Decision Points

On October 7th, 2023, Hamas launched the most significant and deadliest terror attack against Israel in the history of the state. Formed in the late 1980s, Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist military and socio-political movement. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and the organization has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2006. How has Hamas evolved over the last few decades, and ho...

The Middle East is at a crucial moment. Dual retaliatory attacks by Iran and Hezbollah against Israel threaten to tip the region into total war. However, a breakthrough in the hostage-for-ceasefire negotiations in Doha, initiated by the U.S., Qatar and Egypt, may delay or eliminate the attacks and could be a pivotal turning point in the Israel-Hamas war. In any scenario, this crisis moment will te...

The Gaza War is Israel’s longest battle since its War of Independence in 1948. Wartime demands have put an outsized strain on Israel’s army, reopening the debate over the ultra-orthodox (Haredi) draft and the broader secular-religious fault line in Israeli society. While the Haredim have historically enjoyed a blanket exemption from military service, a June 25th decision by the High Court of Israe...

Israeli society underwent a massive shock on October 7 that upended deeply held convictions about the army and the state. The horrors of 10/7 and the immediate demands of war unified Israelis at a time of deep division, but the 300+ days since Hamas’ assault have tested societal cohesion. How have 10/7 and the ensuing months of war changed Israeli society? What is needed to carry Israel through th...

In recent weeks, the mid-intensity conflict on Israel’s northern border with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite terror group, has threatened to explode into all-out war. With Israel ramping up its targeted killings of top Hezbollah military commanders and Hezbollah launching rockets and drones ever further into Israel, is total war inevitable? What will it take to deliver peace and/or s...

The ten months since October 7th have revealed both the profound strengths and strains of the U.S.-Israel partnership. Are current tensions a temporary consequence of the Israel-Hamas war, or do they represent a new and enduring divide between the two allies? In this episode, Dennis Ross joins David Makovsky on the eve of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s record fourth address to Congress to discuss the...

Host David Makovsky is joined by Prof. Yedidia Stern, president of the Jewish People Policy Institute and former dean of the law faculty at Bar-Ilan University, and Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, Israel’s former attorney-general and the recently retired deputy president of its Supreme Court. After breaking down the history and structure of Israel’s judiciary, they discuss the serious implications tha...

In the season finale, David is joined by Ben Caspit, columnist and author of The Netanyahu Years , and David Horovitz, the founding editor of The Times of Israel , to discuss Israel's returning prime minister and his controversial right-wing government. David and the guests break down the keys to Binyamin Netanyahu's long-lasting political career, the evolution of his public persona, and try to un...

David is joined by acclaimed historian Deborah Lipstadt, appointed by President Biden as the State Department's Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism. The two discuss the state of contemporary anti-Semitism, reflect upon the role of the Holocaust in Israel, and draw takeaways from Lipstadt's travels to the Gulf and Morocco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informa...

In this episode, host David Makovsky welcomes Yehudah Mirsky, professor of Near Eastern and Judaic studies at Brandeis University, faculty member of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, and author of Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution . The two discuss the ideology of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, founder of Religious Zionism, and how his teachings are being subverted by certain members of...

Yossi Klein Halevi, Shalom Hartman Institute fellow and author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor , joins the podcast to discuss Israeli-Palestinian coexistence with Yousef Bashir, Director of Research & Operations for the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and author of The Words of My Father . Halevi and Bashir share personal experiences, common public perceptions among Israel...

David Makovsky hosts veteran diplomat Stuart Eizenstat, who served as Jimmy Carter’s chief domestic policy advisor and whose book President Carter: The White House Years provides an unparalleled view of the administration’s Middle East decisionmaking. In this episode, David and Stuart discuss the Camp David Accords, U.S.-led negotiations with Syria’s Hafiz al-Assad, an Egyptian-Israeli field trip...

David Makovsky hosts Martin Indyk, Washington’s former peace envoy and ambassador to Israel, to discuss his recent book Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy . The conversation will focus on Kissinger’s Middle East strategy from the 1973 war to the beginnings of the peace process. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hillel Halkin, author of Jabotinsky: A Life , joins host David Makovsky to discuss Russian Zionist thinker Zeev Jabotinsky and the origins of the Revisionist movement, which has shaped a great deal of Israel’s political thought over the decades. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Ben-Gurion's term as Israel's prime minister marked not only a new era for the Jewish people, but a starkly different chapter in his own life. Anita Shapira, the author of Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel, joins the podcast to discuss the challenges and accomplishments of this time, from immigration and Labor party politics to German reparations and nuclearization. Hosted on Acast. See ac...

Shlomo Avineri, the author of Herzl's Vision: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State, discusses the father of modern Zionism and his legacy. Avineri is director of the Institute for European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Walter Russell Mead, the author of The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People, discusses the centuries-long history of Zionism in America, the hurdles Truman overcame to recognize the state of Israel, and the evolution of Israel’s role in U.S. domestic politics. Mead is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a scholar at Hudson Institute. Hosted on Aca...

This season of Decision Points will mark the upcoming 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding by highlighting some of the finest and most cutting-edge books on Zionism, the U.S.-Israel relationship, and Arab-Israeli relations. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews with a group of authors that includes key diplomats and distinguished historians. The first episode premieres on October 31st wit...

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s visit to the White House this week is a timely reminder of potentially new political dynamics in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israeli has just exited the whirlwind of four elections in two years, replacing long-serving Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu with an extraordinarily diverse coalition. Meanwhile, the PA has postponed its first planned election since...

August 13 marked the first anniversary of the breakthrough normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates—a deal followed shortly by accords with Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. In addition to strong U.S. mediation, several broader forces brought these countries together, including mutual concerns about Iran, Arab recognition of how Israeli technology could help their societies,...

In recent years, public support for the two-state solution has continued to erode on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Each party suspects that the other has completely given up on the idea, further weakening the political will and public trust needed to preserve it. Can leaders lead the public on this issue, or does the public lead them? Will Israel’s new government attempt to narrow...

Over the past two decades, China has increasingly challenged America’s economic and political influence in the Middle East, including in Israel. At the same time, Washington remains Jerusalem’s strongest ally and patron, which raises questions about how the U.S. relationship affects Israel’s policies toward Beijing. On one hand, Chinese investment is enticing—large-scale infrastructure projects at...

After decades of energy dependence, Israel discovered offshore natural gas reserves that have fundamentally changed its energy dynamics and led it to deepen ties across the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The country is suddenly a net energy exporter to Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinians, while Gulf states have shown preliminary indications that they would like to develop such ties as well. Ye...

Since the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel and Hezbollah have not engaged in major hostilities. Yet while mutual deterrence has averted all-out war, this uneasy truce is weakening. At home in Lebanon, Hezbollah is facing a dire economic and political crisis. Moreover, the group still seeks to convert some of its estimated 140,000 rockets into precision-guided missiles, a serious threat to Israel. It has a...

For decades, Israel and Russia stood on opposite ends of an ideological divide. During the Soviet era, Moscow not only supported Israel’s enemies economically and militarily, but also sought to stamp out any connection between Russian citizens and Israel, refusing millions the right to emigrate. Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, however, relations have turned a corner. Where are Russian-Israeli t...