Jonny Gould's Jewish State

Our guest today is Joseph Cohen, creator of the Israel Advocacy Movement and it's extraordinarily powerful viral videos. Joseph Cohen’s helping to change perceptions of Israel and Judaism. Amid rising antisemitism and antizionism, Joseph hopes his work will inspire others to follow his lead. His YouTube and Facebook videos have been viewed millions of times and been retweeted by President Trump an...

"I can go freely to the Western Wall or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, why can't our Jewish and other friends go to the Temple Mount?" Ed Husain is a vital voice from the British Muslim community with his many speeches and articles on tolerance and pluralism. He was a teenage Islamist who embraced Muslim nationalism but started life in his father's more peaceful, religious mosque. Now he’s a st...

This episode opens with a stark warning to Europe’s leaders: a second refugee influx looks increasingly likely. Yaakov Lappin is a military analyst and researcher whose book, “The Virtual Caliphate” predicted the emergence of ISIS as they then swept through Iraq and Syria. He was alarmed at how easily accessible IS was online and how it led readily to the radicalization of so many young western Mu...

Ambassador Mark Regev embodies the modern Israeli story. Leaving his native Australia at 22 without family or contacts waiting for him, he praises Israeli mobility which aided his rise to the top of diplomacy. Armed with mother-tongue English, his ability to communicate Israel to billions of people is both of great advantage personally and nationally. He pays tribute to the pioneer generation of I...

This is an excerpt from Ep 31, the full interview with Israel's Ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev. In this ‘preview clip’ Ambassador Regev tells Jonny Gould that growing trade is but part of a burgeoning relationship between Israel and the UK, which can only grow post-Brexit. Bilateral trade stands at $18bn both ways so Israel was quick off the mark to complete a deal to continue trade seamlessly a...

You can support Jonny in making these podcasts right here. The former White House Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci is a political celebrity. He’s making a career out of his ten days in the Trump Administration. The Mooch was heading to Pennsylvania to campaign for Mike Bloomberg’s short-lived Democratic Party bid for the Presidency. And in advance of that, he was in London addressing an...

This is my second meeting with Richard and delighted to tell you it took place in Tel Aviv. He's a regular visitor to Israel and gives generously of his time to so many people and institutions helping to make the country stronger. Our trips to Israel coincided and he graciously made time to sit down with me amid his many engagements. There have been two significant, perhaps gamechanging events sin...

“Jerusalem is the laboratory for the regional solution”. Fleur Hassan-Nahoum has been Jerusalem's Deputy Mayor since November 2018. I met her in London as she prepared to join a cross-party delegation in the House of Lords urging Britain to cease funding UNRWA to which they’ve just pledged a further £65.5 million. It’s supposed to aid Palestinian refugees yet funds the “glorifying of martyrdom” t...

Baroness Ruth Deech gave me more than I bargained for in this wide-ranging interview. I asked a question, she replied with 120% of an answer. Ruth discusses the rise of British antisemitism, the post-Holocaust record of Poland, campaigning to ease tough abortion laws, restoring university maintenance grants to aid social mobility and the role of the BBC. Baroness Deech tells me: • about her lack o...

Together Against Antisemitism, a rally outside Parliament just days before the infamous 2019 General Election featuring Jeremy Corbyn. To say this gathering at Parliament Square organised by Campaign Against Antisemitism attracted a cross-section of society is an understatement. All the present to show their support for the Jewish community. The anxiety ahead of the poll was palpable in the crowd....

If only I could go back in a time machine and interview Mrs. Thatcher. This is the next best thing! As an extra to the Zoom Rockman interview, I was delighted to bump into Steve Nallon, the unforgettable Spitting Image voice of Mrs. Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister. Steve was there to add his support to Zoom's Portraits of Churchill launch at the Hyatt Regency Churchill Hotel in London....

I'm giving this episode over to two brilliant 19-year-olds who energize the worlds around them. Zoom Rockman’s a magazine & newspaper satirist, a cartoonist and commissioned artist who at such a tender age has already left the Beano for Private Eye and from the Savoy to the Churchill hotels, where his distinctive sketches of Sir Winston Churchill now grace the walls. Harry Markham’s a self-declare...

David Collier is an extraordinary researcher and his facts and figures on Labour antisemitism and the deligitimization of Israel have at times, dominated the news agenda. In this interview profiling his work and background, we get behind the computer screen to reveal more about the man and his mission. He says his undercover work online has revealed extraordinary levels of Jew hate within the high...

US Special Envoy Elan Carr spoke to Parliament in his role as the United States' leading diplomat in the fight against antisemitism. The address was hosted by Henley MP John Howell and I was given the honour of presenting Elan on behalf of Our Soldiers Speak and quite a platform to explain what the organization is about. In this tough yet uplifting speech, Elan clearly defines the three disparate...

Col. Richard Kemp has "seen evil at first-hand" and says fighting it "becomes personal". In this wide-ranging interview, Richard discusses his military career over three decades, starting in Northern Ireland, culminating in Whitehall as a senior government advisor and as commander of British Forces in Afghanistan. This episode opens with Jeremy Corbyn claiming we in the West don’t understand Iran’...

Palestinian Mudar Zahran is Jordan's self-styled opposition leader but lives in exile in the UK after denouncing his country as an apartheid state. In his absence, he was found guilty by a Jordanian military court of inciting hatred against the Hashemite kingdom, which handed down a sentence of imprisonment and hard labour. But he continues to speak out against the 82-strong royal family who rule...

Ashley Blaker and Bennett Arron are the two most prolific Jewish standup comedians in the UK. Their journeys are different but their comic routines are both rich in life experience and observation. As Ashley says, ”Jews are funny people”. Bennett grew up in Port Talbot in the town’s last Jewish family. His father ran a glazing business staying there long after the rest of the community had moved o...

My guest today is legendary BBC Panorama documentary maker, John Ware. John has yet more revelations and assesses his view of Jeremy Corbyn since his Panorama programme, "Is Labour Antisemitic?" was aired on primetime BBC1. “What we transmitted is not everything we have. There’s a sizeable iceberg beneath the surface”. I like and respect John because as a libel barrister once told him, ”report the...

US Special Envoy Elan Carr’s White House role is to monitor and combat global antisemitism. But the tragedies of the Pittsburgh and Poway synagogue attacks have ensured his focus has become more domestic. He was appointed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in February 2019. Mr Carr's message is like Jonny Gould's Jewish State's: unity; for the Jewish community to stand together to fight anti-Jewish...

Hen Mazzig is truly a modern Israeli. A social media manager for major corporations and a writer and campaigner. Born in Israel in 1989 to a Mizrahi family originally from Iraq and Tunisia, Hen campaigns for the advancement of Israeli Jews from the east and LGBTQ rights as an openly gay man. He actually came out in the IDF serving in Ramallah and Jerusalem in a humanitarian role. His life experien...

This episode is dedicated to the 60,000 British Jews who fought for their country during 1939 to 1945. One of them, Stanley Fisher (100-years-old in August 2024), is my first cousin Samuel Posaner's great-grandfather - and we met by chance at Samuel’s Bar Mitzvah in Birmingham in the very 75th anniversary week he landed on Normandy’s beaches in 1944. Stanley is living history. Not only a teenage s...

Author, historian and campaigner Lyn Julius promotes the culture, history and lives of Mizrahim, the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa. Mizrahi is the Hebrew word for Easterners - and their exodus from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Morocco, Lebanon, Iran and Algeria has perhaps been overlooked in the last century. After 3,000 years of vibrant Jewish life, interspersed with pers...

Jonny produces these podcasts in support of the Jewish diaspora and Israel. You can help support the show here. My guest is a fourth generation smoked salmon purveyor and a former EU politician (if not a European Union supporter). Lance Forman was elected as a Brexit Party MEP in the 2019 European election, which he says shouldn't have happened in the first place. He accuses the political class of...

You can help support the show at http://www.ko-fi.com/jonnygould Today's guest is distinguished academic, medic, historian and legislator, Lord Leslie Turnberg. Born in Salford in 1934 to Polish and Romanian immigrant parents, Leslie grew up to enjoy a successful career in medicine including presidency of the Royal College of Physicians. He took his place in the House of Lords when Tony Blair was...

Tuvia Tenenbom, theatre director, playwright, author, academic and unapologetic, uncompromising Jew. For six months in 2019, he travelled the length and breadth of Britain, uncovering “a deep psychological Jew hate”. He warns the Anglo-Jewish community’s in denial - just as they are in Poland, where he also gives examples. His UK experiences make up the fifth book in a series, The Taming of the Je...