State of Tel Aviv, Israel Podcast

Part II: Government subverts democracy with its illegal firing of Shin Bet Chief. In this podcast episode, I speak with Amir Tibon, diplomatic correspondent with Ha’aretz newspaper, author, and member of kibbutz Nahal Oz. A survivor of October 7, Amir and his family were rescued that day by his father, retired IDF General Noam Tibon. In his superb book, Gates of Gaza, Amir tells the story of that...

Part I: Can the government fire the head of Shin Bet? You bet! Says Simcha Rothman Apologies for the gap in podcast posts, but this coming week your cup will runneth over. Lots of great stuff coming your way. And we begin with this fiery discussion with Religious Zionist MK Simcha Rothman. I spoke to him on Sunday, April 6, just after the government had fired Shin Bet Head Ronen Bar and two days b...

Each week, it seems, the stakes get higher. Last week, PM Netanyahu strode into very dangerous territory. In addition to resuming the war with Hamas, his government took the rather bold steps of firing the Internal Security Service Head, Ronen Bar, as well as Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara. Never before has a government fired a Shin Bet boss. And this, in the midst of unprecedented security t...

A video from an ultra-orthodox wedding last week went viral and stoked fresh rage targeting the ultra-orthodox population. In his column in the Jerusalem Post last Friday (see the Podcast Notes for the link), State of Tel Aviv regular, Ya’akov Katz, gave voice to the growing anger that many Israelis feel towards the ultra-orthodox population in Israel. This time, it was triggered by the wedding vi...

On Wednesday, March 5, President Trump welcomed eight men and women who had been held hostage by Hamas into the Oval Office. Most were released since January, having spent 16 months, more or less, in brutal conditions. To a person, they expressed their profound gratitude to President Trump, saying that they believe that it was his election as president that led to their freedom. Among those presen...

The pace of events here is impossible. I’m keen to keep you updated and for now that means more podcasts than usual. Today I was lucky to catch a regular State of Tel Aviv guest and a man with deep knowledge of security and military issues… politics too…Ya’akov Katz. My head has been spinning from the pace of reports being made public by the IDF into the total failure of October 7 and I turned to...

Every Saturday for the last 7 weeks Israelis have been riveted to their television screens, watching the release of hostages, alive and dead. I expect that many reading this introduction have followed the coverage and been horrified by the macabre propaganda theatre productions of Hamas. Today, after so much gut wrenching testimony, funerals, and cruel videos released by Hamas, State of Tel Aviv g...

Ya’akov Katz and I pick up where President Trump left off. The horrific images of skeletal hostages released from Hamas captivity last Thursday were reminiscent of survivors of concentration camps during the Holocaust. President Trump and so many people reacted. Strongly. This insanity must stop. Release them all by noon on Saturday, he said... or else... And that’s where PM Netanyahu and the Isra...

In late December, I met in Tel Aviv with Lishay Miran-Lavi’s brother, Moshe, who was visiting for a few weeks from his home in New York. He has been a prizefighter on behalf of his brother-in-law, Omri Miran, husband of his sister, Lishay, and father to two little girls, Roni and Alma. A few days after seeing Moshe, I drove to meet with Lishay at her home in southern Israel. Omri is not on “the li...

At the urging of his Mid-East Envoy and longtime golf buddy, Steve Witkoff, President Trump will watch a 47-minute movie today before he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is the story of how that movie came to be made and the extraordinary effort of one Israeli man, Mattan Harelfisch, who came up with the idea and plan to do so. Within hours of the shock Hamas attack of Oc...

We were fortunate to catch up with State of Tel Aviv regular and now a globally recognized A+ commentator and analyst on the Israel-Hamas conflict and more—Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus (Res.). He spoke to us on Saturday evening—after a very busy day doing media in Israel and abroad. The hostage release has been a spectacle unlike any other—when an Islamist terror group commands center stage on media...

Israelis watched the video on October 7, 2023 in shock. A teenage girl, bloodied and terrified, was being pulled by her long hair from the trunk of a jeep by a heavily armed Hamas terrorist. Naama Levy, a newly conscripted IDF soldier, had been brutalized, and the short clip of her went viral globally. When they first saw it even her parents did not recognize their daughter. In a dramatic few week...

This interview with Karnit Flug was on January 2, shortly after the Government of Israel released all manner of economic statistics and announced some rather significant tax tweaks. Based on my anecdotal conversations with people in the professional, VC and tech sectors, there is growing concern that the new tax measures will have the most deleterious—and disproportionate—impact on small independe...

Ya’akov Katz is back to discuss the wild week we’ve had here. I caught up with him on Wednesday evening, Israel time, and had intended to focus on the resignation the day before of IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. But, of course, we spent more than half our time discussing the terrible hostage deal that we agree was absolutely necessary. And we get into how the deal might unfold in the coming week...

We begin with a clip of the Hamas chief in Gaza—Khalil al-Hayya, speaking Wednesday night in Doha after Hamas signed off on the proposed hostage deal. We have included a link to the video with English subtitles in the Podcast Notes, below. What he is saying, in short, is that October 7 was a glorious beginning and that Hamas will continue the struggle until all occupied lands and Jerusalem are lib...

President-elect Donald Trump threatens that if the 100 hostages held by Hamas since October 7 aren’t freed by January 20, there will be “all hell to pay!” What does that actually mean? Jonathan Conricus and I get into the political and military complexities embedded in the issue, which also enrage us. Because we both feel that the hostages should never have been seized in the first place. Of cours...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.stateoftelaviv.com Today we continue to deconstruct the rise and spread of antisemitism in Canada during the tenure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. We concentrate on the environment from October 7, 2023, when things really spiraled out of control. And there is good reason for that. Institutional foundations that supported antisemi...

This two-part podcast is long and intense. It has been in-the-making now since early November. Initially, I wasn’t sure about how to approach it. Because the reality is overwhelming. But the “how” happened organically, as events unfolded. When Ezra Levant—a well-known Canadian journalist/lawyer/provocateur—was arrested by Toronto police on Sunday, November 24, 2024, for allegedly “breaching the pe...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.stateoftelaviv.com Michael Starr has served more than 200 days of reserve duty with the IDF since October 7, 2023. Within hours of the Hamas attack, he was summoned to join his colleagues and begin preparations for war. Michael recently wrote about his experiences in The Jerusalem Post , where he is the Diaspora Affairs reporter. It...

Theodor Herzl is the father of the modern political Zionist movement, but the centrality of his vision to the founding of the state of Israel is less understood than it might be. Herzl was living an assimilated life in late 19th-century Vienna but continually came up against brick walls blocking his professional advancement. Because he was Jewish. He quickly formed the view that the Jewish people...

I met Igal Hecht, an independent Canadian-Israeli documentary filmmaker, in late September in Toronto. We sat on the patio of one of the many locations of Israeli-owned Landwer Cafe, and spoke about his very intense film, The Killing Roads. It was a glorious early fall day, strong sun, perfect temperature, too many bees. But we were elsewhere in our conversation, talking about the roads of souther...

It’s wonderful to have Ya’akov Katz back to discuss domestic Israeli politics and leadership. We jump into the discussion using his superb piece published last Friday in The Jewish Chronicle . (The link is set out in podcast notes, below.) On the one hand, Ya’akov writes, we have a very Machiavellian leader who is constantly calculating where and how to achieve an advantage, which, I suppose, is t...

I am thrilled to bring you this fascinating chat with Professor Gad Sa’ad, an iconic intellectual figure who helps us to make sense of this seemingly mad moment in history. Sharp, brilliant, fearless—and also very funny—Prof. Sa’ad likens the thought and mind controls pervading western societies to bacteria—or pathogens—that cause disease. It’s also the focus of his international best-seller— The...

On Monday afternoon I had the privilege to speak with the German Ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert. Since taking up his post in July, 2022, Seibert has distinguished himself as a different kind of diplomat. He interacts extensively with “regular” Israelis and has a sharp sense as to what matters. And among the key issues that has dominated the national zeitgeist in Israel since October 7 is th...

It all went down with lightning speed and took the world by surprise: the toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime by a group of rebels united in their hatred of the brutal dictator. Abu Mohammed al Jolani, who has led this so-far successful rebellion, has been working to present to the world a pragmatic image. He has been associated since his youth with various jihadist groups but is...