Podcasts about Zionism

In this episode of The Narrative, Burning Bright and Jordan Sather peel back the prophetic and political layers behind the recent red heifer headlines. They explore how the ritual of the red heifer, central to Third Temple prophecy, may be weaponized for geopolitical ends, and whether its timing is part of a broader psychological operation tied to the Israeli state, evangelical Zionism, and elite esoteric belief systems. The hosts revisit the rise of Trump and the spiritual awakening it triggered, questioning whether certain elements within the awakening movement were manipulated to usher in the very beast system they thought they were resisting. The conversation touches on Project Blue Beam, predictive programming, and how mythological archetypes have been inserted into political movements through media, memes, and metaphysical sleight of hand. Whether discussing the Book of Numbers or the Netflix doc Ancient Apocalypse, this episode challenges listeners to examine how old world patterns and ancient rituals continue to shape global events. It's a journey through time, tech, and theology, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Jessica Steinberg speaking with Guri Alfi, comic, actor and producer of "The New Jew." Recorded before the conflict with Iran, Alfi speaks about his experiences filming the second season of "The New Jew," a series he first created with public broadcaster Kan 11 in 2021 that had him looking at the Jewish community in the United States. For these latest episodes, Alfi traveled to the US to speak to Jews in the wake of October 7 and the intense antisemitism and anti-Zionism that exploded across college campuses and American cities. Guri discusses his conversations with a range of Jewish leaders, including Reform Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl, student leaders from Columbia and Harvard universities, and bereaved parents whose dual-citizen children became Israeli lone soldiers and were killed in the line of duty on October 7 and during the ongoing war. Guri says he wanted to show the bonds between the Israeli and American Jewish communities, and to show the hope and future that still exist despite the terrible events and trauma of the last 21 months. He also talks about one of his latest projects, “Speeches Against Despair” during the upcoming Israel Festival, in which he, along with actress Noa Koler, musician Noga Erez, actor Norman Issa, actress Maya Landsmann, screenwriter Galit Hoogi and others offer new interpretations to historical speeches. And so this week, we ask Guri Alfi what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

01:06:33 – 01:07:19Settler and IDF Violence Kills Nearly 1,000 Palestinians Since 2023Following the October 7 invasion, violence against Palestinians has intensified. Even former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert condemned the atrocities, noting many of the victims are children. 01:11:29 – 01:12:38Christians Abandoned by Pro-Israel U.S. LeadersDespite settler attacks on Christian villages, figures like Huckabee stay silent. Accusations rise that financial and political interests override concern for persecuted Christians. 01:12:40 – 01:13:52Churches Burned, Crops Destroyed in West Bank PogromsSettlers torch homes, crops, and a Christian cemetery in Tebe. The systematic violence and desecration are framed as genocidal land seizure. 01:16:11 – 01:17:14Israel Bombs Catholic Church in Gaza, Killing ThreeA strike on the only Catholic church in Gaza sparks outrage—even from the Pope. Israel claims it was a mistake, while critics recall past “accidental” attacks like the USS Liberty. 01:25:10 – 01:26:08Israel Bombs Syrian Defense Ministry Amid Druze ConflictAfter West Jerusalem threatened “painful blows,” Israel launched strikes on Damascus, including near the presidential palace. Violence now spreads into Syria. 01:38:25 – 01:39:33BRICS Condemns U.S. and Israeli Bombings of IranBRICS leaders denounce violations of international law, prompting Trump to threaten tariffs and sanctions—escalating a global divide between unipolar control and multipolar sovereignty. 01:44:06 – 01:45:18Dave Smith Condemns Pro-Israel “Pro-Lifers”At a Turning Point event, Smith calls out conservative hypocrisy—arguing that supporting Israel's bombing of Gaza disqualifies anyone from claiming to be “pro-life.” 01:56:47 – 01:58:01Undercover Video Exposes Abortionist's Cruelty and EnthusiasmVirginia abortionist Jessica Rubino is filmed joking about killing babies and offering “gender care.” 02:01:09 – 02:04:08Spiritual Case Against AbortionThe argument builds from biology to theology, stating that if one believes in the soul—even vaguely—then abortion becomes inexcusable spiritual murder. 02:10:29 – 02:10:59Starvation or Death: Gaza's No-Win SituationThe UN confirms Gazans face deadly choices—either starve or be shot at aid stations. The speaker accuses Israel of weaponizing humanitarian aid. 02:14:20 – 02:15:10Zionism's Fruits: Genocide and DespairA Christian calls on fellow believers to reckon with the consequences of supporting Zionism—arguing it has yielded mass murder and spiritual rot. 02:33:26 – 02:33:57Planned Parenthood's Sex Ed Targets ChildrenThe organization's new digital program pushes radical ideas, such as children being “sexual from birth,” to teachers of students as young as 8 years old. 02:38:40 – 02:39:23Consumerism Replaces the Joy of ParenthoodA cultural shift equates fulfillment with goods and experiences, while ignoring the unique love, meaning, and legacy children offer. 02:55:30 – 02:57:23Trump Sued Over Superman Meme by DC and James GunnTrump is mocked for a photoshopped Superman tweet that prompted a billion-dollar lawsuit from Warner Bros. and DC. The reaction is framed as absurd censorship and political overreach. 03:01:27 – 03:02:30Trump Denounces Epstein Files as Democrat HoaxTrump calls the Epstein scandal a Democratic hoax, undermining his prior rhetoric. The move angers his base and is seen as a betrayal of earlier promises to expose child trafficking networks. 03:07:04 – 03:08:12QAnon's Failed Prophecies and Trump's CollapseThe transcript mocks QAnon for never delivering results. Trump's recent behavior contradicts years of supposed “trust the plan” messaging, leading to disillusionment. 03:44:23 – 03:45:42China Unveils Robotic ‘Murder Wolves' for CombatVideo footage shows China deploying quadruped robots with drones. The segment critiques their aesthetics and warns about their real potential for battlefield use. 03:52:54 – 03:53:23Automation Removes Human Moral JudgmentDelegating warfare to robots removes the human conscience from battle decisions. The fear is that “malfunctions” will be used as plausible deniability for atrocities. Follow the show on Kick and watch live every weekday 9:00am EST – 12:00pm EST https://kick.com/davidknightshow Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code KNIGHTFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

Support the show!Patreon.com/thebpdshowPaypal.Me/HeyPastorBen$HeyPastorBen on CashApp

01:06:33 – 01:07:19Settler and IDF Violence Kills Nearly 1,000 Palestinians Since 2023Following the October 7 invasion, violence against Palestinians has intensified. Even former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert condemned the atrocities, noting many of the victims are children. 01:11:29 – 01:12:38Christians Abandoned by Pro-Israel U.S. LeadersDespite settler attacks on Christian villages, figures like Huckabee stay silent. Accusations rise that financial and political interests override concern for persecuted Christians. 01:12:40 – 01:13:52Churches Burned, Crops Destroyed in West Bank PogromsSettlers torch homes, crops, and a Christian cemetery in Tebe. The systematic violence and desecration are framed as genocidal land seizure. 01:16:11 – 01:17:14Israel Bombs Catholic Church in Gaza, Killing ThreeA strike on the only Catholic church in Gaza sparks outrage—even from the Pope. Israel claims it was a mistake, while critics recall past “accidental” attacks like the USS Liberty. 01:25:10 – 01:26:08Israel Bombs Syrian Defense Ministry Amid Druze ConflictAfter West Jerusalem threatened “painful blows,” Israel launched strikes on Damascus, including near the presidential palace. Violence now spreads into Syria. 01:38:25 – 01:39:33BRICS Condemns U.S. and Israeli Bombings of IranBRICS leaders denounce violations of international law, prompting Trump to threaten tariffs and sanctions—escalating a global divide between unipolar control and multipolar sovereignty. 01:44:06 – 01:45:18Dave Smith Condemns Pro-Israel “Pro-Lifers”At a Turning Point event, Smith calls out conservative hypocrisy—arguing that supporting Israel's bombing of Gaza disqualifies anyone from claiming to be “pro-life.” 01:56:47 – 01:58:01Undercover Video Exposes Abortionist's Cruelty and EnthusiasmVirginia abortionist Jessica Rubino is filmed joking about killing babies and offering “gender care.” 02:01:09 – 02:04:08Spiritual Case Against AbortionThe argument builds from biology to theology, stating that if one believes in the soul—even vaguely—then abortion becomes inexcusable spiritual murder. 02:10:29 – 02:10:59Starvation or Death: Gaza's No-Win SituationThe UN confirms Gazans face deadly choices—either starve or be shot at aid stations. The speaker accuses Israel of weaponizing humanitarian aid. 02:14:20 – 02:15:10Zionism's Fruits: Genocide and DespairA Christian calls on fellow believers to reckon with the consequences of supporting Zionism—arguing it has yielded mass murder and spiritual rot. 02:33:26 – 02:33:57Planned Parenthood's Sex Ed Targets ChildrenThe organization's new digital program pushes radical ideas, such as children being “sexual from birth,” to teachers of students as young as 8 years old. 02:38:40 – 02:39:23Consumerism Replaces the Joy of ParenthoodA cultural shift equates fulfillment with goods and experiences, while ignoring the unique love, meaning, and legacy children offer. 02:55:30 – 02:57:23Trump Sued Over Superman Meme by DC and James GunnTrump is mocked for a photoshopped Superman tweet that prompted a billion-dollar lawsuit from Warner Bros. and DC. The reaction is framed as absurd censorship and political overreach. 03:01:27 – 03:02:30Trump Denounces Epstein Files as Democrat HoaxTrump calls the Epstein scandal a Democratic hoax, undermining his prior rhetoric. The move angers his base and is seen as a betrayal of earlier promises to expose child trafficking networks. 03:07:04 – 03:08:12QAnon's Failed Prophecies and Trump's CollapseThe transcript mocks QAnon for never delivering results. Trump's recent behavior contradicts years of supposed “trust the plan” messaging, leading to disillusionment. 03:44:23 – 03:45:42China Unveils Robotic ‘Murder Wolves' for CombatVideo footage shows China deploying quadruped robots with drones. The segment critiques their aesthetics and warns about their real potential for battlefield use. 03:52:54 – 03:53:23Automation Removes Human Moral JudgmentDelegating warfare to robots removes the human conscience from battle decisions. The fear is that “malfunctions” will be used as plausible deniability for atrocities. Follow the show on Kick and watch live every weekday 9:00am EST – 12:00pm EST https://kick.com/davidknightshow Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code KNIGHTFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.

Being Jewish podcast host Jonah Platt—best known for playing Fiyero in Broadway's Wicked—joins People of the Pod to discuss his journey into Jewish advocacy after October 7. He reflects on his Jewish upbringing, challenges media misrepresentations of Israel, and shares how his podcast fosters inclusive and honest conversations about Jewish identity. Platt also previews The Mensch, an upcoming film he's producing to tell Jewish stories with heart and nuance. Recorded live at AJC Global Forum 2025. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: Untold stories of Jews who left or were driven from Arab nations and Iran People of the Pod:  Latest Episodes:  Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War: The Dinah Project's Quest to Hold Hamas Accountable Journalist Matti Friedman Exposes Media Bias Against Israel John Spencer's Key Takeaways After the 12-Day War: Air Supremacy, Intelligence, and Deterrence Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Transcript of the Interview: Manya Brachear Pashman:   Jonah Platt: is an award winning director of theater and improv comedy, an accomplished musician, singer and award winning vocal arranger. He has been on the Broadway stage, including one year as the heartthrob Fiyero in Wicked and he's producing his first feature film, a comedy called The Mensch. He also hosts his own podcast, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt:, a series of candid conversations and reflections that explore the many facets of Jewish identity.  Jonah is with us now on the sidelines of AJC Global Forum 2025. Jonah, welcome to People of the Pod. Jonah Platt:   Thank you so much for having me, happy to be here.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   So tell us about your podcast. How is being Jewish with Jonah Platt: different from Jewish with anyone else? Jonah Platt:   That's a great question. I think it's different for a number of ways. I think one key difference is that I'm really trying to appeal to everybody, not just Jews and not just one type of Jews. I really wanted it to be a very inclusive show and, thank God, the feedback I've gotten, my audience is very diverse. It appeals to, you know, I hear from the ultra orthodox. I hear from people who found out they were Jewish a month ago. I hear from Republicans, I hear from Democrats. I hear from non Jews, Muslims, Christians, people all over the world. So I think that's special and different, especially in these echo-chambery, polarized times online, I'm trying to really reach out of that and create a space where the one thing we all have in common, everybody who listens, is that we're all well-meaning, good-hearted, curious people who want to understand more about our fellow man and each other.  I also try to really call balls and strikes as I see them, regardless of where they're coming from. So if I see, let's call it bad behavior, on the left, I'll call it out. If I see bad behavior on the right, I'll call it out. If I see bad behavior from Israel, I'll call it out. In the same breath that I'll say, I love Israel, it's the greatest place.  I think that's really unfortunately rare. I think people have a very hard time remembering that we are very capable of holding two truths at once, and it doesn't diminish your position by acknowledging fault where you see it. In fact, I feel it strengthens your position, because it makes you more trustworthy. And it's sort of like an iron sharpens iron thing, where, because I'm considering things from all angles, either I'm going to change my mind because I found something I didn't consider. That's going to be better for me and put me on firmer ground.  Or it's going to reinforce what I thought, because now I have another thing I can even speak to about it and say, Well, I was right, because even this I checked out, and that was wrong. So either way, you're in a stronger position. And I feel that that level of sort of, you know, equanimity is sorely lacking online, for sure.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Our podcasts have had some guests in common. We've had Dara Horn, Sarah Hurwitz, you said you're getting ready to have Bruce Pearl. We've had Coach Pearl on our show. You've also had conversations with Stuart Weitzman, a legendary shoe designer, in an episode titled Jews and Shoes. I love that. Can you share some other memorable nuggets from the conversations you've had over the last six months? Jonah Platt:   I had my dad on the show, and I learned things about him that I had never heard about his childhood, growing up, the way his parents raised him. The way that social justice and understanding the conflict and sort of brokenness in the world was something that my grandparents really tried to teach them very actively, and some of it I had been aware of, but not every little specific story he told. And that was really special for me. And my siblings, after hearing it, were like, We're so glad you did this so that we could see Dad and learn about him in this way. So that was really special.  There have been so many. Isaac Saul is a guy I had early on. He runs a newsletter, a news newsletter called Tangle Media that shows what the left is saying about an issue with the right is saying about an issue, and then his take. And a nugget that I took away from him is that on Shabbat, his way of keeping Shabbat is that he doesn't go on social media or read the news on Shabbat. And I took that from him, so now I do that too.  I thought that was genius. It's hard for me. I'm trying to even start using my phone period less on Shabbat, but definitely I hold myself to it, except when I'm on the road, like I am right now. When I'm at home, no social media from Friday night to Saturday night, and it's fantastic.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   It sounds delightful. Jonah Platt:   It is delightful. I highly recommend it to everybody. It's an easy one.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   So what about your upbringing? You said you learned a lot about your father's upbringing. What was your Jewish upbringing? Jonah Platt:   Yeah, I have been very blessed to have a really strong, warm, lovely, Jewish upbringing. It's something that was always intrinsic to my family. It's not something that I sort of learned at Hebrew school. And no knock on people whose experience that is, but it's, you know, I never remember a time not feeling Jewish. Because it was so important to my parents and important to their families. And you know, part of the reason they're a good match for each other is because their values are the same.  I went to Jewish Day School, the same one my kids now go to, which is pretty cool. Manya Brachear Pashman:  Oh, that's lovely. Jonah Platt:   Yeah. And I went to Jewish sleepaway camp at Camp Ramah  in California. But for me, really, you know, when I get asked this question, like, my key Jewish word is family. And growing up, every holiday we spent with some part of my very large, amazing family. What's interesting is, in my city where I grew up, Los Angeles, I didn't have any grandparents, I didn't have any aunts or uncles or any first cousins. But I feel like I was with them all the time, because every holiday, someone was traveling to somebody, and we were being together. And all of my childhood memories of Jewish holidays are with my cousins and my aunts and my uncles and my grandparents. Because it was just so important to our family. And that's just an amazing foundation for being Jewish or anything else, if that's your foundation, that's really gonna stay with you. And my upbringing, like we kept kosher in my house, meat and milk plates. We would eat meat out but no pork, no shellfish, no milk and meat, any of that. And while I don't ascribe to all those things now, I'm grateful that I got sort of the literacy in that.  In my Jewish Day School we had to wrap tefillin every morning. And while I don't do that now, I'm glad that I know how to do that, and I know what that looks like, and I know what that means, even if I resisted it very strongly at the time as a 13 year old, being like what I gotta wrap this up every day. But I'm grateful now to have that literacy. And I've always been very surprised to see in my life that often when I'm in a room with people, I'm the most observant in the room or the most Jewish literate in the room, which was never the case in my life.  I have family members who are much more observant than me, orthodox. I know plenty of Orthodox people, whatever. But in today's world, I'm very grateful for the upbringing I had where, I'll be on an experience. I actually just got back from one in Poland. I went on a trip with all moderate Muslims from around the North Africa, Middle East, and Asia, with an organization called Sharaka. We had Shabbat dinner just this past Friday at the JCC in Krakow, and I did the Shabbat kiddush for everybody, which is so meaningful and, like, I'm so grateful that I know it, that I can play that role in that, in special situations like that.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   So you've been doing a lot of traveling. Jonah Platt:  Yes. Manya Brachear Pashman:   I saw your reflection on your visit to Baku, Azerbaijan. The largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. And you went with the Jewish Federation's National Young leadership cabinet. Jonah Platt:   Shout out to my chevre. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And you posted this reflection based on your experience there, asking the question, how much freedom is too much? So can you walk our listeners through that and how you answered that question? Jonah Platt:   Yes. So to be fair, I make very clear I don't have the answer to that question definitively, I just wanted to give people food for thought, and what I hoped would happen has happened where I've been getting a lot of people who disagree with me and have other angles at which they want to look and answer this question, which I welcome and have given me a lot to think about.  But basically, what I observed in Azerbaijan was a place that's a little bit authoritative. You know, they don't have full freedom of the press. Political opposition is, you know, quieted, but there's no crime anywhere. They have a strong police presence on the streets. There are security cameras everywhere, and people like their lives there and don't want to mess with it.  And so it just got me thinking, you know, they're an extremely tolerant society. It's sort of something they pride themselves on, and always have. It's a Muslim majority country, but it is secular. They are not a Muslim official country. They're one of only really two countries in the world that are like that, the other being Albania. And they live together in beautiful peace and harmony with a sense of goodwill, with a sense of national pride, and it got me thinking, you know, look at any scenario in our lives. Look at the place you work, look at the preschool classroom that your kid is in.  There are certain rules and restrictions that allow for more freedom, in a sense, because you feel safe and taken care of and our worst instincts are not given space to be expressed. So that is what brought the question of, how much freedom is too much. And really, the other way of putting that is, how much freedom would you be willing to give up if it meant you lived in a place with no crime, where people get along with their neighbors, where there's a sense of being a part of something bigger than yourself. I think all three of which are heavily lacking in America right now that is so polarized, where hateful rhetoric is not only, pervasive, but almost welcomed, and gets more clicks and more likes and more watches. It's an interesting thing to think about.  And I heard from people being like, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this question. I don't know the answer, but it's really interesting. I have people say, you're out of your mind. It's a slippery slope. The second you give an inch, like it's all going downhill. And there are arguments to be made there.  But I can't help but feel like, if we did the due diligence, I'm sure there is something, if we keep the focus really narrow, even if it's like, a specific sentence that can't be said, like, you can't say: the Holocaust was a great thing. Let's say we make that illegal to say, like, how does that hurt anybody? If that's you're not allowed to say those exact words in that exact sequence, you know. So I think if it's gonna be a slippery slope, to me, is not quite a good enough argument for Well, let's go down the road and see if we can come up with something. And then if we decide it's a slippery slope and we get there, maybe we don't do it, but maybe there is something we can come to that if we eliminate that one little thing you're not allowed to say, maybe that will benefit us. Maybe if we make certain things a little bit more restrictive, it'll benefit us. And I likened it to Shabbat saying, you know, on Shabbat, we have all these restrictions. If you're keeping Shabbat, that's what makes Shabbat special, is all the things you're not allowed to do, and because you're not given the quote, unquote, freedom to do those things, you actually give yourself more freedom to be as you are, and to enjoy what's really good about life, which is, you know, the people around you and and having gratitude. So it's just something interesting to think about.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   It's an interesting perspective. I am a big fan of free speech. Jonah Platt:   As are most people. It's the hill many people will die on. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Educated free speech, though, right? That's where the tension is, right? And in a democracy you have to push for education and try to make sure that, you know, people are well informed, so that they don't say stupid things, but they are going to say stupid things and I like that freedom. Did you ever foresee becoming a Jewish advocate? Jonah Platt:   No. I . . . well, that's a little disingenuous. I would say, you know, in 2021 when there was violence between Israel and Gaza in the spring over this Sheik Jarrah neighborhood. That's when I first started using what little platform I had through my entertainment career to start speaking very, you know, small things, but about Israel and about Jewish life, just organically, because I am, at the time, certainly much more well educated, even now, than I was then.  But I was more tuned in than the average person, let's say, and I felt like I could provide some value. I could help bring some clarity to what was a really confusing situation at that time, like, very hard to decipher. And I could just sense what people were thinking and feeling. I'm well, tapped into the Jewish world. I speak to Jews all over the place. My, as I said, my family's everywhere. So already I know Jews all over the country, and I felt like I could bring some value. And so it started very slowly. It was a trickle, and then it started to turn up a little bit, a little bit more, a little bit more. I went on a trip to Israel in April of 2023. It's actually the two year anniversary today of that trip, with the Tel Aviv Institute, run by a guy named Hen Mazzig, who I'm sure, you know, well, I'm sure he's been on the show, yeah.  And that was, like, sort of the next step for me, where I was surrounded by other people speaking about things online, some about Jewish stuff, some not. Just seeing these young, diverse people using their platforms in whatever way, that was inspiring to me. I was like, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna start using this more.  And then October 7 happened, and I couldn't pull myself away from it. It's just where I wanted to be. It's what I wanted to be spending my time and energy doing. It felt way too important. The stakes felt way too high, to be doing anything else. It's crazy to me that anybody could do anything else but be focusing on that. And now here we are. So I mean, in a way, could I have seen it? No. But have I sort of, looking back on it, been leaning this way? Kinda. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Do you think it would've you would've turned toward advocacy if people hadn't been misinformed or confused about Israel? Or do you think that you would've really been more focused on entertainment.  Jonah Platt:   Yeah, I think probably. I mean, if we lived in some upside down, amazing world where everybody was getting everything right, and, you know, there'd be not so much for me to do. The only hesitation is, like, as I said, a lot of my content tries to be, you know, celebratory about Jewish identity. I think actually, I would still be talking because I've observed, you know, divisions and misunderstandings within the Jewish community that have bothered me, and so some of the things I've talked about have been about that, about like, hey, Jews, cut it out. Like, be nice to each other. You're getting this wrong.  So I think that would still have been there, and something that I would have been passionate about speaking out on. Inclusivity is just so important to me, but definitely would be a lot lower stakes and a little more relaxed if everybody was on the same universe in regards to Israel. Manya Brachear Pashman:   You were relatively recently in Washington, DC. Jonah Platt:   Yeah. Manya Brachear Pashman:   For the White House Correspondents Dinner. I was confused, because he just said he was in Krakow, so maybe I was wrong. Jonah Platt:   I flew direct from Krakow to DC, got off the plane, went to the hotel where the dinner was, changed it to my tux, and went downstairs for the dinner.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Wow. Jonah Platt:   Yeah. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Are you tired? Jonah Platt:   No, actually, it's amazing. I'll give a shout out. There's a Jewish businessman, a guy named Andrew Herr, who I was in a program with through Federation called CLI in LA, has started a company called Fly Kit. This is a major shout out to Fly Kit that you download the app, you plug in your trip, they send you supplements, and the app tells you when to take them, when to eat, when to nap, when to have coffee, in an attempt to help orient yourself towards the time zone you need to be on. And I have found it very useful on my international trips, and I'm not going to travel without it again. Yeah. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Wow. White House Correspondents dinner. You posted some really thoughtful words about the work of journalists, which I truly appreciated. But what do American journalists get wrong about Israel and the Jewish connection to Israel?  Jonah Platt:   The same thing that everybody who gets things wrong are getting wrong. I mean, we're human beings, so we're fallible, and just because you're a journalist doesn't make you immune to propaganda, because propaganda is a powerful tool. If it didn't work, people wouldn't be using it. I mean, I was just looking at a post today from our friend Hen Mazzig about all the different ways the BBC is getting things horribly, horribly wrong. I think part of it is there's ill intent. I mean, there is malice. For certain people, where they have an agenda. And unfortunately, you know, however much integrity journalists have, there is a news media environment where we've made it okay to have agenda-driven news where it's just not objective. And somehow it's okay for these publications that we've long trusted to have a story they want to tell. I don't know why that's acceptable. It's a business, and I guess maybe if that, if the dollars are there, it's reinforcing itself. But reporters get wrong so much. I'd say the fundamental misunderstanding that journalists as human beings get wrong, that everybody gets wrong, is that Jews are not a group of rich, white Europeans with a common religion. That's like the number one misunderstanding about Jews. Because most people either don't know Jews at all on planet Earth. They've never met one. They know nothing about it except what they see on the news or in a film, or the Jews that they know happen to maybe be white, rich, European ancestry people, and so they assume that's everybody. When, of course, that's completely false, and erases the majority of Jews from planet Earth. So I think we're missing that, and then we're also missing what Israel means to the Jewish people is deeply misunderstood and very purposefully erased.  Part of what's tricky about all of this is that the people way behind the curtain, the terrorists, the real I hate Israel people agenda. They're the ones who plant these seeds. But they're like 5% of the noise. They're secret. They're in the back. And then everybody else, without realizing it, is picking up these things. And so the vast majority of people are, let's say, erasing Jewish connection to Israel without almost even realizing they're doing it because they have been fed this, because propaganda is a powerful tool, and they believe it to be true what they've been told.  And literally, don't realize what they're doing. And if they were in a calm environment and somebody was able to explain to them, Hey, here's what you're doing, here's what you're missing, I think, I don't know, 75% of people would be like, holy crap. I've been getting this wrong. I had no idea. Maybe even higher than 75% they really don't know. And that's super dangerous. And I think the media and journalism is playing a major role in that. Sometimes things get, you know, retracted and apologized for. But the damage is done, especially when it comes to social media. If you put out, Israel just bombed this hospital and killed a bunch of doctors, and then the next day you're like, Oops, sorry, that was wrong. Nobody cares. All they saw was Israel bombed a bunch of doctors and that seed's already been planted. So it's been a major issue the info war, while you know, obviously not the same stakes as a real life and death physical war has been as important a piece of this overall war as anything. And I wouldn't say it's going great. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Did it come up at all at the Correspondent's Dinner, or more of a celebration? Jonah Platt:   No, thank God. Yeah. It was more of a celebration. It was more of just sort of it was cool, because there was no host this year, there was no comedian, there was no president, he didn't come. So it was really like being in the clubhouse with the journalists, and you could sense they were sort of happy about it. Was like, just like a family reunion, kind of a vibe, like, it's just our people. We're all on the same page. We're the people who care about getting it right. We care about journalistic integrity. We're here to support each other. It was really nice. I mean, I liked being sort of a fly on the wall of this other group that I had not really been amongst before, and seeing them in their element in this like industry party, which was cool.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Okay, so we talked about journalists. What about your colleagues in the entertainment industry? Are you facing backlash from them, either out of malice or ignorance?  Jonah Platt:   I'm not facing any backlash from anybody of importance if I'm not getting an opportunity, or someone's written me off or something. I don't know that, you know, I have no idea if I'm now on somebody's list of I'm never gonna work with that guy. I don't know. I don't imagine I am. If I am, it says way more about that person than it does about me, because my approach, as we've discussed, is to try to be really inclusive and honest and, like, objective. And if I get something wrong, I'll delete it, or I'll say I got it wrong. I try to be very transparent and really open that, like I'm trying my best to get things right and to be fair.  And if you have a problem with that. You know, you've got a problem. I don't have a problem. So I wouldn't say any backlash. In fact, I mean, I get a lot of support, and a lot of, you know, appreciation from people in the industry who either are also speaking out or maybe too afraid to, and are glad that other people are doing it, which I have thoughts about too, but you know, when people are afraid to speak out about the stuff because of the things they're going to lose. Like, to a person, maybe you lose stuff, but like, you gain so many more other people and opportunities, people who were just sort of had no idea that you were on the same team and were waiting for you to say something, and they're like, Oh my God, you're in this with me too. Great, let's do something together, or whatever it is. So I've gotten, it's been much more positive than negative in terms of people I actually care about. I mean, I've gotten fans of entertainment who have nasty things to say about me, but not colleagues or industry peers.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   So you would declare yourself a proud Zionist. Jonah Platt:   Yes. Manya Brachear Pashman:   But you wrote a column in The Forward recently over Passover saying, let's retire the word Zionist. Why?  Jonah Platt:   Yes. I recently wrote an op-ed and actually talked about on my pod as well about why I feel we should retire the word Zionism. Not that I think we actually are. It's pretty well in use. But my main reasoning was, that the way we all understand Zionism, those of us who actually know what it is, unlike a lot of people –is the belief that Jews should have self determination, sovereignty in some piece of the land to which they are indigenous. We have that. We've had it for almost 80 years. I don't know why we need to keep using a word that frames it as aspirational, that like, I believe we should have this thing. We already have it.  And I feel by sort of leaving that sentence without a period, we're sort of suggesting that non-existence is somehow on the table. Like, if I just protest enough, Israel's going to stop existing. I want to slam that door closed. I don't think we need to be the, I believe that Israel should exist people anymore. I think we should be the I love Israel people, or I support Israel people. I'm an Israel patriot. I'm a lover of Israel, whatever the phrase may be. To me, the idea that we should continue to sort of play by their framework of leaving that situation on the table, is it only hurts us, and I just don't think we need it. Manya Brachear Pashman:   It lets others define it, in their own terms.  Jonah Platt:   Yeah, we're playing, sort of by the rules of the other people's game. And I know, you know, I heard when I put that out, especially from Israelis, who it to them, it sort of means patriot, and they feel a lot of great pride with it, which I totally understand. But the sort of more universal understanding of what that word is, and certainly of what the Movement was, was about that aspirational creation of a land, that a land's been created. Not only has it been created, it's, you know, survived through numerous wars, it's stronger than ever. You know, third-most NASDAQ companies in the world. We need to just start talking about it from like, yeah, we're here. We're not going anywhere, kind of a place. And not, a we should exist, kind of a place. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So it's funny, you said, we all know what Zionism is. And I grinned a little bit, because there are so many different definitions of Zionism. I mean, also, Zionism was a very inclusive progressive ideology packaged in there, right, that nobody talks about because it's just kind of not, we just don't talk about it anymore.  So what else about the conversation needs to change? How do we move forward in a productive, constructive way when it comes to teaching about Jewish identity and securing the existence of Israel? Jonah Platt:   In a way, those two things are related, and in a way they're not. You can have a conversation about Jewish identity without necessarily going deep down the Israel hole. But it is critical that people understand how central a connection to Israel is, to Jewish identity. And people are allowed to believe whatever they want. And you can be someone who says, Well, you know, Israel is not important to me, and that's okay, that's you, but you have to at least be clear eyed that that is an extreme and fringe position. That is not a mainstream thing. And you're going to be met with mistrust and confusion and anger and a sense of betrayal, if that's your position.  So I think we need to be clear eyed about that and be able to have that conversation. And I think if we can get to the place where we can acknowledge that in each other. Like, dude, have your belief. I don't agree with it. I think it's crazy. Like, you gotta at least know that we all think you're crazy having that idea. And if they can get to the base, we're like, yeah, I understand that, but I'm gonna believe what I'm gonna believe, then we can have conversations and, like, then we can talk. I think the, I need to change your mind conversation, it doesn't usually work. It has to be really gently done. And I'm speaking this as much from failure as I am from success. As much as we try, sometimes our emotions come to the fore of these conversations, and that's–it's not gonna happen. You know, on my pod, I've talked about something called, I call the four C's of difficult conversation. And I recently, like, tried to have a conversation. I did not adhere to my four C's, and it did not go well. And so I didn't take my own advice. You have to come, like, legitimately ready to be curious to the other person's point of view, wanting to hear what they have to say. You know, honoring their truth, even if it is something that hurts you deeply or that you abhor. You can say that, but you have to say it from a place of respect and honoring. If you want it to go somewhere. If you just want to like, let somebody have it, go ahead, let somebody have it, but you're definitely not going to be building towards anything that. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So before I let you go, can you tell us a little bit about The Mensch? Jonah Platt:   Yeah, sure. So the Mensch is one of a couple of Jewish entertainment projects I'm now involved with in the last year, which, you know, I went from sort of zero to now three. The Mensch is a really unique film that's in development now. We're gonna be shooting this summer that I'm a producer on. And it's the story of a 30 something female rabbi in New Mexico who, life just isn't where she thought it would be. She's not connecting with her congregation. She's not as far along as she thought things would be. Her synagogue is failing, and there's an antisemitic event at her synagogue, and the synagogue gets shut down. And she's at the center of it. Two weeks later, the synagogue's reopening. She's coming back to work, and as part of this reopening to try to bring some some life and some juzz to the proceedings, one of the congregants from the synagogue, the most eccentric one, who's sort of a pariah, who's being played by Jennifer Goodwin, who's a fantastic actress and Jewish advocate, donates her family's priceless Holocaust-era Torah to the synagogue, and the rabbi gets tasked with going to pick it up and bring it. As things often happen for this rabbi, like a bunch of stuff goes wrong. Long story short, she ends up on a bus with the Torah in a bag, like a sports duffel bag, and gets into an altercation with somebody who has the same tattoo as the perpetrator of the event at her synagogue, and unbeknownst to the two of them, they have the same sports duffel bag, and they accidentally swap them. So she shows up at the synagogue with Jennifer Goodwin, they're opening it up, expecting to see a Torah, and it's full of bricks of cocaine. And the ceremony is the next day, and they have less than 24 hours to track down this torah through the seedy, drug-dealing, white nationalist underbelly of the city. And, you know, drama and hilarity ensue. And there's lots of sort of fun, a magic realism to some of the proceedings that give it like a biblical tableau, kind of sense. There's wandering in the desert and a burning cactus and things of that nature.  So it's just, it's really unique, and what drew me to it is what I'm looking for in any sort of Jewish project that I'm supporting, whether as a viewer or behind the scenes, is a contemporary story that's not about Jews dying in the Holocaust. That is a story of people just being people, and those people are Jewish. And so the things that they think about, the way they live, maybe their jobs, even in this case, are Jewish ones. But it's not like a story of the Jews in that sense. The only touch point the majority of the world has for Jews is the news and TV and film. And so if that's how people are gonna learn about us, we need to take that seriously and make sure they're learning who we really are, which is regular people, just like you, dealing with the same kind of problems, the same relationships, and just doing that through a little bit of a Jewish lens. So the movie is entertaining and unique and totally fun, but it also just happens to be about Jews and rabbis. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And so possible, spoiler alert, does the White Nationalist end up being the Mensch in the end? Jonah Platt:   No, no, the white nationalist is not the mensch. They're the villain.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   I thought maybe there was a conversion moment in this film. Jonah Platt:   No conversion. But sort of, one of the themes you take away is, anybody can be a mensch. You don't necessarily need to be the best rabbi in the world to be a mensch. We're all fallible, flawed human beings. And what's important is that we try to do good and we try to do the right thing, and usually that's enough. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Well, I thought that kind of twist would be… Jonah Platt:   I'll take it up with the writer.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Well, Jonah, you are truly a mensch for joining us on the sidelines here today. Jonah Platt:   Thank you. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Safe travels, wherever you're headed next.  Jonah Platt:   Thank you very much. Happy to be with you.   

It is an honor and a privilege to welcome Emmy-winning actor, director, filmmaker, and advocate Yuval David to The Jake's Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast. As an actor, Yuval has dazzled audiences with his roles on hit TV shows such as Days of Our Lives (Peacock), Feud (FX & Hulu), Madam Secretary (CBS), The Michael J. Fox Show (NBC), The Plot Against America (HBO), and Unforgettable (CBS).  He worked on the long-running ABC News series What Would You Do from 2011 to 2018 and appeared in several films such as Awakening of Spring, Beauty and the Beast, The Fifth Estate, and You.  Yuval also performed in The Game on Broadway and several off-Broadway productions of Bunburry, Daddy Issues, Leaving an Impression, and Romeo and Juliet. Yuval regularly does voice-overs for animation, commercials, documentaries, industrials, and narration.Yuval David is also a news commentator on broadcast news programs, speaking about social and political issues and causes, often talking about civil rights, social justice, and entertainment and media. These have been on major national, international, and regional news networks and programs, including on US broadcasts on ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NewsNation, and NBC, in Israeli broadcasts on i24, Achsav, ILTV, Keshet, Kan, and Reshet.  Yuval's writings have appeared in publications including AM New York, The Hill, Instinct Magazine, The Jerusalem Post, The Jewish Week, Out Magazine, Queerty, and other international publications. In addition to his work in entertainment and media, Yuval is a passionate advocate and activist. Advocacy for the marginalized and underrepresented is a driving force, along with his focus on Jewish, LGBTQ, humanitarian, arts, and creative initiatives. He uses his innovative work as a vehicle for the greater good on behalf of highly respected American, Israeli, and international organizations.On this episode of The Jake's Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast, Yuval David spoke about his work on ABC's What Would You Do?, a potential revival of his popular YouTube series Better World with Yuval David and gave his honest opinion on how the pro-Israel community can do better tackling the rising antisemitism and anti-Zionism spun out of the October 7 attack.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jake-s-take-with-jacob-elyachar--4112003/support.

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world. New York reporter Luke Tress joins host Jessica Steinberg for today's episode. Tress discusses several universities dealing with issues of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, including Tuesday's hearing in Congress as Republican officials questioned the CUNY chancellor and presidents of Berkeley and Georgetown about foreign funding, support for terrorism on campus and harassment of Jewish students on campus, keeping up the Trump administration pressure. He also discusses a report on Israel studies programs in universities, as a Jerusalem think tank looked at the climate on campuses, including anti-Zionism activism on campus alongside rich discussion and a broad array of viewpoints in the classroom. Tress talks about mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and his threats to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he ever visited New York, as well as the current feud between New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Comptroller Brad Lander about a possible BDS conflict over New York's divestment from Israel bonds. He also mentions the 100-year-old Adirondacks synagogue that has persisted despite the dearth of Jews in the area and the history of Jewish immigrants in rural America. Check out The Times of Israel's ongoing liveblog for more updates. For further reading: US university heads grilled in Congress about anti-Israel terror support on campus Shai Davidai, an outspoken Israeli professor at Columbia, leaves the university Israeli postdoc sues Stanford for discrimination; university denies it Israel studies programs on US campuses are at a crisis point, report warns NYC hopeful Mamdani’s vow to arrest Netanyahu likely oversteps what US mayors can do NYC mayor feuds with comptroller over Israel bonds investments NY’s rural 120-year-old ‘Peddlers’ Synagogue’ charts new path — without a congregation Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. IMAGE: FILE- Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters demonstrate on the campus of DePaul University, April 30, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, file)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anti-zionist writer and agitator Amanda Gelender joins me to discuss what she describes as the Jewish community's widespread fascism problem. I ask Amanda about her upbringing in a Jewish community and what role Zionism had in her perceptions of the State of Israel and Occupied Palestine, including stepping back from the question itself and interrogating the often unexamined contexts and built-in assumptions the question contains. We converse on how "Jewish feelings" are weaponized in the discourse on the Israel-US genocide of Palestinians in Gaza as an attempt to label any calls for its end and support for resistance to it as antisemitic. And lastly, another thread we pull on is the question of what fascism is and how, in our view, Zionism contained the seeds of fascism since its inception and nascent colonization efforts in Palestine. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/amanda-gelender // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Are the land promises made to Israel in the Old Testament still standing? Are they unfulfilled? Are Jewish people automatically saved because they're Jewish? Should Christians support Israel unequivocally? Blake reacts to a conversation between apologists Alisa Childers and Dr. Jeff Myers. That You May Know Him, Episode 259 

FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Executive Director Stefanie Fox about the evolution of JVP as a Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the US, strategies for growing the movement, and navigating uncomfortable coalition partners, including on the political far-right. They also discuss how JVP thinks thinks about accountability to Palestinian partners, how it approaches electoral work and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), and how to counter the ubiquitous claim that US bases its support for Israel on a commitment to protecting Jewish people rather than on U.S. geopolitical and corporate interests.  Stefanie Fox, MPH (she/her) is the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a U.S. based, grassroots membership organization mobilizing Jewish communities into the movement for Palestinian rights and freedom and towards a vision of Judaism beyond Zionism. Prior to her 16 years at JVP JVP, Stefanie spent a decade doing racial and economic justice work as a grassroots community organizer, public health practitioner, and policy researcher and analyst. She has written extensively for print media with publications in outlets like Time, Boston Review, The Nation, and has appeared on MSNBC, Al Jazeera English, CNN, and more. Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a 2025 Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University. Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with Palestinian political analyst Iyad El-Baghdadi about Israel's regional military campaigns, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and how it's current aggressive posture reflects the attitudes of Israel's founders. Looking forward, the two discuss how the bigger picture provides a framework to suggest what might come next. Iyad El-Baghdadi is a Palestinian political analyst and director of the research center of Kawaakibi Foundation. Peter Beinart is an author, Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York For more information and resources, see: https://fmep.org/resource/iyad-el-baghdadi-on-late-stage-zionism-what-might-it-suggest-for-israels-future/ Original music by Jalal Yaquoub

Mijal Bitton and Noam Weissman sit down with award-winning author and media entrepreneur Zibby Owens to explore what it means to publicly embrace Jewish identity after October 7th. Zibby shares her journey from a largely secular literary figure to an outspoken Jewish advocate. They discuss cancel culture, Zionism, the challenges Jewish authors face in publishing, and the power of Jewish moms stepping up. Note: This conversation was recorded before the Iran-Israel War in June, 2025. On Being Jewish Now, Edited by Zibby Owens. Zibby Media Link to the documentary: October 8 Please follow Wondering Jews on Instagram! instagram.com/wonderingjews. Check us out on ⁠⁠⁠Youtube.⁠⁠ Get in touch at our new email address: WonderingJews@unpacked.media and call us, 1-833-WON-Jews. ------------ This podcast was brought to you by Unpacked, a division of OpenDor Media. For other podcasts from Unpacked, check out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jewish History Nerds⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unpacking Israeli History⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Soulful Jewish Living⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stars of David with Elon Gold ⁠

In part 2 of our 'What Would Malcolm Do?' series, we examine his anti-zionist writings and other sources in the archive of his visits abroad to places such as Gaza. We also discuss the cultural aspects of neocolonial warfare in reference to not only Malcolm X, but also Robert F. Williams and Frantz Fanon.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Jessica Steinberg speaking with Guri Alfi, comic, actor and producer of "The New Jew." Recorded before the conflict with Iran, Alfi speaks about his experiences filming the second season of "The New Jew," a series he first created with public broadcaster Kan 11 in 2021 that had him looking at the Jewish community in the United States. For these latest episodes, Alfi traveled to the US to speak to Jews in the wake of October 7 and the intense antisemitism and anti-Zionism that exploded across college campuses and American cities. Guri discusses his conversations with a range of Jewish leaders, including Reform Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl, student leaders from Columbia and Harvard universities, and bereaved parents whose dual-citizen children became Israeli lone soldiers and were killed in the line of duty on October 7 and during the ongoing war. Guri says he wanted to show the bonds between the Israeli and American Jewish communities, and to show the hope and future that still exist despite the terrible events and trauma of the last 21 months. He also talks about one of his latest projects, “Speeches Against Despair” during the upcoming Israel Festival, in which he, along with actress Noa Koler, musician Noga Erez, actor Norman Issa, actress Maya Landsmann, screenwriter Galit Hoogi and others offer new interpretations to historical speeches. And so this week, we ask Guri Alfi what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#israel #jewishhistory #australiaHillel Fuld joins me back on the podcast to discuss any array of issues including his being barred from Australia, Trump's policy in the Middle east, Orthodox anti-Zionism, antisemitism, whether he is afraid of right-wing antizionism, The NYC mayoral elections, and much more!‪@hilzfuld‬ #jewishhistory #hillelfuld #israel #australia #hillel #satmar For our first conversation see here:    • Hillel Fuld Argues the Jewish Case for Trump  Facebook:   / daniel.levine.31  Instagram:   / rabbidaniellevine  

Listen to a powerful Conversations with Alan when Josh Weiner, Co-Founder of the Chicago Jewish Alliance and Chief Marketing and Development Office at NAVI, and his husband Kevin Schultz. Josh, a proud Jewish leader and fourth-generation descendant of Armenian Genocide survivors, left a 15-year marketing career to take a stand against rising antisemitism and anti-Zionism. He'll share his personal journey—including what it means to be both gay and Jewish in today's America—and the work he's doing to lead with truth and purpose. Josh also serves as Chief Marketing & Development Officer for the North American Values Institute, where he helps shape bold, strategic responses to hate and misinformation. Josh and I will also discuss the recent terror attacks in Washington, DC and Boulder, CO, and how these events have intensified the urgency of his advocacy.Kevin, who is not Jewish, will offer his own powerful perspective—on witnessing antisemitism up close, supporting Josh, and what it's been like to stand beside him as this fight intensified.We'll also explore what Pride means to both of them at this moment in our country.

Josh Hammer is the author of Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. He joins me to explore the big stuff: God, geopolitics, Zionism, the future of the U.S. We also get into the complexities of interfaith marriage and the role of religion in modern culture. The conversation delves into the challenges and nuances of maintaining religious and ethnic continuity in a modern, pluralistic society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caleb Collier is a former Marine, politician and is currently the host of Church & State media.Church & State Media: https://churchandstate.media/www.worldviewmatters.tv© FreedomProject 2025See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this Palestine Post, we speak with Eliana Rubin who is an anti-Zionist organizer, somatic practitioner, full spectrum doula and author of the book Taking the State out of the Body: A Guide to Embodied Resistance to Zionism. — Subscribe to this podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: lawanddisorder@kpfa.org Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/   The post Palestine Post: Somatic Approach to Anti-Zionism w/ Eliana Rubin appeared first on KPFA.

In a time when Jewish trauma is being weaponized and used to justify the Israeli genocide against Palestinians, the book An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing: Somatic Practices to Heal Historical Wounds, Unlearn Oppression, and Create a Liberated World to Come presents a liberatory model for Jewish healing firmly rooted in Jewish spiritual values. In this book based conversation the panel  discusses the intersection of healing and activism that can make our organizing movements more healing and our healing more political to strengthen our collective work for a free Palestine and a Jewishness beyond Zionism. Over the last year and a half, many of us activists and organizers have felt hopeless, despairing, and angry that we have not been able to stop this genocidal violence being carried out in our names. Sometimes we take these feelings out on each other by being overly critical and unkind, which leads to fractures inside our movements. At this time of rising fascism when the Trump administration is exploiting the fractures on the Left to create division, we can incorporate body-based healing to strengthen our collective power that moves us closer to a liberated world and a free Palestine. Wendy Elisheva Somerson (Wes) is a queer non-binary, disabled, cat- loving Ashkenazi Jewish somatic healer, writer, activist, and visual artist residing on Duwamish and Coast Salish land. One of the founders of the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, they have been active in Palestinian solidarity work for more than two decades. As a politicized healer, Wes works at the intersection of personal and collective healing with individuals, groups, and organizations. They are the creator and facilitator of Ruach, an ongoing anti-Zionist, body-based Jewish healing group. Cecilie Surasky is the Director of Communications and Narrative at the Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI) at UC Berkeley, a global research and advocacy organization focused on understanding the structures of exclusion and building a world where all people belong. Cecilie's career spans decades of mobilizing politically marginalized communities, and she's proud of her role in building a co-liberation movement as the founding communications and later deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). She draws from her own family's journey with traumatic grief, belonging and resilience. Penny Rosenwasser, Ph.D., is a lifelong heartfelt rabble-rouser for justice. A queer/lesbian white Jewish intersectional feminist, Penny is author of the award-winning Hope into Practice, Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears. She was a founding Board member and early leader of Jewish Voice for Peace, co-teaches an Antisemitism/Anti-Arabism class with a Palestinian colleague at City College of San Francisco, and serves on the Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. An educator, public speaker, fundraiser and  facilitator, Penny organized events for the Middle East Children's Alliance for 32 years and is a racial justice leader at Kehilla synagogue.           The post An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing: A conversation about the intersection of healing and activism with Wendy Elisheva Somerson (Wes), Cecilie Surasky, and Penny Rosenwaswer appeared first on KPFA.

Hundreds of MILLIONS of sincere Christians remain TOTALLY DECEIVED when it comes to the last days and the teachings about ISRAEL . . . VIDEO SAME MESSAGE

October 7th exposed to everyone what many in and around the academy have known for years: American universities—not all, but many—are failing catastrophically to educate the next generation about the history, cultures, and politics of the Middle East. Instead of producing students versed in the region's complexities, these institutions have become factories for ideological activism. And nowhere is this truer than in the case of Israel and its history: Zionism in the modern university classroom is rarely examined as a movement of national liberation but instead as a caricature of colonialism, racism, repression, and occupation. And outside of the classroom, we've seen the most prestigious campuses in the United States transform into nodes of anti-Israel activism and Jew hatred. These are immense and long-standing problems. But instead of just diagnosing their sources and discussing their perils, today we're going to talk to someone who's actually done something about it. Robert Satloff saw this crisis clearly. Having published back in 2001 the eminent historian Martin Kramer's short volume on the corruption of Middle East Studies, Ivory Towers on Sand, Satloff has spent decades watching the field drift toward anti-Israel political advocacy. As the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he decided to stop complaining and found his own professional master's program. Working with Pepperdine University, the Washington Institute has established a completely new graduate program designed to train policy professionals with rigorous scholarship and historical accuracy, without anti-Israel bias. The program offers full scholarships, accepts no foreign funding, is fully accredited, and will convene its inaugural cohort in Washington, DC this fall.

In the rubble of war, Israel is rebuilding—and Christians need to pay attention. This week on The Narrative, CCV President Aaron Baer, his wife Maria, and CCV Communications Director Mike Andrews sit down with Daniel Gordis—a leading voice on Israeli affairs—to unpack what life looks in the country today. From the aftermath of October 7 to the spiritual and societal resilience of the Jewish people, this is a timely and powerful conversation every Christian should hear. Before they speak with Daniel, CCV Policy Director David Mahan joins Aaron and Mike to run through this week's most pressing news, including:

In this episode, I sit down with Episcopal priest and author Leyla King to explore her deeply moving memoir Daughters of Palestine. Told through the voices of five generations of Palestinian women, Leyla's book offers a powerful counter-narrative to the dominant Western framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through personal and ancestral stories, she sheds light on the lived experience of Palestinian Christians - stories of displacement, resilience, and unshakable faith. We talk about the intersection of identity and belief, the legacy of generational trauma, and the need to name injustice while holding on to hope. Leyla helps us see why understanding history through human stories is crucial, how reconciliation must be rooted in truth and accountability, and how small acts of listening and proximity can disrupt cycles of vengeance. This is a conversation about the power of story, the pain of loss, and the possibility of healing. It invites us not only to see the full humanity of Palestinians but to reflect on how we might live more faithfully in a fractured world.Leyla K. King is a Palestinian-American Episcopal priest and author. She is a founding member of both Palestinian Anglicans and Clergy Allies (www.palestiniananglicans.org) and The Small Churches Big Impact Collective (smallchurchesbigimpact.org). She writes about her experiences as a Palestinian, a clergywoman and a mother at thankfulpriest.com. Daughters of Palestine is her first book.Leyla's Book:Daughters of PalestineLeyla's Recommendation:The Skin and Its GirlSubscribe to Our Substack: Shifting CultureConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.usGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeConsider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowSubscribe on Substack for Early, Ad-Free Episodes and More Personalized Cancer Treatment Center in USAWe treat you—not just your illness—with personalized, integrative care, love, and support.Support the show

How can we stay true to our Jewish commitments while remaining active in movements that don't always want us there? In this episode of TEXTing IRL, Elana Stein Hain sits down with Jacob Feinspan, Executive Director of Jews United for Justice, to explore the complex dilemmas raised by the increased normalization of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Drawing on Maimonides' teachings about friendship, they tackle the nature of coalitions, navigating discomfort and acknowledging red lines, and how to foster relationships when we disagree. Episode Source Sheet You can now sponsor an episode of TEXTing. Click HERE to learn more.  JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS

In this episode of The School for Divine Mysteries, Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq (fhip) meets with his disciple Caroline Hören to reflect on the trials of a forgotten people and the vision for their future. He draws a powerful parallel between the exile of the Children of Israel and the persecution and scattering of the Bani Hashem—the family of the Prophet Mohammed. Just as the Jewish people gave birth to the idea of Zionism to reclaim their homeland, the followers of the Mahdi now begin to awaken to a similar yearning. Is this the beginning of a new dream—a vision of return, unity, and divine purpose? A movement that may one day be known as Mahdiism?

Congressman Max Miller joins Bob to talk about charges being filed against the man accused of an antisemitic attack that took place in Ricky River on June 19. Rep. Miller discusses the danger he was placed in, and that of his family if his child had been in the car, as well as the political violence committed in the name of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in general. The Westlake doctor who tried to run him off the road and threatened to kill him has been charged with 2 felonies and several misdemeanors.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when the sacred victim becomes the sovereign nation? We delve into a provocative exploration of Jewish identity and otherness in this week's episode. Drawing inspiration from the Torah portion Balak and a thought-provoking essay by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, we challenge long-held beliefs about Judaism's role as the quintessential "other" in society. Have we been misinterpreting our own history? Key Takeaways The concept of Jews as universal "others" may be more modern than we realize Embracing particularism might be more authentic to Jewish tradition than universal symbolism Zionism can be seen as a return to Jewish particularity rather than just a political movement Timestamps [00:00] Introduction to the episode and the theme of “The Jew as Other” [01:45] How the term “other” appears in this week's Parsha and Moab's fear [03:50] Biblical context: Egyptians and Haman's perspective on Jews [06:45] Jewish laws and their role in antisemitic narratives [09:30] Rabbinic interpretations and perceived Jewish separateness [12:15] Rabbinic blame of God for antisemitism through Jewish laws [14:30] Evolution from oppression to loving the stranger in Torah [17:00] Introduction of Hussein Aboubakr Mansour's argument [20:15] Breakdown of the Jew as metaphor and object of culture [28:00] Zionism's rejection of “otherness” and affirmation of sovereignty Links & Learnings Sign up for free and get more from our weekly newsletter https://madlik.com/ Safaria Source Sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/661213 Hussein Aboubakr Mansour‘s Substack article https://open.substack.com/pub/critiqueanddigest/p/the-jew-after-otherness Transcript on episode web page: https://madlik.com/2025/07/09/understanding-anti-semitism-through-history/

Join me as I explore the wave of antisemitic comments flooding my recent YouTube videos. In this video, I break down why I believe most of these comments aren't from real people at all—but from bots. We'll look at the patterns, suspicious accounts, and broader reasons behind coordinated online hate campaigns.If you've noticed similar trends or have thoughts on the rise of bot-driven antisemitism, share them in the comments below. Let's keep this conversation going. #jewish #judaism #israel #zionism #ai #bots #chatgpt #socialmedia Facebook:   / daniel.levine.31  Instagram:   / rabbidaniellevine  #Zionism #hillel #Judaism

We invited Adam (not his real name) a young Palestinian LGBTQ activist from Gaza to share with us his story, his thoughts and how he views the society he lives, the contrast before and during the war with regards to conservative values, sexuality and many different issues we filter from the western point of view. Of course we discussed hamas, Zionism, the Free Palestine movement in the West (specially the LGBTQ bandwagon), antisemitism and other matters where we don't agree but we felt it was a great opportunity and worth the tension even though we didn't have all the time we wanted and needed. We still hope this experience ignites and inspires more conversations.This episode was recorded on July 6th, 2025.----Invitamos a Adam (no es su nombre real) un joven palestino activista LGBTQ para que nos comparta su historia, sus pensamientos y cómo ve la sociedad en la que vive, el contraste antes y durante la guerra en relación a los valores conservadores, la sexualidad y diferentes temas que filtramos desde el punto de vista Occidental.Por supuesto discutimos sobre hamas, Sionismo, el movimiento Free Palestine en Occidente (y su componente LGBTQ), antisemitismo y otras cuestiones sobre los que no acordamos pero sentimos que era una gran oportunidad y valía la pena la tensión aunque no tuviéramos todo el tiempo que queríamos y necesitábamos. De todas formas esperamos que esta experiencia inicie e inspire más conversaciones.Este episodio fue grabado el 6 de Julio de 2025.

After Zohran Mamdani's stunning victory in the NYC Democratic mayoral primary, the Jewish community is raising serious concerns. But can they articulate why? In this deep dive, we break down the real issues behind the headlines and explain what many are struggling to put into words.From his socialist economic policies to his stance on Israel, from his past tweets to his current media-trained persona - we examine the gap between public perception and documented positions. This isn't about personal attacks - it's about understanding the policies and ideologies that could reshape New York City. We are then joined by special guest Shabbos Kestenbaum from ⁨@PragerU⁩ to add some actual informed insight.

Scott interviews Auron MacIntyre about his book on the failures of liberal democracies. They cover MacIntyre's intellectual journey, the cost of empire, mass migration, Zionism in American politics and more. Discussed on the show: The Total State: How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies by Auron MacIntyre On Power by Bertrand de Jouvenel Auron MacIntyre is a columnist, lecturer, and author focusing on the application of political theory. He is the host of The Auron MacIntyre Show podcast and author of The Total State: How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies. Follow him on Twitter @AuronMacintyre This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott's interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Download Episode. Scott interviews Auron MacIntyre about his book on the failures of liberal democracies. They cover MacIntyre's intellectual journey, the cost of empire, mass migration, Zionism in American politics and more. Discussed on the show: The Total State: How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies by Auron MacIntyre On Power by Bertrand de Jouvenel Auron […]

This bible study episode explores the complex relationship between Israel and the Church, challenging the misconception that unconditional support for the modern state of Israel is mandated by biblical prophecy. Pastor Anthony Uvenio meticulously defines "Israel" throughout scripture – as a personal name (Jacob), tribal name (Jacob's descendants), national name (those delivered from Egypt), splintered kingdom (Judah and Israel), restored people (post-exile), and finally, as the remnant believers in the New Covenant. The Church, conversely, is defined as the "called-out ones," born-again believers in Jesus Christ. The core argument centers on the distinction between the Old Covenant (physical circumcision, potential for covenant without knowing God) and the New Covenant (spiritual circumcision, indwelling of the Holy Spirit, knowledge of God). Pastor Anthony emphasizes that the New Covenant, established through Jesus's sacrifice, is inclusive of all nations, fulfilling the promises made to Abraham, and that true spiritual Israel is defined by faith in Christ, not lineage. The episode critiques the conflation of supporting Israel with receiving God's blessing, citing Genesis 12 and Galatians 3 to demonstrate that God's blessings extend to all who believe through faith in Christ. The discussion also touches upon the theological implications of dispensationalism and Zionism, particularly concerning the interpretation of scripture and its impact on political stances, such as those held by figures like Ted Cruz. Ultimately, the podcast advocates for a nuanced understanding of Israel and the Church, urging believers to support Israel when acting biblically, but to rebuke disobedience, while simultaneously focusing on the global mission of spreading the Gospel to all nations.#IsraelAndTheChurch #biblicalisrael #newcovenant #oldcovenant #israelites #churchhistory #theology #christianity #messianicjudaism #reformedtheology Christianity #dispensationalism Podcast: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/reformedrookie/episodes/Israel-and-the-Church-Whos-Who-e3585s0www.ReformedRookie.comPodcast: https://anchor.fm/reformedrookieFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheReformedRookie Twitter: https://twitter.com/NYapologistSemper Reformanda!

01:03:15 – 01:17:32“One Big Beautiful Bill”: Budget, Amnesty, and Economic FalloutThe new budget bill extends Trump-era tax cuts, slashes welfare and Medicaid, raises defense spending, and increases the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. Critics warn it frontloads benefits and delays cuts, triggering a fiscal cliff by 2028. Despite MAGA promises, the bill includes talk of amnesty and centralizes more power in federal hands. 01:18:29 – 01:21:28Military Budget Passes $1 Trillion MarkThe bill allocates $150 billion in extra military funding, bringing the 2026 military budget to over $1 trillion. Funding priorities include a proposed “Golden Dome” defense system and additional missile stockpiles, sparking concern over boondoggles and unnecessary militarism. 01:29:29 – 01:43:58Inalienable Rights, Tyranny, and the Spirit of 1776A commentary explores the erosion of civil liberties under expanding executive power, comparing modern policies to British tyranny before the American Revolution. Topics include surveillance, indefinite detention, censorship, and the decline of constitutional protections. 01:52:33 – 01:55:35Antidepressant-Linked Suicide and Pfizer LawsuitA widow recounts her husband's suicide shortly after starting Zoloft, leading to a lawsuit against Pfizer. She uncovers internal documents revealing the pharmaceutical company's knowledge of associated risks, sparking wider criticism of industry secrecy. 01:55:35 – 02:00:26Leaked Memo: Pharma Lobby Plots to Silence RFK Jr.A biotech industry memo details efforts to remove RFK Jr. from public discourse due to his challenge to pharmaceutical narratives. Paired with FOIA documents, it exposes widespread media manipulation during the COVID response involving Hollywood, sports leagues, and influencers. 02:17:07 – 02:18:59UK Immigration Criticized as Criminal Crisis by DesignBritish media reports that migrants arriving by boat are far more likely to be imprisoned than UK citizens. Commentary alleges this is part of a deliberate plan to displace native populations and suppress cultural identity. 02:19:30 – 02:21:37Trump to Host UFC Fight at White House as Political SpectaclePlans for a UFC fight at the White House are mocked as emblematic of American political decline and national trivialization. Critics call it a circus undermining presidential dignity. 03:03:16 – 03:05:58Israel Lobby's Push for Bunker Buster Transfers and Nuclear EscalationA bipartisan bill would authorize Trump to transfer stealth bombers and bunker busters to Israel based on Netanyahu's discretion regarding Iran's nuclear intentions. The move is framed as a dangerous escalation and example of unchecked foreign lobbying. 03:06:29 – 03:07:23Pro-Israel Bipartisanship Highlights Uniparty DynamicsDespite differing on abortion and social issues, Reps. Gottheimer and Lawler are united in arming Israel. Commentary criticizes the uniparty system and the U.S. government's prioritization of Israeli military goals. 03:12:14 – 03:16:50Israel Accused of Genocide and Weaponizing StarvationAmnesty International reports Israel is using starvation as a weapon in Gaza, allegedly targeting aid sites to corral and kill civilians. Commentary claims the militarized aid system is designed to enable mass killings with U.S. backing. 03:29:42 – 03:32:40Trump's Mass Amnesty for Migrant Labor CriticizedTrump proposes amnesty for millions of undocumented workers in agriculture and hospitality. Critics call it a betrayal of immigration promises and accuse him of protecting cheap labor for personal business interests. 03:33:58 – 03:41:06Microsoft Lays Off Americans While Expanding H-1B HiringMicrosoft cuts thousands of U.S. jobs while lobbying to expand the H-1B visa cap. Commentary alleges racial hiring bias, credential fraud from foreign diploma mills, and intentional destruction of U.S. tech standards. 03:45:10 – 03:46:51Mexico City Protests American Digital NomadsLocals rally against rising rents and gentrification caused by U.S. digital nomads. The irony is highlighted—Mexicans protest foreign impact while Americans are shamed for raising similar concerns at home. 03:50:31 – 03:52:28Spain Criminalizes Parental Resistance to Gender TransitionNew Spanish law threatens jail time for parents or doctors who oppose a child's gender transition. Critics say the law mandates blind affirmation and criminalizes dissent, especially targeting Christians. Follow the show on Kick and watch live every weekday 9:00am EST – 12:00pm EST https://kick.com/davidknightshow Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code KNIGHTFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

With Alana Lentin. In this episode we discuss the ways in which racial capitalism reproduces itself. Beyond the distracting framings of culture wars and moral panics, Alana Lentin shows how, from Australia to the USA, the attacks on Black, Indigenous and anticolonial thought and praxis reveal the processes through which racial colonial rule is ideologically resecured.  We discuss the 'whitelash' against the teaching of histories of slavery and colonialism; the counterinsurgent capture and institutionalisation of antiracism, Indigeneity and decoloniality in the service of Zionism and settler colonialism; and how the 'war on antisemitism' re-forms white supremacism at an acute time of genocide. The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy is out now from Pluto Press. Use the coupon 'PODCAST' for 40% off the book on plutobooks.com.

#jewishhistory #kabbalah #gershomScholem

Join Christine Darg on the Jerusalem Channel as she explores the biblical principle of being "wise as serpents and harmless as doves." The Lord's imagery of sheep co-existing with wolves suggests danger and the need to rely on the Good Shepherd. We're tasked with spreading the Gospel despite opposition. We're encouraged to avoid unnecessary conflict while remaining faithful to the Lord.

Link to Manny's guidebook: https://www.patreon.com/posts/comprehensive-to-133496236?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_linkBefore you ask: https://colonialoutcasts.bigcartel.com/products for the merch. Thanks for being patient!With that out of the way - Can we match up to Fred Hampton's level of outreach for class solidarity and hard power revolution?We finally dedicated an episode to the following questions posed numerous times by our audience in the comments: How do we reach the right for class consciousness?Is it even possible? The short answer is: yes, it is. Our proof is in our guest, Manny, a conservative Marine Corps veteran who not only deprogrammed from Zionism years ago due to conversations with leftists, but even used his top tier research and technical skills to author and index a thorough guidebook (link below) for defeating any Zionist argument which he used to coach a good friend of the podcast, an advocate for Palestine and anti-ICE activist, Mea (www.instagram.com/spacebunnynews1) in debating Zionists.We've uploaded this guidebook to our Patreon (below) where you can view and download it for free.We discuss Israel, ICE, MAGA, the rapidly deteriorating state of "the free world" and what is needed for a successful unification of the left and right working class for a successful revolution against the increasingly powerful ruling class. #conservative #war #maga #humanrights #geopolitics #veteran #protest #ice #trump #consitution

Participants: John Steppling, Aghogho Akpome, Hiroyuki Hamada, and Dennis Riches. Topics covered: the new artists against apartheid: summer rock festivals express the popular uprising against enablers of genocide, why Russia and China avoid direct confrontation with the zero-sum thinking of the US-NATO bloc, the latest “Washington Accord” for the ongoing resource extraction amid the Congo-Rwanda conflict, everyone is a socialist in their time of need, the class divide visible in who supports Zionism, pro-military themes in new television dramas, why you need to be an autodidact, Antonioni's “The Passenger” (1975). Music track: “Betty” by Jack Littman (used with permission).

At Glastonbury, Britain's biggest music festival, two artists called out Israel's genocide in Gaza and accused the British government of complicity. On-stage remarks by one of them - Bob Vylan - plunged the country's public broadcaster, the BBC, which livestreamed the performance, into yet another Gaza-shaped row. Contributors: Des Freedman – Author, The Media Manifesto Peter Oborne – Journalist and broadcaster Karishma Patel – Former newsreader, BBC Justin Schlosberg – Professor of Media and Communications, University Of Westminster On our radar: In the United States, Zohran Mamdani has secured the Democratic nomination for New York mayor, despite relentless media attacks that focus less on his policies and more on his outspoken stance against Israel's war on Gaza. Tariq Nafi reports. Palestinians are seen as some sort of existential threat, just for being there While debates rage in international media over phrases like “from the river to the sea” and “death to the IDF,” far less scrutiny falls on the anti-Palestinian abuse that has become normal inside Israel - from pop songs to viral chants. Palestinian analyst Abdaljawad Omar joins us from Ramallah to unpack this everyday Israeli racism. Featuring: Abdaljawad Omar – Lecturer, Birzeit University

In this special three-part series, we explore the increasingly contentious place of media superstar Piers Morgan and his YouTube show, Uncensored. Morgan has always inclined to the sensational, but in recent months he has perhaps gone too far – in terms of platforming some of the most hateful, uninformed antisemites and anti-Zionist voices in the world. Repeatedly. As he reminds us often, millions watch his show and engage on social media. So, he reasons, he must be doing something right. Well, perhaps not. Clicks and views may validate his mass appeal. But they also raise the question: To whom does he appeal? Why is he platforming and amplifying such hateful, uninformed people on the anti-Israel “side”, and putting them on the same show with some of the brightest, most articulate minds who support Israel? The result – particularly in the last month or so – has been many things but certainly not enlightening discussion or debate. To explore this issue I decided to speak with some past, ongoing and – never gonna happen – guests of Piers Morgan Uncensored. What began as one episode became a three part series. Because each of the five people with whom I spoke had such thoughtful and strong insights. And I belielve that the conduct of media- MSM and independents – is hugely important. When a media giant with global influence like Piers Morgan repeatedly platforms extreme haters – he legitimizes and amplifies their voice and reach- exponentially. Does he have a responsibility to society? Or is it just about the numbers?I discuss this and more with my five superb guests. In Part I we feature Lt. Col. (Res.) and Senior FDD Fellow, Jonathan Conricus, as well as Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli. Both appeared last week on Uncensored. And they have a lot to say.Part II of this series will be out on Sunday and features British-Israeli comedian, actor, writer and – in my view – serious social commentator – Lee Kern. When Uncensored seemed to veer off in a very concerning direction in recent weeks, Lee Kern posted a searing indictment of Piers Morgan and Uncensored on X. His commentary certainly got my attention and I assure you - his interview does not disappoint. It'll be out on Sunday.Part III of the series features two exceptional and very different voices. Emily Schrader, journalist, and activist – and frequent guest on Uncensored – gets into how the show has changed recently. She is savvy and has a keen understanding of all media. Emily explains the value in appearing on his show, but also gets into some troubling aspects of how it has been going lately. Emily is a massive influencer on social media – and she has some strong views on that world as well. Also in this episode is Ridvan Aydemir, aka the ApostateProphet on YouTube to his more than 500,000 followers. Raised in a strict Muslim home while navigating the very liberal society of modern Germany, Ridvan no longer identifies as a Muslim and he is a fierce critic of Islamist antisemitism and anti-Zionism. He also falls into the category of one who will never appear on Morgan's show – and shares with us why.All three segments in this series are super interesting and I expect you will learn a lot about the “behind the scenes” workings of today's media and why we should all – consumers and creators of content – pay careful attention to what is going down. Independent media is the wild west today. Query whether it should remain that way.State of Tel Aviv is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Podcast Notes:* I encourage all listeners/viewers to peruse the X accounts of the participants in this series. It is an eye-popping rabbit-hole (weird metaphor but kinda' works), no matter where you start. All roads, as they say, lead to Rome – in this case that would be Piers Morgan and Uncensored.Instagram:Conricus: @jconricusChikli: @amichaichikliLee Kern: @leekern13Apostate Prophet: @realapostateprophetEmily: @emilykschraderX (Twitter):@jconricus@AmichaiChikli@leekern13@emilykschrader@apostateprophet * I am posting here the full links to the most recent Uncensored episode in which Jonathan Conricus appeared, as well as the episode featuring Minister Amichai Chikli. Both ran last week. If you go to Piers Morgan's personal X account you will find numerous clips that he considered post-worthy from these episodes. You watch. You decide.* Below is the full text of the post of Minister Chikli's on June 4 that seemed to have triggered Piers Morgan and led to Chikli being invited to appear on Uncensored. * Guest BiosJonathan Conricus is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank. He served in the IDF for 24 years, four of them as spokesman during the intense 11 days of the Guardian of the Walls Operation between Israel and Hamas. Now a reserve officer with the rank of Lt. Col., he is a sought-after speaker internationally and is frequently seen on major television news shows. Jonathan was born in Jerusalem to a Swedish father and an Israeli mother and spent his formative years in Sweden.Amichai Chikli is an Israeli politician who serves as the Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism & the BDS movement.In the past he worked as an educator and social entrepreneur.Chikli was born in 1981 in Jerusalem. He served as an officer in the elite units in the Golani brigade.Following his IDF service, Chikli earned a bachelor's degree in security and Middle Eastern studies from Haifa University and a master's degree in security studies and diplomacy from Tel Aviv University.State of Tel Aviv is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stateoftelaviv.com/subscribe

Robert David Steele (July 16, 1952 – August 29, 2021) was an American case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency,[ co-founder of the United States Marine Corps Intelligence Activityand conspiracy theorist.Conspiracy theoriesSteele was a regular guest on Alex Jones's radio show. In an interview by Jones in June 2017, Steele claimed NASA holds a colony on Mars populated by human slaves who were kidnapped as children and sent to the planet.NASA spokesperson, feeling the need to respond about numerous false rumors, said "There are no humans on Mars" and that “there's only one stupid rumor on the Internet? Now that's news."On his Public Intelligence Blog, Steele cited The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic document, at least 42 times to expound on the "Zionist conspiracy". He stated in a September 2019 blog entry that Jews in financial sectors were "a secret society" that "believes [itself] to be exempt from all laws and customs", leading to accusations of antisemitism, and called for the incarceration of Jews who were insufficiently loyal to the republic.He described the Holocaust as being a "contrived myth" and Zionism as “a cancer on humanity” urging the eradication of "every Zionist who refuses to be loyal to their country of citizenship and the rule of law.”In September 2020, he implied "two Zionists", one of whom was Yitzhak Rabin, were in Dallas and somehow involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Additionally, he claimed Rabin and Dick Cheney agreed on a proposal for the September 11 attacks: "The Zionists installed the controlled demolitions that assisted what I believe was clearly a directed energy controlled frequency event in the twin towers, controlled demolitions alone for WTC seven, and a massive coverup was executed….9/11 [legal] cases did not go to trial; controlled Zionist judges and prosecutors ensured that all cases were generously settled".Steele was the organizer of the Arise USA tour, a three-month tour of all 50 American states.[1] The Daily Beast reported the tour began in May 2021. Steele promoted Donald Trump's claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and told his audiences of "the treason and high crimes represented by the fake pandemic, unconstitutional lockdown, mask idiocy, and the deaths and sterilization and mutations associated with the untested toxic 'vaccines'".[14] The tour featured speakers such as Oath Keeper Richard Mack and conspiracy theory promoter Sacha Stone. In July 2021, he held a demonstration in Belfast, Maine to claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and called COVID-19 a hoax.[15][16] He claimed to be the first person to call COVID-19 a hoax.[5] The tour concluded in August 2021, following allegations that $300,000 had been stolen from the tour's budget.[17] He also promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.[1]Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

How has the media distorted Israel's response to the October 7 Hamas attacks? In this powerful conversation from AJC Global Forum 2025, award-winning journalist and former AP correspondent Matti Friedman breaks down the media bias, misinformation, and double standards shaping global coverage of Israel. Moderated by AJC Chief Communications and Strategy Officer Belle Etra Yoeli, this episode explores how skewed narratives have taken hold in the media, in a climate of activist journalism. A must-listen for anyone concerned with truth in journalism, Israel advocacy, and combating disinformation in today's media landscape. Take Action: Take 15 seconds and urge your elected leaders to send a clear, united message: We stand with Israel. Take action now. Resources: Global Forum 2025 session with Matti Friedman:: Watch the full video. Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: Untold stories of Jews who left or were driven from Arab nations and Iran People of the Pod:  Latest Episodes:  John Spencer's Key Takeaways After the 12-Day War: Air Supremacy, Intelligence, and Deterrence Iran's Secret Nuclear Program and What Comes Next in the Iranian Regime vs. Israel War Why Israel Had No Choice: Inside the Defensive Strike That Shook Iran's Nuclear Program Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Transcript of the Interview: Manya Brachear Pashman: I've had the privilege of interviewing journalism colleague Matti Friedman: twice on this podcast. In 2022, Matti took listeners behind the scenes of Jerusalem's AP bureau where he had worked between 2006 and 2011 and shared some insight on what happens when news outlets try to oversimplify the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then in 2023, I got to sit down with Matti in Jerusalem to talk about his latest book on Leonard Cohen and how the 1973 Yom Kippur War was a turning point both for the singer and for Israel.  Earlier this year, Matti came to New York for AJC Global Forum 2025, and sat down with Belle Yoeli, AJC Chief Strategy and Communications Officer. They rehashed some of what we discussed before, but against an entirely different backdrop: post-October 7. For this week's episode, we bring you a portion of that conversation.  Belle Yoeli:   Hi, everyone. Great to see all of you. Thank you so much for being here. Matti, thank you for being here.  Matti Friedman:   Thanks for having me.  Belle Yoeli:   As you can tell by zero empty seats in this room, you have a lot of fans, and unless you want to open with anything, I'm going to jump right in. Okay, great.  So for those of you who don't know, in September 2024 Matti wrote a piece in The Free Press that is a really great foundation for today's discussion. In When We Started to Lie, Matti, you reflect on two pieces that you had written in 2015 about issues of media coverage of Israel during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. And this piece basically talked about the conclusions you drew and how they've evolved since October 7. We're gonna get to those conclusions, but first, I'm hoping you can describe for everyone what were the issues of media coverage of Israel that you first identified based on the experience in 2014? Matti Friedman:   First of all, thanks so much for having me here, and thanks for all of the amazing work that you guys are doing. So it's a real honor for me. I was a reporter for the AP, between 2006 and the very end of 2011, in Jerusalem. I was a reporter and editor. The AP, of course, as you know, is the American news agency. It's the world's largest news organization, according to the AP, according to Reuters, it's Reuters. One of them is probably right, but it's a big deal in the news world.  And I had an inside view inside one of the biggest AP bureaus. In fact, the AP's biggest International Bureau, which was in Jerusalem. So I can try to sketch the problems that I saw as a reporter there. It would take me seven or eight hours, and apparently we only have four or five hours for this lunch, so I have to keep it short. But I would say there are two main problems. We often get very involved. When we talk about problems with coverage of Israel. We get involved with very micro issues like, you call it a settlement. I call it a neighborhood. Rockets, you know, the Nakba, issues of terminology. But in fact, there are two major problems that are much bigger, and because they're bigger, they're often harder to see. One of the things that I noticed at the Bureau was the scale of coverage of Israel. So at the time that I was at the AP, again, between 2006 and the very end of 2011 we had about 40 full time staffers covering Israel. That's print reporters like me, stills photographers, TV crews. Israel, as most of you probably know, is a very small country. As a percentage of the world's surface, Israel is 1/100 of 1% of the surface of the world, and as a percentage of the land mass of the Arab world, Israel is 1/5 of 1%. 0.2%.  And we had 40 people covering it.  And just as a point of comparison, that was dramatically more people than we had at the time covering China. There are about 10 million people today in Israel proper, in China, there are 1.3 billion. We had more people in Israel than we had in China. We had more people in Israel than we had in India, which is another country of about 1.3 billion people. We had more people in Israel than we had in all of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. That's 50 something countries. So we had more people in Israel than we had in all of those countries combined. And sometimes I say that to Jews, I say we covered Israel more than we covered China, and people just stare at me blankly, because it's Israel. So of course, that makes perfect sense.  I happen to think Israel is the most important country in the world because I live there. But if the news is meant to be a rational analysis of events on planet Earth, you cannot cover Israel more than you cover the continent of Africa. It just doesn't make any sense. So one of the things that first jumped out at me– actually, that's making me sound smarter than I am. It didn't jump out at me at first. It took a couple of years. And I just started realizing that it was very strange that the world's largest organization had its largest international bureau in the State of Israel, which is a very small country, very small conflict in numeric terms. And yet there was this intense global focus on it that made people think that it was the most important story in the world. And it definitely occupies a place in the American political imagination that is not comparable to any other international conflict.  So that's one part of the problem. That was the scope, the other part was the context. And it took me a while to figure this out, but the coverage of Israel is framed as an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict is defined in those terms, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and everyone in this room has heard it discussed in those terms. Sometimes we discuss it in those terms, and that is because the news folks have framed the conflict in those terms. So at the AP bureau in Jerusalem, every single day, we had to write a story that was called, in the jargon of the Bureau, Is-Pals, Israelis, Palestinians. And it was the daily wrap of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. So what Netanyahu said, what Abbas said, rockets, settlers, Hamas, you know, whatever, the problem is that there isn't an Israeli=Palestinian conflict. And I know that sounds crazy, because everyone thinks there is.  And of course, we're seeing conflicts play out in the most tragic way right now in Gaza. But most of Israel's wars have not been fought against Palestinians. Israel has unfortunately fought wars against Egyptians and Jordanians and Lebanese and Iraqis. And Israel's most important enemy at the moment, is Iran, right? The Iranians are not Palestinian. The Iranians are not Arab. They're Muslim, but they're not Arab. So clearly, there is a broader regional conflict that's going on that is not an Israeli Palestinian conflict, and we've seen it in the past year. If we had a satellite in space looking down and just following the paths of ballistic missiles and rockets fired at Israel. Like a photograph of these red trails of rockets fired at Israel. You'd see rockets being fired from Iraq and from Yemen and from Lebanon and from Gaza and from Iran. You'd see the contours of a regional conflict.  And if you understand it's a regional conflict, then you understand the way Israelis see it. There are in the Arab world, 300 million people, almost all of them Muslim. And in one corner of that world, there are 7 million Jews, who are Israelis. And if we zoom out even farther to the level of the Islamic world, we'll see that there are 2 billion people in the Islamic world. There's some argument about the numbers, but it's roughly a quarter of the world's population. And in one corner of that world there, there are 7 million Israeli Jews. The entire Jewish population on planet Earth is a lot smaller than the population of Cairo.  So the idea that this is an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where Israelis are the stronger side, where Israelis are the dominant actor, and where Israelis are, let's face it, the bad guy in the story, that's a fictional presentation of a story that actually works in a completely different way. So if you take a small story and make it seem big. If you take a complicated regional story and you make it seem like a very small local story involving only Israelis and Palestinians, then you get the highly simplified but very emotive narrative that everyone is being subjected to now. And you get this portrayal of a villainous country called Israel that really looms in the liberal imagination of the West as an embodiment of the worst possible qualities of the age. Belle Yoeli:   Wow. So already you were seeing these issues when you were reporter, earlier on. But like this, some of this was before and since, since productive edge. This is over 10 years ago, and here we are. So October 7 happens. You already know these issues exist. You've identified them. How would you describe because obviously we have a lot of feelings about this, but like, strictly as a journalist, how would you describe the coverage that you've seen since during October 7, in its aftermath? Is it just these issues? Have they? Have they expanded? Are there new issues in play? What's your analysis? Matti Friedman:   The coverage has been great. I really have very I have no criticism of it. I think it's very accurate. I think that I, in a way, I was lucky to have been through what I went through 10 or 15 years ago, and I wasn't blindsided on October 7, as many people were, many people, quite naturally, don't pay close attention to this. And even people who are sympathetic to Israel, I think, were not necessarily convinced that my argument about the press was right. And I think many people thought it was overstated.  And you can read those articles from 2014 one was in tablet and one was in the Atlantic, but it's basically the two chapters of the same argument. And unfortunately, I think that those the essays, they stand up. In fact, if you don't really look at the date of the essays, they kind of seem that they could have been written in the past year and a half. And I'm not happy about that. I think that's and I certainly wrote them in hopes that they would somehow make things better. But the issues that I saw in the press 15 years ago have only been exacerbated since then. And October seven didn't invent the wheel. The issues were pre existing, but it took everything that I saw and kind of supercharged it.  So if I talked about ideological conformity in the bureaus that has been that has become much more extreme. A guy like me, I was hired in 2006 at the AP. I'm an Israeli of center left political leanings. Hiring me was not a problem in 22,006 by the time I left the AP, at the end of 2011 I'm pretty sure someone like me would not have been hired because my views, which are again, very centrist Israeli views, were really beyond the pale by the time that I left the AP, and certainly, and certainly today, the thing has really moved what I saw happening at the AP. And I hate picking on the AP because they were just unfortunate enough to hire me. That was their only error, but what I'm saying about them is true of a whole new. Was heard. It's true of the Times and CNN and the BBC, the news industry really works kind of as a it has a herd mentality. What happened was that news decisions were increasingly being made by people who are not interested in explanatory journalism. They were activists. Activists had moved into the key positions in the Bureau, and they had a very different idea of what press coverage was supposed to do. I would say, and I tried to explain it in that article for the free press, when I approach a news story, when I approach the profession of journalism, the question that I'm asking is, what's going on? That's the question I think you're supposed to ask, what's going on? How can I explain it in a way that's as accurate as as possible? The question that was increasingly being asked was not what's going on. The question was, who does this serve? That's an activist question. So when you look at a story, you don't ask, is it true, or is it not true? You ask, who's it going to help? Is it going to help the good guys, or is it going to help the bad guys?  So if Israel in the story is the villain, then a story that makes Israel seem reasonable, reasonable or rational or sympathetic needs to be played down to the extent possible or made to disappear. And I can give you an example from my own experience.  At the very end of 2008 two reporters in my bureau, people who I know, learned of a very dramatic peace offer that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had made to the Palestinians. So Olmert, who was the prime minister at the time, had made a very far reaching offer that was supposed to see a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, most of the West Bank, with land swaps for territory that Israel was going to retain, and a very far reaching international consortium agreement to run the Old City of Jerusalem. Was a very dramatic. It was so far reaching, I think that Israelis probably wouldn't have supported it. But it was offered to the Palestinian side, and the Palestinians rejected it as insufficient. And two of our reporters knew about this, and they'd seen a map of the offer. And this was obviously a pretty big story for a bureau that had as the thrust of its coverage the peace process.  The two reporters who had the story were ordered to drop it, they were not allowed to cover the story. And there were different explanations. And they didn't, by the way, AP did not publish the story at the time, even though we were the first to have it. Eventually, it kind of came out and in other ways, through other news organizations. But we knew at first. Why were we not allowed to cover it? Because it would have made the Israelis who we were trying to villainize and demonize, it would have made Israel seem like it was trying to solve the conflict on kind of reasonable lines, which, of course, was true at that time. So that story would have upended the thrust of our news coverage. So it had to be made to go away, even though it was true, it would have helped the wrong people. And that question of who does this serve has destroyed, I want to say all, but much, of what used to be mainstream news coverage, and it's not just where Israel is concerned.  You can look at a story like the mental health of President Biden, right. Something's going on with Biden at the end of his term. It's a huge global news story, and the press, by and large, won't touch it, because why? I mean, it's true, right? We're all seeing that it's true, but why can't you touch it? Because it would help the wrong people. It would help the Republicans who in the press are the people who you are not supposed to help.  The origins of COVID, right? We heard one story about that. The true story seems to be a different story. And there are many other examples of stories that are reported because they help the right people, or not reported because they would help the wrong people. And I saw this thinking really come into action in Israel 10 or 15 years ago, and unfortunately, it's really spread to include the whole mainstream press scene and really kill it.  I mean, essentially, anyone interested in trying to get a solid sense of what's going on, we have very few options. There's not a lot, there's not a lot out there. So that's the broader conclusion that I drew from what I thought at the time was just a very small malfunction involving Israel coverage. But Israel coverage ends up being a symptom of something much bigger, as Jews often are the symptom of something much bigger that's going on.  So my problems in the AP bureau 15 years ago were really a kind of maybe a canary in the coal mine, or a whiff of something much bigger that we were all going to see happen, which is the transformation of the important liberal institutions of the west into kind of activist arms of a very radical ideology that has as its goal the transformation of the west into something else. And that's true of the press, and it's true of NGO world, places like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which were one thing 30 years ago and are something very different today. And it's also true of big parts of the academy. It's true of places like Columbia and places like Harvard, they still have the logo, they still have the name, but they serve a different purpose, and I just happen to be on the ground floor of it as a reporter. Belle Yoeli:   So obviously, this concept of who does this serve, and this activist journalism is deeply concerning, and you actually mentioned a couple other areas, academia, obviously we're in that a lot right now in terms of what's going on campus. So I guess a couple of questions on that. First of all, think about this very practically, tachlis, in the day to day.  I'm a journalist, and I go to write about what's happening in Gaza. What would you say is, if you had to throw out a percentage, are all of them aware of this activist journalist tendency? Or you think it's like, like intentional for many of them, or it's sort of they've been educated that way, and it's their worldview in such a way that they don't even know that they're not reporting the news in a very biased way. Does that make sense? Matti Friedman:   Totally. I think that many people in the journalism world today view their job as not as explaining a complicated situation, but as swaying people toward the correct political conclusion. Journalism is power, and the power has to be wielded in support of justice. Now, justice is very slippery, and, you know, choosing who's in the right is very, very slippery, and that's how journalism gets into a lot of trouble. Instead of just trying to explain what's going on and then leave, you're supposed to leave the politics and the activism to other people. Politics and activism are very important.  But unless everyone can agree on what is going on, it's impossible to choose the kind of act, the kind of activism that would be useful. So when the journalists become activists, then no one can understand what's what's going on, because the story itself is fake, and there are many, many examples of it. But you know, returning to what you asked about, about October 7, and reporting post October 7, you can really see it happen. The massacres of October 7 were very problematic for the ideological strain that now controls a lot of the press, because it's counterintuitive. You're not supposed to sympathize with Israelis.  And yet, there were a few weeks after October 7 when they were forced to because the nature of the atrocities were so heinous that they could not be ignored. So you had the press covering what happened on October 7, but you could feel it. As someone who knows that scene, you could feel there was a lot of discomfort. There was a lot of discomfort. It wasn't their comfort zone, and you knew that within a few weeks, maybe a month, it was gonna snap back at the first opportunity.  When did it snap back? In the story of the Al Ahli hospital strike. If you remember that a few weeks in, there's a massive global story that Israel has rocketed Hospital in Gaza and killed about 500 people and and then you can see the kind of the comfort the comfort zone return, because the story that the press is primed to cover is a story about villainous Israelis victimizing innocent Palestinians, and now, now we're back. Okay. Now Israel's rocketing hospital. The problem was that it hadn't happened, and it was that a lot of stories don't happen, and they're allowed to stand.  But this story was so far from the truth that even the people involved couldn't make it work, and it had to be retracted, but it was basically too late. And then as soon as the Israeli ground offensive got into swing in Gaza, then the story really becomes the same old story, which is a story of Israel victimizing Palestinians for no reason. And you'll never see Hamas militants in uniform in Gaza. You just see dead civilians, and you'll see the aftermath of a rocket strike when the, you know, when an Israeli F16 takes out the launcher, but you will never see the strike. Which is the way it's worked in Gaza since the very end of 2008 which is when the first really bad round of violence in Gaza happens, which is when I'm at the AP.  As far as I know, I was the first staffer to erase information from the story, because we were threatened by Hamas, which happened at the very end of 2008. We had a great reporter in Gaza, a Palestinian who had always been really an excellent reporter. We had a detail in a story. The detail was a crucial one. It was that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and were being counted as civilians in the death toll, an important thing to know, that went out in an AP story. The reporter called me a few hours later. It was clear that someone had spoken to him, and he told me, I was on the desk in Jerusalem, so I was kind of writing the story from the main bureau in Jerusalem. And he said, Matti, you have to take that detail out of the story. And it was clear that someone had threatened him. I took the detail out of the story. I suggested to our editors that we note in an Editor's Note that we were now complying with Hamas censorship. I was overruled, and from that point in time, the AP, like all of its sister organizations, collaborates with Hamas censorship in Gaza.  What does that mean? You'll see a lot of dead civilians, and you won't see dead militants. You won't have a clear idea of what the Hamas military strategy is. And this is the kicker, the center of the coverage will be a number, a casualty number, that is provided to the press by something called the Gaza health ministry, which is Hamas. And we've been doing that since 2008, and it's a way of basically settling the story before you get into any other information. Because when you put, you know, when you say 50 Palestinians were killed, and one Israeli on a given day, it doesn't matter what else you say. The numbers kind of tell their own story, and it's a way of settling the story with something that sounds like a concrete statistic. And the statistic is being, you know, given to us by one of the combatant sides. But because the reporters sympathize with that side, they're happy to play along. So since 2008, certainly since 2014 when we had another serious war in Gaza, the press has not been covering Gaza, the press has been essentially an amplifier for one of the most poisonous ideologies on Earth. Hamas has figured out how to make the press amplify its messaging rather than covering Hamas. There are no Western reporters in Gaza. All of the reporters in Gaza are Palestinians, and those people fall into three categories. Some of them identify with Hamas. Some of them are intimidated by Hamas and won't cross Hamas, which makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't want to cross Hamas either. So either. And the third category is people who actually belong to Hamas. That's where the information from Gaza is coming from. And if you're credulous, then of course, you're going to get a story that makes Israel look pretty bad. Belle Yoeli:   So this is very depressing. That's okay. It's very helpful, very depressing. But on that note, I would ask you so whether, because you spoke about this problem in terms, of, of course, the coverage of Israel, but that it's it's also more widespread you talk, you spoke about President Biden in your article, you name other examples of how this sort of activist journalism is affecting everything we read. So what should everyone in this room be reading, truly, from your opinion. This is Matti's opinion. But if you want to you want to get information from our news and not activist journalism, obviously The Free Press, perhaps. But are there other sites or outlets that you think are getting this more down the line, or at least better than some, some better than others?  Matti Friedman:   No, it's just The Free Press. No. I mean, it's a question that I also wrestle with. I haven't given up on everyone, and even in publications that have, I think, largely lost the plot, you'll still find good stuff on occasion. So I try to keep my eye on certain reporters whose name I know. I often ask not just on Israel, but on anything, does this reporter speak the language of the country that they're covering? You'd be shocked at how rare that is for Americans. A lot of the people covering Ukraine have no idea what language they speak in Ukraine, and just as someone who covers Israel, I'm aware of the low level of knowledge that many of the Western reporters have. You'll find really good stuff still in the Atlantic. The Atlantic has managed, against steep odds, to maintain its equilibrium amid all this. The New Yorker, unfortunately, less so, but you'll still see, on occasion, things that are good. And there are certain reporters who are, you know, you can trust. Isabel Kirchner, who writes for The New York Times, is an old colleague of mine from the Jerusalem report. She's excellent, and they're just people who are doing their job. But by and large, you have to be very, very suspicious of absolutely everything that you read and see. And I'm not saying that as someone who I'm not happy to say that, and I certainly don't identify with, you know, the term fake news, as it has been pushed by President Trump.  I think that fake news is, you know, for those guys, is an attempt to avoid scrutiny. They're trying to, you know, neuter the watchdog so that they can get away with whatever they want. I don't think that crowd is interested in good press coverage. Unfortunately, the term fake news sticks because it's true. That's why it has worked. And the press, instead of helping people navigate the blizzard of disinformation that we're all in, they've joined it. People who are confused about what's going on, should be able to open up the New York Times or go to the AP and figure out what's going on, but because, and I saw it happen, instead of covering the circus, the reporters became dancing bears in the circus. So no one can make heads or tails of anything. So we need to be very careful.  Most headlines that are out there are out there to generate outrage, because that's the most predictable generator of clicks, which is the, we're in a click economy. So I actually think that the less time you spend following headlines and daily news, the better off you'll be. Because you can follow the daily news for a year, and by the end of the year, you'll just be deranged. You'll just be crazy and very angry.  If you take that time and use it to read books about, you know, bitten by people who are knowledgeable, or read longer form essays that are, you know, that are obviously less likely to be very simplistic, although not, you know, it's not completely impossible that they will be. I think that's time, that's time better spent. Unfortunately, much of the industry is kind of gone. And we're in an interesting kind of interim moment where it's clear that the old news industry is basically dead and that something new has to happen. And those new things are happening. I mean, The Free Press is part of a new thing that's happening. It's not big enough to really move the needle in a dramatic way yet, but it might be, and I think we all have to hope that new institutions emerge to fill the vacuum.  The old institutions, and I say this with sorrow, and I think that this also might be true of a lot of the academic institutions. They can't be saved. They can't be saved. So if people think that writing an editor, a letter to the editor of the New York Times is going to help. It's not going to help. Sometimes people say, Why don't we just get the top people in the news industry and bring them to Israel and show them the truth? Doesn't help. It's not about knowing or not knowing. They define the profession differently.  So it's not about a lack of information. The institutions have changed, and it's kind of irrevocable at this point, and we need new institutions, and one of them is The Free Press, and it's a great model of what to do when faced with fading institutions. By the way, the greatest model of all time in that regard is Zionism. That's what Zionism is. There's a guy in Vienna in 1890 something, and his moment is incredibly contemporary. There's an amazing biography of Herzl called Herzl by Amos Elon. It's an amazing book. If you haven't read it, you should read it, because his moment in cosmopolitan Vienna sounds exactly like now. It's shockingly current. He's in this friendly city. He's a reporter for the New York Times, basically of the Austro Hungarian empire, and he's assimilated, and he's got a Christmas tree in his house, and his son isn't circumcised, and he thinks everything is basically great. And then the light changes.  He notices that something has changed in Vienna, and the discourse about Jews changes, and like in a Hollywood movie, the light changes. And he doesn't try to he doesn't start a campaign against antisemitism. He doesn't get on social media and kind of rail against unfair coverage. He sits down in a hotel room in Paris and he writes this pamphlet called the Jewish state, and I literally flew from that state yesterday. So there's a Zionist model where you look at a failing world and you think about radical solutions that involve creation. And I think we're there. And I think Herzl's model is a good one at a dark time you need real creativity. Belle Yoeli:   Thank God you found the inspiration there, because I was really, I was really starting to worry. No, in all seriousness, Matti, the saying that these institutions can't be saved. I mean the consequences of this, not just for us as pro-Israel, pro-Jewish advocates, but for our country, for the world, the countries that we come from are tremendous.  And the way we've been dealing with this issue and thinking about how, how can you change hearts and minds of individuals about Israel, about the Jewish people, if everything that they're reading is so damaging and most of what they're reading is so damaging and basically saying there's very little that we can do about that. So I am going to push you to dream big with us. We're an advocacy organization. AJC is an advocacy organization. So if you had unlimited resources, right, if you really wanted to make change in this area, to me, it sounds like you're saying we basically need 15 Free Presses or the new institutions to really take on this way. What would you do? What would you do to try to make it so that news media were more like the old days? Matti Friedman:   Anyone who wants unlimited resources should not go into journalism. I have found that my resources remain limited. I'll give you an answer that is probably not what you're expecting or not what you want here. I think that the fight can't be won. I think that antisemitism can't be defeated. And I think that resources that are poured into it are resources wasted. And of course, I think that people need legal protection, and they need, you know, lawyers who can protect people from discrimination and from defamation. That's very important. But I know that when people are presented with a problem like antisemitism, which is so disturbing and it's really rocking the world of everyone in this room, and certainly, you know, children and grandchildren, you have a problem and you want to address it, right? You have a really bad rash on your arm. You want the rash to go away, and you're willing to do almost anything to make it go away. This has always been with us. It's always been with us.  And you know, we recently celebrated the Seder, and we read in the Seder, in the Haggadah, l'chol dor vador, omdim aleinu l'chaloteinu. Which is, in every generation, they come at us to destroy us. And it's an incredibly depressing worldview. Okay, it's not the way I wanted to see the world when I grew up in Toronto in the 1990s. But in our tradition, we have this idea that this is always gonna be around. And the question is, what do you do? Do you let other people define you? Do you make your identity the fight against the people who hate you? And I think that's a dead end.  This crisis is hitting the Jewish people at a moment when many of us don't know who we are, and I think that's why it's hitting so hard. For my grandfather, who was a standard New York Jew, garment industry, Lower East Side, poor union guy. This would not have shaken him, because he just assumed that this was the world like this. The term Jewish identity was not one he ever heard, because it wasn't an issue or something that had to be taught. So if I had unlimited resources, what I would do is I would make sure that young Jewish people have access to the riches of Jewish civilization, I would, you know, institute a program that would allow any young Jewish person to be fluent in Hebrew by the time they finish college. Why is that so important? Why is that such an amazing key?  Because if you're fluent in Hebrew, you can open a Tanakh, or you can open a prayer book if you want. Or you can watch Fauda or you can get on a plane to Israel and hit on Israeli guys. Hebrew is the key to Jewish life, and if you have it, a whole world will open up. And it's not one that antisemites can interfere with. It does not depend on the goodwill of our neighbors. It's all about us and what we're doing with ourselves. And I think that if you're rooted in Jewish tradition, and I'm not saying becoming religious, I'm just saying, diving into the riches of Jewish tradition, whether it's history or gemara or Israel, or whatever, if you're if you're deep in there enough, then the other stuff doesn't go away, but it becomes less important.  It won't be solved because it can't be solved, but it will fade into the background. And if we make the center of identity the fight against antisemitism, they've won. Why should they be the center of our identity? For a young person who's looking for some way of living or some deep kind of guide to life, the fight against antisemitism is not going to do it, and philanthropy is not going to do it. We come from the wisest and one of the oldest civilizations in the world, and many of us don't know how to open the door to that civilization, and that's in our hands. And if we're not doing it, it's not the fault of the antisemites. It's our own fault. So if I had unlimited resources, which, again, it's not, it's not going to happen unless I make a career change, that's where I would be putting my effort. Internally and not externally.  Belle Yoeli:   You did find the inspiration, though, again, by pushing Jewish identity, and we appreciate that. It's come up a lot in this conversation, this question about how we fight antisemitism, investing in Jewish identity and who we are, and at the same time, what do we do about it? And I think all of you heard Ted in a different context last night, say, we can hold two things, two thoughts at the same time, right? Two things can be true at the same time. And I think for me, what I took out of this, in addition to your excellent insights, is that that's exactly what we have to be doing.  At AJC, we have to be engaging in this advocacy to stand up for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. But that's not the only piece of the puzzle. Of course, we have to be investing in Jewish identity. That's why we bring so many young people to this conference. Of course, we need to be investing in Jewish education. That's not necessarily what AJC is doing, the bulk of our work, but it's a lot of what the Jewish community is doing, and these pieces have to go together. And I want to thank you for raising that up for us, and again, for everything that you said. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you. Manya Brachear Pashman: If you missed last week's episode, be sure to tune in as John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, breaks down Israel's high-stakes strike on Iran's nuclear infrastructure and the U.S. decision to enter the fight. 

Donald Rumsfeld's Role in Biosecurity and COVID Profiteering (01:02:20 – 01:25:45) Outlines Rumsfeld's decades-long ties to pharmaceutical companies and government, alleging he helped engineer pandemic narratives and emergency powers to fuel vaccine profits. Pulitzer-Winning Journalist Arrested for Child Pornography (01:59:38 – 02:03:58) A Washington Post reporter involved in discrediting Roy Moore was found with child sexual abuse material. The case raises concerns about media corruption and selective silence. Grace Schara Trial and Hospital Accountability (02:04:00 – 02:09:17) Discusses the case of Grace Schara, a special-needs girl who had a DNR placed on her by hospital staff against the wishes of her family. A documentary is forthcoming. Trump EPA Rolls Back CO2 Regulations (02:13:11 – 02:22:23) Describes the repeal of greenhouse gas rules under Trump, emphasizing CO2's natural role, criticism of carbon capture, and support from energy industry and skeptics of climate policy. Trump Spending Bill Introduces Solar and Wind Tax (02:23:51 – 02:30:14) Breaks down industry backlash to Trump's energy bill, which removes subsidies and imposes taxes on wind and solar, arguing renewables are unstable and subsidized scams. Supreme Court Ruling Affirms Opt-Outs for LGBTQ Curriculum (02:39:47 – 02:56:54) Covers a major Supreme Court case allowing parents to opt children out of LGBTQ materials in public schools, highlighting ideological conflict over parental rights and indoctrination. Zoran Mamdani's Marxist Platform and Israel Controversy (03:13:54 – 03:22:28) A socialist New York City mayoral candidate denounces capitalism and advocates wealth redistribution, refusing to pledge allegiance to Israel, triggering backlash. His positions reflect growing ideological divides within American politics, particularly over Zionism. Canada Renames Street with Unpronounceable Indigenous Term (03:27:42 – 03:37:33) Critiques a Canadian street being renamed using obscure phonetic symbols as part of a decolonization push, calling it performative and impractical. The segment frames this as cultural erasure and ideological overcorrection. Trump-Backed Israel Loyalist to Replace Thomas Massie (03:46:52 – 03:58:38) Trump pushes to replace Rep. Thomas Massie with Aaron Reed, a self-described Christian Zionist who links U.S. prosperity to unconditional support for Israel. The discussion challenges the religious and political implications of this alignment. Follow the show on Kick and watch live every weekday 9:00am EST – 12:00pm EST https://kick.com/davidknightshow Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code KNIGHTFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

Donald Rumsfeld's Role in Biosecurity and COVID Profiteering (01:02:20 – 01:25:45) Outlines Rumsfeld's decades-long ties to pharmaceutical companies and government, alleging he helped engineer pandemic narratives and emergency powers to fuel vaccine profits. Pulitzer-Winning Journalist Arrested for Child Pornography (01:59:38 – 02:03:58) A Washington Post reporter involved in discrediting Roy Moore was found with child sexual abuse material. The case raises concerns about media corruption and selective silence. Grace Schara Trial and Hospital Accountability (02:04:00 – 02:09:17) Discusses the case of Grace Schara, a special-needs girl who had a DNR placed on her by hospital staff against the wishes of her family. A documentary is forthcoming. Trump EPA Rolls Back CO2 Regulations (02:13:11 – 02:22:23) Describes the repeal of greenhouse gas rules under Trump, emphasizing CO2's natural role, criticism of carbon capture, and support from energy industry and skeptics of climate policy. Trump Spending Bill Introduces Solar and Wind Tax (02:23:51 – 02:30:14) Breaks down industry backlash to Trump's energy bill, which removes subsidies and imposes taxes on wind and solar, arguing renewables are unstable and subsidized scams. Supreme Court Ruling Affirms Opt-Outs for LGBTQ Curriculum (02:39:47 – 02:56:54) Covers a major Supreme Court case allowing parents to opt children out of LGBTQ materials in public schools, highlighting ideological conflict over parental rights and indoctrination. Zoran Mamdani's Marxist Platform and Israel Controversy (03:13:54 – 03:22:28) A socialist New York City mayoral candidate denounces capitalism and advocates wealth redistribution, refusing to pledge allegiance to Israel, triggering backlash. His positions reflect growing ideological divides within American politics, particularly over Zionism. Canada Renames Street with Unpronounceable Indigenous Term (03:27:42 – 03:37:33) Critiques a Canadian street being renamed using obscure phonetic symbols as part of a decolonization push, calling it performative and impractical. The segment frames this as cultural erasure and ideological overcorrection. Trump-Backed Israel Loyalist to Replace Thomas Massie (03:46:52 – 03:58:38) Trump pushes to replace Rep. Thomas Massie with Aaron Reed, a self-described Christian Zionist who links U.S. prosperity to unconditional support for Israel. The discussion challenges the religious and political implications of this alignment. Follow the show on Kick and watch live every weekday 9:00am EST – 12:00pm EST https://kick.com/davidknightshow Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code KNIGHTFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Ayala Fader—an anthropologist who studies American Haredi communities and their “hidden heretics”—about the personal, familial, and communal factors that pull us toward and push us away from different Jewish communities. In this episode we discuss: How should we respond to the discomfort we experience when the communities we live in don't measure up to the communities we desire?How has the internet changed Hasidic and yeshivish cultures over the past three decades? How has the surge of antisemitism and anti-Zionism affected the views of Hasidic Jews? Tune in to hear a conversation about the ways we seek out and build communities that nourish us. Interview begins at 12:48.Ayala Fader is a professor of anthropology at Fordham University. Her research investigates contemporary North American Jewish identities and languages and engages key issues at the intersection of religion, Jewish Studies, gender, and linguistic anthropology, including language and media. She is also the founding director of the Demystifying Language Project, a partnership between academia and public high schools, housed in the New York Center for Public Anthropology at Fordham. Fader is the author of Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age. References:“Failure Goes to Yeshivah” by David BashevkinMitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn by Ayala FaderHidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age by Ayala FaderNaftuli Moster with Frieda Vizel: "Why I left Hasidic education activism"When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter Jew Vs Jew by Samuel G. Freedman18Forty Podcast: “Rav Moshe Weinberger: Can Mysticism Become a Community?”For more 18Forty:NEWSLETTER: 18forty.org/joinCALL: (212) 582-1840EMAIL: info@18forty.orgWEBSITE: 18forty.orgIG: @18fortyX: @18_fortyWhatsApp: join hereBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/18forty-podcast--4344730/support.

Sam Harris speaks with Haviv Rettig Gur about Israel and her enemies. They discuss Israel's war with Iran and America's role in the conflict, Israel's military capabilities, Iran's nuclear program, what a ground invasion of Iran could look like, how Iranians view the regime, antisemitism, the history of Zionism, Islam and jihadism, extremism on the Israeli far right, religious fanaticism, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Ehud Olmert, the hostages in Gaza, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.