the time. There isn't a system, there isn't a pattern. It's just the whim of him. And that means you, you just have to wait. And as you say, we end where we began with we don't know the war that dominated the previous period and which Donald Trump likes to claim, claim credit for, that was both a piece and a deal, if you like, in the Jake Sullivan formulation in namely Gaza. That is an interesting sort of period. I mean, we know that they're now they want to be into phase two of the agree is the bigger stuff, the more difficult stuff, including the demilitarizing of Hamas, including Israeli withdrawal, including ultimately a pathway to a Palestinian state. Part of that was opening up Rafah, the land crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Israel had been very wary of that. Trump by all accounts, insisted on it. I just think that it's worth just putting some numbers on that this week, on Monday, it was a grand total of five patients. According to World Health Organization, five patients and seven companions were transferred out of Gaza for medical care. On Tuesday, that rose to 16 patients and 40 companions. I just mentioned the numbers because I think people think when a, when a crossing is open, they picture this huge flows of people. We are talking about a trickle of a trickle. This is a tiny, tiny thing that's happened. It's symbolic really more than anything. There are a whole lot of people queuing up to get in, returning from medical treatment who were turned away. This is really, and, you know, one, one official from the World Health Organization saying this is a drop in the ocean compared to the 18,500 Gazans who they say need medical evacuations.

[Yanit Levy]

Yes, you're right to point out that the reports are that indeed President Trump was pressuring Netanyahu to open the Rafah crossing. We should mention it has been closed since October 7th for obvious reasons. And this is all tied, right? If Netanyahu needs assistance from Trump in all kinds of areas or wants certain things with regard to the Iranian issue, then he will have to succumb to certain issues in the Gaza story. To me, again, as an Israeli looking at all this, the most worrying point here is that it is very clear that Hamas is doing everything it can to build, rebuild itself in every way possible, either as, of course, as a terrorist organization first and foremost, but also as. As kind of being the civil authority. There were reports this week, actually our diplomatic Correspondent on Channel 12, Yonavam, reported, that it's the Emiratis who want to come in and deal with the civil issues in Gaza. Whatever happens is better. Anything is better than Hamas, of course, and the Emiratis are a very good option. But how is this supposed to happen? They don't seem to be moving aside. And I think that is the biggest tragedy. This has to happen. It has to happen fast. And it's not happening. It's definitely not happening fast.

[Jonathan Friedland]

This is exactly the why the sort of. Some of the granular reporting from on the ground is very, very useful, because there are signs on the ground of Hamas reasserting control. You know, there's this medical point in Gaza where evacuees would be. Evacuees assemble. On Tuesday, local journalists noticed that members of the Health Ministry, Hamas controlled health ministry, appeared unexpectedly at this medical point, along with representatives of Hamas's media office and Interior Ministry. And that they began intervening in these preparations for these evacuations. In other words, they were putting their fingerprints on this. This is something that was meant to be under the control of this National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. This, or rather it should be, but is not under this committee. This is the body that has been designated as the new temporary administrators under Donald Trump's plan for Gaza. It just shows, to put it very kindly, how limited their role is and that actually in reality on the ground, it's Hamas. You know, this is something where you'd imagine the technocrats would be involved. It's not political, it's certainly not, you know, military, the evacuation of people needing medical treatment. But there are Hamas making sure they're involved. And I just think this is the picture in that vacuum we've talked about on the podcast before, in the vacuum that's been allowed to develop since last October, of course, the group that are most present historically and now are going to reassert themselves and that means Hamas.

[Yanit Levy]

So we want to discuss a few things that are happening internally inside the Israeli society this week. I think it is important to mention first of all a mounting problem in Israeli society, which is the spike in violence in the Arab sector. Just if we're in numbers to say 35 have been murdered. 35 Arab Israelis have been murdered since the beginning of the year. Only three this morning. These communities have been plagued with violence. It's a problem that is long running in Israeli society, but now it really is exploding. And the claim of this community and of many of the allies of the community is that the government is not doing enough. And especially because the Minister of National Security responsible for the police is Itamar Bengvir, who's a far right minister. Remember his slogans used to be, I'm quoting him, right, his slogans, death to all Arabs. He changed that when he tried to become a moderate to death to all terrorists. So the claim is essentially you're not putting enough effort on this problem. There was a huge demonstration in Tel Aviv Saturday night of Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis calling for a deep, deep discussion and attention given to this terrible problem.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yeah, I mean you're absolutely right to single out and mention Ben gvir. I hadn't seen this to my mind, shocking statistic that the murder rate in the Arab community has doubled since Ben GVIR became National Security minister. That under the previous government, the so called change government, Naftali Bennett, in which an Arab party was, was part of the coalition numbers, the, the murder rate had come down in 2022. It was, you know, it's still bad but it was low, lower. It got down to 108 murders that year. It is stands at now to the figures for 200 for 2025 are 249. So more than doubled in that process. As you say, it's either that Bangvid just doesn't care and neglects it and this area is barely policed and therefore this crime is allowed to run riot. There's, you know, the killing, coercion to pay these protection rackets, which means that people, businesses and others are intimidated into paying money to these Arab gangsters. It's meant people have been abducted from their homes. We're talking about Arab citizens of Israel shot. Residential streets turned into kind of war zones. Children gunned down, caught in the crossfire of crime, families battling over turf. Bengvi doing nothing. And the question is, does he either just, he doesn't care. It's, it's neglect. Or is it even worse than that, that on some level he thinks, look, the disintegration of Arab society, the sense that Palestinian citizens, Israel may be so unhappy and unsafe that they decide they have to make other arrangements and leave. Given his known position on this community, and you've reminded us, his slogan literally was death to the Arabs. Is he, is he quite happy to see these, these, this community at the mercy of these murderous gangsters? The, the protests in Tel Aviv I think is really, really important. There had already been pro demonstrations in, you know, Arab majority communities in the, in the town of Sakhnin, in the Galil, in the Galilee region, for example, big turnout. But this was different. To come into the heart in a way of Jewish Israel into turn. Tel Aviv is making a different statement. And I think the statement it's making is a political one. And we, you know, we're talking a lot about the upcoming elections. Plenty of the activists involved at that demonstration of the weekend were saying this is a call for increased Arab turnout in the next elections. The realization that a Bengvir is a, it gets into government because the numbers allow that to happen and you make that less likely. If Arab voters turn out, you know, they are nearly a fifth or are a fifth of the electorate, that is a very important voting bloc, it could make a profound difference. Now, the first move to, you know, to express that that's happening is some degree of consolidation, unification of the Arab parties, the possibility of a revival of the joint list where all the parties run together, that will maximize their presence, get more seats in the Knesset. My own personal hobby horse has been that to really make a difference would be if those Arab voters were to vote for mainstream, in other words, mainly Jewish Israeli parties that would then go into coalition. I don't expect them to do that, by the way, unless the ar, those majority mainstream parties themselves invite welcome in, you know, woo Arab voters. And they don't show much sign of that. But that surely has to be the thing that will change this. When Palestinian citizens of Israel have a seat at the table, the governing table. And that, you know, that means there has to be movement both ways. You have to have Jewish parties saying, yes, we will govern with Arab parties. That taboo broken once has to be broken again and again. The Arab voters themselves may have to just say, it's been of limited value historically to only vote for our own parties. Maybe that has to change as well. But I think the movement has to come from those mainstream Jewish Israeli parties. And if anything, I think the signs are, the moves are in the other direction.

[Yanit Levy]

Look, there's so much to say here, I think that I can't help myself but think about NAS Daily digital content creator to millions, who is of course Musayr Yassin, who grew up in Arabe, an Arab community in the northern part of Israel. And when he was on this podcast, he told us that the first time he actually met Jews was when he went to Harvard. So of course a lot has to be done about these kind of integration and the connection between these two communities. You see these in beautiful places. You see places like hospitals where the Jews and Arabs work together. I mentioned the National Library where they sit together. All of that can happen. It's really within reach. And that is why I think the protest, as you say, in Tel Aviv, was so important. We can't sort of not look at reality in the sense that after October 7, all this has become more difficult for parts of the Jewish society. When you think of the fact that this government decided to, you know, for, for instance, invest less in infrastructure or education in the Arab communities and more in things like, like policing, then you see where this problem that always existed kind of, you know, grows, grows and grows. By the way, just as a Asterix, a lot of the data on, on crime in general just spiked since Itamar Bengville has been Minister of Police. So just to mention that as well. But you know, there's work to be done here and it can be done. But as you say, it's not only. I think it's not only on the level of politics, it's also on the level of the people. This is indeed a bleeding problem and something that has to be resolved very quickly. This is 20% of the population in this country. They have to be dealt with in the same way that everyone else is. We should mention that Naftali Bennett, who was the sort of patron of the idea of the first Arab party to sit in his coalition when he was Prime Minister between June of 21 to June of 22. Remember, Ra', Am, the United Arab List was part of his coalition experiment that was done then with Mansoor Abbas. It was called an experiment. It lasted a year. He said this week, he said in the current makeup and, and after the current makeup of the Arab parties together and after the war, it would not make sense to have an Arab party in his coalition. He did said, of course, that they should have all of the rights of any other citizen in this country. But it doesn't make sense, he said. Again, I would take with a grain of salt the declarations of every politician before an election and definitely a politician who's trying to woo right wing voters. But this affects what we were talking about talking about as well.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yeah, it does. I, I just think if you're in the business of wanting those Arab voters to participate and yet the signals are that even the opposition parties would prefer in the end to go international unity government with Likud than they would to sit with the Arab parties. That is not going to motivate turnout. And yet I do think for the those two blocks that sit there in stalemate and have now for years and years, remember 4, 5 elections deadlocked between the Bibi camp and the anti BB camp. The game changing thing here would be if that 20% of votes was unlocked and moved into that anti BB camp. Now, from what I was reading about the speeches made at the big protest at the weekend, they themselves, those Arab voters themselves are saying that they are going to have to move the political needle because otherwise they're going to get governed by someone like Baby Ben gvir. But as I said before, this is a two way process. They have to move and similarly they have to be welcomed by the current mainstream parties otherwise this will continue. But yes, it's a challenge, as you say, for the whole country.

[Yanit Levy]

One more sort of, I would say arguments that erupted this week has to do with the issue of women in combat roles in the Israeli military. This comes this time, by the way, I refer our listeners to sort of past episode of unholy called Last Man Standing where we talked about the positioning of women and how there are more and more of them in combat roles and in combat supportive roles in the Israeli military. What happened this week was the channel 14 that is considered generally a right leaning channel and also supportive of Netanyahu started this campaign. Really the whole orchestra was talking against women in combat roles in the military. Their main talent was saying I'm against it, I don't think women should be doing it. And they specifically targeted a person who I would say is a hero in Israeli society, Lt. Col. Orban Yehuda. She's the first female to lead a mixed gender combat unit battalion called Caracal. She and her soldiers were actually fighting over the military base SUFA for 14 hours and saved that military base from being conquered by Hamas. She's a real hero and they targeted her specifically. In any case, what's interesting about this to me is that just the first view of it, you're Saying, why are we having this argument? Like that combat ship has sailed. There have been in this war in these last two years, 60,000 women in combat roles, Israeli women, or in supporting combat roles. They've been in paramedics in Gaza, in Lebanon. They flew over Iran. Why are we having this argument? This whole argument is in the past. It's like opening up the issue of women's votes, right? Women, voting rights. I think what we need to be looking at is, you know, I always tell you, and this is my fault, I always say, look, the fault line of Israeli society and Israeli politics is always Netanyahu, yes or no. You're in the baby block or the anti baby block. This discussion will actually outlive Netanyahu because the fault line here is between the very religious or the devout religious and the secular. And that is a conversation and an argument that will continue long after the rule of Benjamin Netanyahu. The reason for that is, you know, we talk about Israeli society. We have to say we talked about the part of the Arabs in Israeli society and of course, the secular Jews and the ultra Orthodox, which we talk about a lot. But there are the religious Zionists who, let's say most of them correlate with the settlement movement. They're very religious, but they're also, they go into military service and their politics are pretty right wing. They're also religious Zionists who are on the left left less and less. No group in Israel, it's a monolith. In that group, you have the more moderates and the less moderates, the less moderates don't like the idea of women in the military in general, by the way, a lot of religious Zionist women, more and more going into the military, the number has quadrupled in recent years, definitely in combat roles. So they're also scared about that. And this argument will continue. But, you know, it's an important mark to say it isn't, it isn't over this specific battle over the role of women in combat units and generally in the military. It isn't over.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Just one observation, again, going back to party politics, an observation you have made more than once, which is the absence of women in leadership of any of Israel's multiple political parties. Politics does make a difference. The fact that there aren't women leading those political parties means there isn't an obvious locus for this point you've just made to be made in the, you know, in the political arena. And just as we were saying before about, you know, Arab voters, they are not represented because of voting or you know, under counting their political strength by low turnout, the absence of female political leadership is going to have a real world effect. And this, what you've just mentioned, is just one very concrete example of that.

[Coleman Hughes]

Foreign.

[Jonathan Friedland]

So we have talked a lot about what's going on in Israel and particularly inside the country and how Israelis are seeing things. It's always valuable on Unholy to get the perspective of somebody who comes at this and much, much else from a very different angle.

[Yanit Levy]

Coleman Hughes is one of the most influential young intellectuals in America, a writer, opinion columnist, of course, a podcaster. With his very popular podcast Conversations with Coleman, he's been named to Forbes 30 under 30 list in the media category. If that isn't enough of a list of accomplishments for you, he's also a musician, we should mention Coleman, thank you so much for being on Unholy today.

[Coleman Hughes]

Glad to be on with you. Thanks so much for having me.

[Yanit Levy]

You know, we have so many things to talk about relating to the United States, to Israel, to a lot of other things. I hope it's okay if I, you know, start with something that has been on our minds for a very long time here on this podcast, and that is the issue of anti Semitism in the United States and its spike and its rise in recent years. Coming from the left and coming from the right, how do you look at it being such an important ally of the this community? What do you think when you look at it? What happens?

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, so I think there's two separate things that happen at the same time. One is familiar and old and it's from the right. And it's essentially the same emotional and psychological source from which Nazism came. That's the, you know, however, we don't actually have to spend that much time on that because people, you know, Jews are familiar with it and people in general are familiar with it and the psychological causes of it, where it comes from. And so I've spent more time thinking about and focusing on antisemitism from the left because people have a tougher time actually understanding where it comes from, why it exists. And, and the result may be the same as antisemitism on the right, namely that people end up focusing all day long on Israel as if it's the only country in the world when much bigger conflicts just in the past 10 years in the same region have gone virtually unnoticed by those people. But the source of it is not the same as antisemitism on the right. The source of it is this philosophy that you can call intersectionality or critical Race theory or wokeness, which a whole generation of people on the left have adopted, which says essentially that the world, the way you have to understand the world, similar to how a Marxist must understand the world through a class analysis. There's the bourgeoisie and there are the work, working people. Intersectionality says the way you have to understand the entire world is through the lens of race, gender and sexuality. In other words, when you look at a problem in the world, you look at a political situation. The first and last question you ask is, who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed? And the way you answer that question is racially. So who are the white people? Who are the brown people right? Now that may sound overly simplistic, because it is. But I promise you, most of these kids on college campuses that are protesting for the first time in their life, a war overseas, this is actually how they think about the world. This is the one moral toolkit they have actually been given in life that resonates with them. Now that's a big problem. But just accept that that's true for the sake of argument, because that gets you 90% of the way towards every anti Semitic thing that they participate in afterwards. Because for them, and these are mostly American kids, for them, Jews are white people. So obviously there's 10 different ways you can actually question that claim historically and genetically and all the rest of the. But that's not important for now. What's important is understanding their mindset. For them, Jews are white people and Palestinians are people of color. And that is all you need to know. That's all they need to know to understand who they're for and who they're against. And that's how they come to the issue. Now, I'm not saying there isn't some. There is within that group, I think some Islamic antisemitism too, because if you're a second generation Muslim student and your religion is important to you, and you can sort of drink in antisemitism with certain versions of Islam as well, but I think for the majority of these students, it really is that simple.

[Jonathan Friedland]

It's a very useful framing that you've given us there because in a way, it answers a question I know we've been getting from a lot of our listeners. Why is there not an equivalent storm about Iran? And in a way the answer would be because on the framing you've just given us, because intersectionality would say, well, that's people of color killing other people of color. And therefore it's all a bit too confusing. And so people just sort of back away from it and don't say anything. I'd be interested to hear what you say on that. But. But I did also want to get you to give us the companion piece of what you've just given us, which is an account of antisemitism on the left, and ask you about what's going on on the right, because there does seem to be an interesting shift in attitudes towards Israel. We've talked about that on the podcast, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, that kind of thing.

[Yanit Levy]

Nick Fuentes, which you had an episode about.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yeah, and then I was going to say, and then obviously not just on Israel, but also on Jews, a shift in attitude. And you have somebody like a Holocaust denying anti Semite like Nick Fuentes, who is getting his been sort of mainstreamed, as it were. So I'm giving you a lot there to react to, but interested to know how you what, how you sort of pick your way through all of that.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, I've been watching what's happening on the right with, with alarm over the past six months to a year and asking the same question as you. You know, what is going on here? One thing to remind people is that though America has been much better on the anti Semitism question historically than there has always been an element on the right in America that is anti Semitic. There's a great book by Walter Russell Mead called the Ark of the Covenant, which some of your listeners might be familiar with. If not, it's a fantastic read and it goes into some of the deep sources why American Protestant culture in particular tended to be friendlier towards the Jews than Europe did. But notwithstanding, there's always been antisemitism on the right. William F. Buckley made a point of marginalizing the anti Semites on the right when he was the standard bearer of the American conservative movement. But that just goes to show that there was an anti Semitic right there to block. And he blocked it. There was. Pat Buchanan in the 90s was very influential. And in many ways the modern anti Semites on the right are part of his legacy and his tradition. And so the real question is not why is there an element on the right that's anti Semitic? That's a standard throughout Europe and has been a standard in America. The question is why is it bubbling up now? And the answer, you know, I'm not 100% clear on what the answer is, but one, one of my ideas is that for most of my life and long before it, American media has had guardrails, meaning if you look at someone like me, my career, okay, I went to an Ivy League school. I had a philosophy degree, not really in journalism and so forth. But that's not really the only reason I really was able to break through is because I grew up in the Internet age, where I could literally, I could email or submit an essay to a startup magazine in Australia called Colette, which was not really mainstream media. It was new alternative media. And because Twitter existed, a magazine that is not the Atlantic or not the New York Times Magazine or not the New Yorker or not the Spectator can actually win a broad reach just on the power of its content alone. So Colette got big. I submitted to Colette. And that led to a change of events where I'm a known public intellectual and a writer today. So that kind of scenario for most of the past hundred years couldn't happen because there were only a few channels through which you could rise in the world of journalism. It was guarded by elites. That fact was resented by many people. There were only a few channels literally on television, and then there were only a few avenues that you could drive down in order to get into this world. And so the people who controlled those avenues, they could make judgment calls on what was simply too crazy to include. So, like when you, for instance, on Fox news in the 90s and 2000s, you didn't actually see Alex Jones types type characters. Now, Alex Jones, had he been led on Fox News in the 2000s, I think he would have done very well, right? Because there's a market for his brand of conspiracy theory mixed with humor, mixed with charisma or whatever it is. But the people in charge of Fox News never would have let that on. And that's part of the guardrails that existed in that era. Those guardrails have been fully taken off right now. So you can just. Anyone in the world can get a YouTube account, start broadcasting every single day, and see, try the market on for size. How much does the market like my thing? Right. And that's what Candace Owens is. And I think what we're learning is that when you get rid of guardrails on the right, what's left is that people do gravitate in great numbers towards conspiracy theories and anti Semitism, which is the mother of all conspiracy theories.

[Yanit Levy]

What it means actually is that as media opens up, you have to take the good, the Coleman Hughes with the bad. Alex Jones, that's actually no way of taking it, only the good.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's a good way of putting it.

[Yanit Levy]

I do wonder, because you, you know, and I'll send Our listeners, if anyone hasn't heard the podcast that you did In August of 2025, it was called Israel, Hamas, and the Myth of Moral Equivalence. And I think for many, at least from my Israeli perspective, I can say for many, it kind of really crystallized where the argument is and why there is no moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas. You were very, you know, vocal on large stages. You spoke. You were on the Joe Rogan experience that kind of got to millions. I wonder, as the war ended, do you see it differently, or is it the same for you as you look at it?

[Coleman Hughes]

I see what the end of the war emphasized is just how wrong the other side of this argument was. So, you know, throughout the war, I've been on the side of never losing sight of the fact that Israelis in general want to build a society where people flourish, where people have rights, a democracy, a society much like, you know, with. With some important tweaks, much like the ones that. That we enjoy in the West. Whereas what Hamas wants to build is an Islamic theocracy of the kind that if. If you or I were born there, we would probably be doing everything we could to get to the west, to get to the societies more like Israel and more like America. And losing sight of that, ethically losing sight of the question of what world does each side want to build is, to me, to lose the forest for the trees. So if you want to talk all. If you want to spend all your time thinking about, you know, one. One specific tragic event where there's collateral damage, civilians are killed, and maximize your focus on that to the exclusion of all else, okay, well, you can do that. But you could play that game in any war. You could play that game in the Civil War where the south suffered much more than the north did. You could play that game in World War II where the Germans suffered much, much more than the American population did. You could play that game with Japan as well. And I think it's important for journalism to always expose what goes on during war, but that shouldn't actually negate or let you lose the forest for the trees. And that's always been my feeling about it. There's been another side, obviously. It's been very influential, not only on the left, but the right, which has said essentially that Israel is committing genocide. So what the end of the war emphasized for me is it proved them wrong for the umpteenth time. Right? Because if you're committing a genocide, it would not matter one bit whether or not the hostages came home and whether or not Hamas agreed to disarm. Because, again, the definition of genocide is that your goal is to destroy a people. Genocide has nothing to do with the number of people killed and everything to do with the intent behind killing. If you're trying to destroy a people, if that's your goal, that's the goal of the violence, then getting the other side to promise to give the hostages back and disarm, it wouldn't matter at all. That has nothing to do with your goals. You would just continue. If anything, when a genocide is occurring and the other side disarms, it helps the genocide go faster. Right, when that's the goal. But what actually happened is that the moment Trump was able to secure a deal in which Hamas sort of agreed to disarm, or sort of. Of sort of didn't, but definitely agreed to give back the hostages while the war ended. What does that tell you? It tells you that, in fact, the goal of this war was the one, two punch of getting the hostages home and disarming Hamas so it could never again do an October 7th. That was the goal. And when those goals were met, you know, even partially in this, in the second, or at least let's allegedly, in the second case, the war ended. So my feeling is just, it proved all of the critics wrong. And there were even some people who said, well, you know, we don't know if Israel will stop the war if they give the hostages back. Like, we don't know that that's what they said, because they actually believed the whole genocidal aim and rhetoric. And so they were proven wrong. Most of them will never admit it, of course.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Can I just go back to the first part of your answer, which was the notion that Israel is building a society like the west, like the United States, that's a democracy, where a society that will flourish and so on. And I'm just thinking of the way your fellow public intellectual Ta Nehisi Coates presented Israel in his book, where he said, actually, by his lights, Israel wasn't comparable to the America of today. It was comparable to the America of the sort of 1950s Jim Crow. And he was particularly talking about the west bank, where Palestinians don't have the vote, where you can't say there's a democracy. Who is winning the argument, if you like, in terms of how intellectuals, even progressive opinion. Let's keep it with public intellectuals in America. Are they seeing Israel the way you see it and the way you've described it, or are they seeing it the way Ta Nehisi Coates said, which is it's like the America of the past, particularly not if you're looking at Israel proper, but if you're looking at the occupation in the West Bank.

[Coleman Hughes]

So this is another reason why the Israel issue has such purchase on the left in America is because the American left is deeply influenced by its success in the American civil rights movement. In some ways, the American civil rights movement in the 1960s, which was a great success, I'm a big fan of and wrote a whole book arguing that we need to restore the actual ideology which caused that and not the latter day radicalism that claims its mantle. In many ways, that's sort of like the founding important collective memory of the, of the American political left. And what that means is Americans on the left are always trying to sort of replicate that. They're trying to see versions of that in the world and do it again in various ways, do things that rhyme and echo with the civil rights movement. There's a problem with that, which is if, if you encounter a situation that looks superficially like segregation and Jim Crow, but actually isn't, then you're going to analyze the situation in the wrong moral terms, right? And that's what has happened with respect to people like Ta Nehisi Coates and the way they look at Israel in America. Segregation was driven by white supremacist ideology. And it was driven by the sense that white people, the explicit ideology which was taught in schools, it was taught in schools all over the country, not just the South. In the north, it was taught that white people were superior to blacks and that the proper order of society had white people on top in every way and black people on the bottom. It was not a situation analogous to Israel for many reasons. So first of all, there was never in America ever a popular or organized black political movement which sought to take control of the entire country. There's nothing even close to that. In other words, from the river to the sea as a political project for Palestinians means that from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab, right? We say Palestine will be free in the west, but as you probably know in Arabic the chant is more often from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab. In American history, there has never been a movement among black Americans that is equivalent. In other words, there's never been from, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, America will be black. There was never that aspiration ever. In fact, the most radical black leader of the 1960s who had any kind of popularity at all was Malcolm X. Now, Malcolm X at his very most radical mood, the most he sometimes asked for was a black state in Georgia. Other black leaders had flirted with the idea. Like Marcus Garvey was quite popular in this first half of the 20th century. His political platform was black people should move back to Africa. And some blacks had actually tried to, had actually done that in the 19th century. And that's where the country of Liberia comes from. The point, however, is that, that there was never a desire among African Americans, much less an organized political movement that put us in zero sum conflict with white Americans for political power. So that, first of all, that's the fundamental disanalogy between Israel, Palestine, what Palestinians want, what Hamas wants, which is still the most popular faction, sadly in Palestinian politics, is they will not compromise, they don't want it to state solution, they don't want a portion of the land and then to live in peace and harmony, they want the whole thing and they want the Jews out or subjugated at minimum. And so that makes, that makes the equation fundamentally different. Secondly, in the entire history of the African American struggle for freedom and for equality, there was never a sense that violence against civilians was a totally legitimate tactic. Right. Martin Luther King was by far more popular than Malcolm X. And every third word out of his mouth was we mean peace, we want peace, we're going to, even to a fault, even when we are attacked, we are not going to attack back. That's how much we do not believe in violence. It's totally dis. Analogous to. And the results would have been very different if Martin Luther King had been like Yasser Arafat or like Hamas is today. Then obviously the results would have been very different and the reaction from white Americans would have been very different. And so if you look both in terms of, of its political goals and its political tactics, namely terror, the African American equality movement looks nothing like the Palestinian movement. And so that's the fundamental disanalogy here. And people seeking to map the American experience onto Israel, Palestine are bound to misfire and actually become useful idiots as a result, as you can see from Hamas's updated charter.

[Yanit Levy]

So let me ask you specifically about American politics. You said that you voted twice, twice for Democrats in 2024. You told the Atlantic you're not going to vote. You were unconvinced by Harris and you thought the threat of Trump was exaggerated. Do you think that was the right decision to make?

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. So in my view, Trump has been, I think overall a little better on foreign policy than I expected and worse on domestic policy than I expected. What he's doing now with ice in Minnesota. The terrible incompetence that he and his administration are showing in carrying out what could be a popular policy. Deporting illegal immigrants that have committed crimes is a popular policy in America. But the way he's going about that, the scorched earth manner in which he's trampling over the norms and rights that Americans expect and indeed have is really, it's terrible to watch. It says a lot about, I guess it says a lot that we already knew about his carelessness and callousness and his judgment in surrounding himself by a clown car of liars and incompetence. But on foreign policy, it's, you know, I don't think that Kamala Harris would have negotiated a peace settlement between Israel and Hamas. I don't, I don't know if she would have had the follow through or the inclination. She definitely wouldn't have, have, in fact, to get rid of Maduro and open the door to better possibilities for Venezuela. And so it's a mixed bag with Trump. I think foreign policy is his strength and people don't want to give him his flowers for his achievements there. Domestic policy is his weakness because rather than govern the whole country and try to get consensus and follow through on the policies that 70 or 80% of Americans would like to see, his ego and incompetence and self aggrandizement leads him to push it so far that he actually loses popularity. And we're already seeing that. I mean, what he's doing in Minnesota, how he's sending ice after these cities is not a popular policy. Not a policy I'm happy to see. I think it's really terrible for the country and it's going to have long run consequences with the backlash against his kind of politics. So it's a mixed bag. I think it's too early to tell whether a Trump or Kamala Harris presidency would have been better. I think we need to see what the legacy of the four years will be before making that judgment. But that's where I stand at the moment.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Coleman Hughes, we obviously could carry on talking for many, many hours longer, but thank you so much for speaking to us for unholy.

[Coleman Hughes]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Yanit Levy]

Look, he's a really interesting voice in America today. And I thought his analyses of the anti Semitism coming from the left and coming from the right and what he explains about Israel, I mean, you know, as an Israeli, you think of that and you're like, if only we had more of people who could be as coherent and erudite and explain things as well as he does. I think we'd be in a different position, to be honest.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking about the sort of notional debate which in a way we heard there between him and Ta Nehisi Coates, which is, you know, I think they are these different poles of the public debate or the intellectual debate in the United States. My guess is on campuses and so on, Coates has the upper hand numerically. But it's very, very interesting to hear Coleman Hughes's very different perspective on those questions. You know, in a way, they. They absolutely apply to the kind of. The notion of Israel on the theory is all there. I think in terms of the practice, the fact that the situation in the west bank is held not just for a few months or years, but for nearly 60 years does change things a little bit. But anyway, I think it's a fascinating debate and he is, as you say, just a sort of brilliant exponent to some of that. Heterodox. That's a word he uses, heterodox. So it was great to have him on Unholy.

[Yanit Levy]

So it's time for our awards, sir. I mean, I know this is quite bigger than chutzpah, but we really wanted to talk about this, so here goes. I think there's only one recipient this week, and that has to be Jeff Bezos with his brutal layoffs at the Washington Post. A third of all journalists, including all of the journalists covering the Middle east, but just a huge pool of talent, obviously, in this wonderful newspaper. And he cut a third just to say, I assume that he has the money to fund this newspaper. So I'm not exactly clear on the decision, but sadly, I mean, this has been something to shake up newsrooms all over, I think, the world, this news coming out from the Washington Post.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yeah, I think this is why Merit's discussion under the chutzpah heading. I mean, he is. Is among the two or three richest people in the world. There is no way that he can't afford to maintain a. Even at a loss, a newspaper like the Washington Post for the reasons which he originally stated he was taking it over. Remember, he said at the time it was about the, you know, democracy needed civil society needed a free press. He was going to really commit to it. He paid next to nothing for it. 250 million, which for a big media title is not very much out of his fortune. It's pocket change. He got it for a bargain. This is something which he should have seen as a kind of philanthropic investment, meaning nice. If it turns a profit, but it's really there because it does good in the world. Full disclosure, I am a sort of alumnus of the Washington Post. I was there as a young reporter on a fellowship and then back in the 1990s and it left a huge mark. It's a newspaper with extraordinary standards and rigor and history. It is the paper, obviously, that broke the Watergate scandal. It had a huge role in the Pentagon Papers. It has a really distinguished career of speaking truth to power. And he has just tied one hand, if not more, behind its back. He's fired more than 300 journalists, axing huge parts of their local, local, international and sports coverage. Diminishing it as a newspaper. It's bound to mean that whatever problems it's got now are going to get worse. People were cutting their subscriptions. I think that was inevitable once they made some of the moves they made backing off, chickening out of their endorsement that had been written of Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Jeff Bezos more or less gave the order that that couldn't happen because he knew that or feared Trump would win and then similarly revolutionizing their opinion page. So it only could operate within very narrow and quite right of center limits. So he made it more and more missable as a newspaper, he and his publisher, Will Lewis. And now this is going to make it even more missable. It's death by a thousand cuts and it's a terrible, terrible thing to a storied, an important, vital journalistic institution and therefore democratic institution.

[Yanit Levy]

You also had a chutzpah nominee of your own.

[Jonathan Friedland]

I do. And I think a lot of people will be ahead of us on this one. I'm sure they will not be surprised that Gregory Bevino, the US Border Patrol officer who in a way became the face of the violent crackdown supposedly on on immigration in Minnesota, is in the frame for our chutzpah award this week. People will have noticed he's got this kind of buzz cut. He wears a coat that has drawn lots of parallels with the coats worn by senior Nazi officers in the period of the Third Reich. And so a friend of this podcast, Mike Murphy, joked, well, how surprising that the guy with the Nazi haircut and the Nazi coat turns out to voice anti Semitic attitudes. That at least is the accusation that is made. New York Times reporting that Gregory Bevino made derogatory remarks about the faith of a Jewish prosecutor in a conversation he Bevino had with lawyers. Apparently he mockingly used, used the term chosen people, by the way, often a go to for Anti Semites to pick up that phrase chosen people and complained that Daniel Rosen, who is the U.S. attorney in Minnesota and an orthodox Jew, was not on call because he was observing Shabbat, apparently was asking sarcastically whether Rosen understood that orthodox Jewish criminals do not take weekends off off and you know, mocking the fact that he was not available on Shabbat. This was in a phone conversation apparently on January 12th, right in the. In the intense period there in Minnesota just after the killing of Renee Nicole. Good. I. I would say that, you know, this is just all over piece with what we know of Gregory Bevino. The only thing that is is a slightly redeeming point in his favor. Is he him mocking the orthodox Jewish lawyer for not being available on Shabbat. Gives me an excuse to cite one of my favorite ever New Yorker cartoons which shows a Haredi man perhaps at an airport speaking into a phone saying remember I'm available 24. Six whenever you need me. 24.

[Yanit Levy]

Nice.

[Jonathan Friedland]

But. But vino. I think a runner up to Jeff Bezos in our chutzpah category.

[Yanit Levy]

Agreed. Mensch Award of the week has to actually be titled. I can't believe we have not given this man a Mensch Award thus far. How is that possible? I, as the librarian of unholy and responsible for all our archives, this shouldn't surprise you. I checked. We never gave him the Mensch Award. How is this possible? We are bad Jews. Okay, Mensch of the week, Steven Spielberg, forgetting an egotist, which is of course, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony. He got finally all four is when he got the Grammy this week. Four. The fact that he was a producer of the documentary about John Williams, another genius, of course. And you know, he won the Oscar for. Rightfully so, for Schindler's List and for Saving Private Ryan, of course. Emmy for an animated children's program called Animaniacs at the. And Tony for producing the musical A strange loop. I know you wanted all this information, sir.

[Jonathan Friedland]

I did. I found myself looking up how on earth did Steven Spielberg get a Tony.

[Yanit Levy]

That was the first thing I checked too.

[Jonathan Friedland]

Yeah. I mean, and now we know why.

[Yanit Levy]

And we also need to mention that out of 22 people, the Times of Israel points out that out of 22 people who won the EGOT, nine were Jews. So good for us. And not that I want to be petty, but I still want to point out that the fact that Steven Spielberg. Spielberg never won an Oscar for E.T. is a travesty. That's it. That's all I have to say for now about Steven Spielberg. Said the rest when we have him.

[Jonathan Friedland]

On, we're going to get him on one day. We must add him to the list. I thought that. Yeah, for years. Remember that was a thing waiting for him to get an Oscar and finally happen with Schindler's List, etc. And he's won quite a few since then. So happy tidings to Steven Spielberg. We should say again that bonus episodes, all the other details, it's all available there in the show notes. Becoming a subscriber. We love reviews, spreading the word. It's all good. And we need to say thank you.

[Yanit Levy]

A big thank you, as always, to Michal Porat and you and I will meet next week.

[Jonathan Friedland]

We will see each other then.