Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis

Almost since the war began, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s polling numbers dropped and exasperation with the present government increased, one question has hovered: “Obviously,” the question went, “if elections were held today, Bibi would lose. But he has a coalition of 64 members, which gives him some cushion. How is anyone going to bring about those elections?” Netanyahu, of course, will do everything...

Last Sunday, on Feb 25th, we posted a column about those in Israel who are urging that Israel “help” Gazans leave Gaza. Depending on what they mean by “help,” that suggestion could range from kind to very not PC. We wrote then, “Some readers will find this shocking. We’ll soon review a well-known conversation that the Israeli press had many, many years ago with one of Israel’s leading historians,...

The news is a slog. There are better days and worse days, and so it is likely to be for a very, very long time. Some of the (fairly knowledgeable) pundits are talking about a war that could go on—with varying levels of intensity—for years. Who knows? So part of what we’re trying to do on Israel from the Inside is to capture the mood in Israel in ways that simple English-language news updates can’t...

One doesn’t need to be a genius to imagine what we speak about in these parts, at the Shabbat table, over dinner with friends, drinks with other friends. It’s 95% October 7, the war, our kids in the army, who’s in, who’s out, who’s recovering. Who’s dead. Occasionally, of course, we find that the conversation has meandered to something else, and we always end up saying, “Wow, that was nice. Someth...

“Rachel from Ofakim,” she was called. The woman who, while she was held hostage, baked cookies for the terrorists holding her and her husband hostage. She got a hug from President Biden. She even became a meme of sorts, in both Hebrew and English. But, as Israeli news reported yesterday , none of that really made a difference for her husband, David. During the nineteen hours that she and her husba...

We begin today with an interactive map that has been around for a while, though the data is constantly updates as more information becomes available. It’s a map showing the location of each and every person who was killed or kidnapped. You just zoom in, click on a dot and you get the information. Plus hyperlinks provided to show where the people who put the map together gleaned their information....

We’ll get to our conversation with Michal Cotler-Wunsh just below. First, though, the “green wedding dress” we mentioned last week, and then a quick summary of this week’s posts for those who might have missed some. Then on to Israel’s Special Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism. What’s with the green wedding dress? Last week, we posted this photo of the bride and groom. Here’s the Facebook post tha...

More than a decade ago, my office at work was situated next door to the office of a former IDF Chief of Staff, who was then working with us. The way my desk was situated, I could see down the hall while sitting at my desk, and thus saw the comings and goings of many of the people on that part of the floor. It turns out, not surprisingly, that former Chiefs of Staff have many contacts in the army....

We saw earlier in the week a portion of Ari Shavit’s column over the weekend, when he described the disappointment some people in Gaza are finding on the home front when they get out. As Shavit put it: … in this fifth month of the war on Israel, the Israeli spirit is challenged. When “lions” and “lionesses” [DG - men and women soldiers fighting the war] are released from reserve duty, they are app...

Today, we focus on the video above, which tragically needs little commentary. First, though, the schedule for the remainder of the week, followed by a few photographs of Kfar Aza and the area where the Nova festival took place. TUESDAY (2/20) :  The last of the reserve units that first went into Gaza are now being pulled out, and Israeli news carried a fascinating interview with some members of on...

In today’s podcast, which we’re making available in full to all, we address the question of whether Israel as a society writ-large is going to find itself in the grips of a national form of PTSD. We turned to Professor Danny Brom, one of Israel’s foremost experts on trauma to learn more—we did, indeed, learn a great deal, and also heard some surprising and reassuring insights. Before we get to tha...

We begin today, and wrap up the week, with the above very brief clip which was part of a larger story we’re not covering now. It’s an IDF-released video (you can see the IDF spokesman’s unit symbol at the top left) of the evacuation of a wounded soldier from Gaza (somewhere on the beach, obviously). We post the video only because of something that has now become routine here, but is still worth no...

The only way to describe Israel this morning is to conjure up one of those scenes from a movie in which someone finally extricates themselves from something holding them under water, and then, once freed, frantically swims to the surface—and then that image of them desperately gasping for air. We needed good news. Desperately. We got it. It won’t change everything, obviously, but today’s Israel is...

These three pieces (including the video above) all represent different points of view about how to address the critical moment in which Israel finds itself. We share them not necessarily out of agreement (and you, also, may or may not agree), but in order to provide a lens onto the debates now simmering in Israel that often don’t get fully reflected in the standard English language press. First, a...

Here’s a quick headline from Haaretz, last night. It reads: Israelis who were supposed to be able to die at a ripe old age in their own beds are rotting away in a dank tunnel, but he has time. It’s a reference to Netanyahu, of course, and growing national frustration with the government’s inability to find some way to get the remaining hostages home. Haaretz, obviously, has never been a huge fan o...

For a while now, Israelis have been reading and hearing about a strange, new tank unit called the Phoenix unit. Like the bird for which it is named (in Hebrew, oaf ha-chol , the bird of the sand), the unit was created by a hi-tech executive, long since out of the army, who decided to revive old tanks, long since out of service. (There’s also a story in Times of Israel .) The story—of the men and t...

Before we to get the video above: Below, after the video, a post by a soldier who mentioned to a bus driver that she was hungry after days of fighting … and what happened. And we are posting again — at the request of some who missed it — the video from earlier this week about Ma’ayan Gross and her return to her old unit, albeit under very different circumstances. And now, as they say, for somethin...

Most political analysts in Israel believe that the Netanyahu era is nearing its end (I’m much less certain than most). As soon as the war is over, they say, or before the war ends if the conflict drags on, he is going to go. Those analysts are supported by the most recent polls taken in Israel, which indicate that if elections were held now, the present coalition would be overwhelmingly voted out...

A quick followup to Friday’s post We’ll get to the video you see posted above in just a moment. But if you read Friday’s post about army reservists who used IDF vehicles to protest ending the military campaign of which they were a part (we included a video one of them prepared, as well), then you might be interested in this followup, which is breaking at this very moment: Likelihood is, it will al...

A lot of the news these days is very sobering. We’ve covered some of that earlier this week. At the same time, Israelis are fully aware that they’re discovering something extraordinary about the people that make up this society, and much of what is getting attention these days is news and social media that capture that. Today, we share three brief clips to give a sense of what, even in these dark...

Another not so stellar week. Kfir Bibas is “celebrating” (an absurd word if ever there was one) his first birthday in Hamas captivity today. He’s one. He’s spent almost a third of his life as a hostage. There really are no words. More hostages died or were killed in captivity. Serious Israeli analysts are increasingly writing that military pressure will not lead to a hostage deal. If Israel wants...

This past Sunday , on the 14th of January, Israelis marked the horrific 100th day of the war. One hundred days of sadness and loss, one hundred days of unimaginable horror for the captives. The country shut down for 100 minutes on Sunday, including striking the airport and other facilities, to show solidarity with the hostages and their traumatized families. Yesterday, Tuesday, the news reported t...

EconTalk: Conversations for the Curious , as you probably know, is a wildly popular and deeply thoughtful podcast with Professor Russel Roberts, president of Shalem College , where I am privileged to work. Last May, Russ invited me on to discuss my new book, Impossible Takes Longer. We published that episode here . Neither of us could have possibly imagined the conversation we would be having just...

Before we get to the video above and the story of Major Dvir Fima below, we are sharing this video from Rachel Goldberg Polin, in which she asks all of us to take a step in marking, reminding and remembering the plight of the hostages, the plight of her son, Hersh. To put it mildly — she’s asking. Who are we not to oblige? And frankly, bag that idea of putting it under your shirt. If you live in a...

“Israel will never be same,” we have all been saying for months. And that is undoubtedly true. For as long as my generation is alive, Israel will be a traumatized nation. People’s trust in the army will take decades to return. The ultra-Orthodox world, as we saw yesterday, may find itself under great pressure to embrace Israeli-ness. Israeli attitudes to Palestinians, even among our left, are like...