Jonny Gould's Jewish State

Aside from producing 🎙️Jonny Gould’s Jewish State, I also host live shows at Talk TV and was delighted to be asked to produce and present a Special, “How to Make Peace in the Middle East”. This was the opportunity to bring guests from the podcast over the years to a mass English speaking audience around the world. Joining me for this three-hour show were guests of the highest calibre: Col. Richard...

Our guest is Chaim Oren, an expert on resilience, wellbeing and high performance, who advises professional sportspeople and leading CEOs on fulfilling their human potential. When it comes to strengthening personal resilience, Chaim quotes Victor E. Frankl, Auschwitz survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning: “If you have the why you can endure any how”. Frankl, who conceptualised “logotherap...

In these times of danger in the Middle East, even on one’s own doorstep, it was both heartening and morale boosting for everyone who attended a Parliamentary reception at the Palace of Westminster. Led by Elnet UK with United Hatzalah of Israel and World Jewish Relief, we learned of support on the ground for victims in the Ukraine and Israel. Meant to mark the 600th day since the war started in Uk...

Words are important. In times of war, their importance is magnified. Never has my mission for Jonny Gould’s Jewish State seemed more urgent: to combat the slurs, the lies and the distortions of history which threaten Israel and Jewish people. The media has a responsibility - at the very least - not to fan conjecture and untruths, because it comes with a by product: incitement. And the media column...

Israel’s collective spirit is rekindled. After eight months of street protests, of political turmoil and the societal divisions it scored arising from judicial reform proposals, the nation has responded in unity to the terror committed by brutal Hamas murderers, rapists and kidnappers on October 7th. The people have risen “ground up, not bottom down” in the best ideals of Israeli and Jewish societ...

Israel is heartbroken, the house of Israel is heartbroken. Israel is at war again fighting genocide. It’s resilient people are traumatised by shock, horror and grief. A quiet Shabbat morning, also the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah where Jews celebrate finishing reading the Torah and then start to read it again, “In the Beginning”, was shattered by a mass invasion of Hamas terrorists, smashing th...

This is a special episode featuring a competition winner from North West London Jewish Day School, who won the chance to make an episode of Jonny Gould’s Jewish State with me. I ran it for Year 6 pupils and was delighted when 11-year-old Bella Bolot stepped up to the plate and secured us an interview with Bill Browder. Bill is a London-based American-born financier, the CEO and co-founder of Hermi...

Our two guests today make their first appearances on the “podcast of record”, and you might say after 120 plus episodes of Jonny Gould’s Jewish State, they’ve been a rather glaring omission. They are two of British politics' biggest supporters of Israel and opponents of antisemitism. The Right Honourable, Lord Eric Pickles and the Right Honourable, Joan Ryan are in conversation. We focus on the fu...

Help support Jonny's coverage of Israel and the Jewish diaspora by making a donation here or buying him a coffee here. Let’s confront the latest expression of antisemitism: that which hates Jewish people for the State of Israel. I’m delighted that Jake Wallis Simons has given his first interview about his new book to Jonny Gould’s Jewish State, “Israelophobia: The Newest Version of the Oldest Hatr...

Our guest today says the unedifying term “civil war” bandied describing judicial reform in Israel is a useful device to maintain pressure on both sides to find a solution. Let me be clear: I spent much of July and August 2023 in Israel and the country is not “entering a state of civil war” as former Prime Minister and convicted criminal, Ehud Olmert claimed. There’s no curfews, no rubber bullets a...

Jonny Gould’s Jewish State heads for the Knesset in Jerusalem and a couple of nights out in Tel Aviv, fresh from an eye opening visit to the Israel-Gaza border (scroll back one episode for that atmospheric discussion beneath an Iron Dome rocket launcher). I was part of an Elnet UK delegation, an organisation sharing democratic values and strategic interests between the Jewish State and the UK and...

Let’s take you to a top secret location in the south of Israel to observe at firsthand an Iron Dome battery, followed by a trip to Kerem Shalom, the border frontier exchanging goods and workers between Gaza and Israel. We were told by the IDF the night before not to come because there’d been incoming rocket fire which they’d defended against from that very location. But in the end, the invite and...

This is a story of moderation, to use our history of oppression to resist fascism, anti-Jewish hate and uphold the rule of law and maintain hard-fought for liberties. Russia led by Stalin and Germany by Hitler were gruesome, murderous, evil regimes. Yet Soviet Russia’s crimes aren’t acknowledged in the same way as those perpetrated by the Germans and their accomplices across Europe. But they certa...

This episode of Jonny Gould’s Jewish State focuses on the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is asserting itself diplomatically on the regional and world stage. Should Israel be worried about the swirling winds of interests in the region? The Emiratis have followed Saudi Arabia in re-establishing diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran - and Syria has been welcomed back into the Arab League f...

Jonny Gould’s Jewish State circles back to a previous episode, uncovering startling new revelations. New details so rich, a bestseller has been updated to include them. In episode 88, I sat down with my old friend, Jonathan Freedland to discuss The Escape Artist, the story of two young Jewish men who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of the horrors within. Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler’s 3...

Follow Jonny Gould’s Jewish State podcast here. “Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world.” is a brutal sentence from the start of “Rise and Kill First”. Our guest is Ronen Bergman, author of the New York Times bestseller, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It’s the product of a thousand interviewees, some of whom Ronen quizze...

This is my second sit-down interview with Trevor Horn and you’ll hear why it’s nothing like the first time. The previous one (episode 43) made an impression with Wikipedia’s editors, who included Trevor’s “I believe in Judaism, more than I believe in anything else” as a reference. On leaving last time, Trevor told me at the door, "no one ever asked me about that before". In this in-depth conversat...

This is Sarah Idan’s story, Sarai more informally and publicly. She used to enter beauty pageants “to help bring people together”. But as Iraq’s winning Miss Universe in 2017, she got much more than she bargained for. Sarai’s new life as a renowned Human Rights campaigner started there and then, when she took a selfie with Adar Gandelsman, participating alongside her as Miss Israel. All hell let l...

These are the sage words of President Isaac Herzog as Israel's Head of State tries to bridge the gap between his people, the biggest schism in the young country’s history. Jonny poses the questions and well-positioned experts and well-positioned protestors present opposing arguments. PLUS we have an exclusive interview with Professor Avi Bell from the Kohelet Policy Forum, the very think tank who...

The unedifying scurry by BBC management to get Gary Lineker back on air after suspending him diffuses both a row with its staff and kicks the can of impartiality into the long grass. A couple of tweets by the BBC’s lead football presenter brought down the entire coverage of the Corporation’s TV and radio sport for a weekend. Lineker compared the government’s language on immigration as "not dissimi...

A shining light in the shimmering city. “If you build it, they will come”, said Kevin Costner in the baseball movie, Field of Dreams – and there’s a similar vision for BNJC, Brighton & Hove’s new Jewish community synagogue and residential property development. There are around 4,000 to 5,000 Jewish people in the East Sussex city and this audacious project is an attempt to revitalise Brighton & Hov...

Big things are happening in the United Arab Emirates, really big things. As the nation which reached out to Israel in the most expansive expression of peace yet with an Arab partner, it’s time Jewish people understood more about this nation. Abu Dhabi is the stage for a new era of religious pluralism. The Emirati capital has opened the Abrahamic Family House, a beacon of mutual understanding, coex...

Israel's judicial reform row is proving an awful spectacle for the watching world. I wanted to find voices of moderation and considered opinion - and in particular, within the ruling Likud Party: is there anyone willing to stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu over the division this is causing? As a diaspora Jew, I look on in dismay at the threat to unity of the Jewish people. Just as bad has been some J...

Emily Schrader was back in London with Yoseph Haddad on a whistlestop UK speaking tour, which included a nasty confrontation with pro-intifada students on campuses in London and Nottingham. Scroll back an episode for one of his energetic and hopeful speeches from the tour. Emily is an American-Israeli journalist and opinion former, a regular on the Jerusalem Post and the co-host of TV show, Headli...

Yoseph Haddad is an Arab Israeli who believes with body, mind and soul in his country. And by his country, I mean the State of Israel, Yoseph joined up with StandWithUs UK at one of London’s oldest continuous communities, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in west London. Being counterintuitive, Yoseph is the target of constant protest, even death threats – some substantial - as he advocates for...