Tel Aviv Diary Podcast

The 26th Knesset was sworn in on Tuesday without the violence many feared. The Shin Bet chief’s claims of foreign money in the Arab vote shrank from hundreds of millions of shekels to about 100,000 and convinced almost no one. The day’s discordant notes came from Itamar Ben Gvir, who shouted as Arab members took their oath, and from Netanyahu, who turned the traditional festive address into an att...

Ehud Haik, a longtime friend from the world of intelligence and a recovering lawyer, joins me on Thursday evening, the day President Herzog finished consultations and Gadi Eisenkot received the most recommendations. Ehud’s prediction is a minority government of 41, with Lieberman voting yes from outside and the Arab parties supporting it until the budget deadline in March or April. Neither of us s...

Marc Schulman and Yossi Klein Halevi first met more than 50 years ago at a demonstration in Washington, where both were arrested. Less than a week after Israel’s election, Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor,” joins Marc to try to make sense of the results. Halevi argues that Israelis drew two conflicting lessons from October 7....

Netanyahu’s coalition walked into this election with 68 seats and walked out with 53. The opposition holds the majority. Yet the night felt like a defeat, because the Likud voters who swore to pollsters they were done with him voted for him anyway. Marc looks at why: a late fear campaign built on mushroom clouds over Tel Aviv, a base that gets its news almost entirely from Channel 14, and a party...

In a solo episode recorded the Sunday after his daughter’s wedding, Marc Schulman looks at a week that turned from quiet to crowded with news, two days before Israel votes. Marc explains why he spent the past weeks worried that Netanyahu would start a war with Iran to change the course of the election, and why reports suggest Trump stopped him. He discusses the deal said to lie behind Trump’s endo...

After October 7 and years of war, can Israelis envision a different future—and who is offering a credible path toward it? Journalist Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps, Israel correspondent for Le Point and host of the INSS podcast Meshadrim Bitachon , joins Marc Schulman for a candid conversation about the deeper questions behind Israel’s daily headlines. They discuss how trauma has reshaped Israeli society...

Maj. Gen. (res.) Nimrod Sheffer spent 37 years in uniform — fighter pilot, squadron commander, head of Air Force operations, Chief of Air Staff — then four years as head of the IDF Planning Directorate under Gantz and Eizenkot, then three years as CEO and President of Israel Aerospace Industries. He could have retired to his grandchildren. Instead he is number 11 on the Democrats’ list, two weeks...

Dr. Meir Javedanfar was born in Tehran and left at 14, a year after his bar mitzvah. He has written about Iran since 2005 and has taught contemporary Iranian studies at Reichman University since 2011. In this episode he tells Marc Schulman he expects the Islamic Republic to start another round of fighting with the United States. His reasoning starts with resources. The US naval blockade has stoppe...

October 6th used to belong to the Yom Kippur War. This year it falls between the government’s official October 7th memorial, held on the Hebrew date, and the ceremonies the families will hold tomorrow in Yarkon Park and at Kibbutz Re’im. On this in-between day, Marc Schulman reads from the October 7th chapter of his new book, “Between Hope and Fear: Israel from Oslo to October 7th.” The readings f...

Marc Schulman returns to Tel Aviv after two weeks in the United States to a country already focused on the October 27 election—and still absorbing the extraordinary attempted destruction of a Flydubai flight bound for Israel. Marc examines the questions raised by the attack, including how a potentially dangerous pilot was able to fly a route into Israel, and what the episode says about Israel’s se...

For 150 years, every speaker ever built has worked the same way. Alexander Graham Bell put a membrane in a telephone, the membrane moved air, and we heard sound. Everything since has been a refinement of that idea. Moti Margalit thinks there is another way. His company, Sonic Edge, has built what amounts to a very fast air pump, one that cycles 400,000 times a second at ultrasound frequencies and...

Marc Schulman sits down with Jeremy Saltan, a candidate on Naftali Bennett’s list , for a detailed conversation about what Bennett and his party would actually do if returned to government. Saltan explains why he chose to run with Bennett and argues that lessons have been learned from Bennett’s previous government, including a much more rigorous process for selecting candidates. The conversation t...

In this Rosh Hashanah edition of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast , Marc Schulman welcomes back Professor Yitzhak Reiter, one of Israel’s leading experts on Arab-Jewish relations, for a wide-ranging conversation about the changing place of Arab citizens in Israeli society. Arab Israelis have made striking gains in higher education, employment, medicine, technology, and other parts of Israeli life. Yet a...

Here is the report by the chief scientist of Open AI that I reference in the episode. https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

Launch day. Instead of the usual news, Marc Schulman talks about the book he has just published — 33 years of Israeli history, from Oslo through the war, told year by year. He traces the path that led here: an Apple developer in the early Mac days, CD-ROMs on American history, a website launched before the 1996 election, an email list of a few hundred readers that eventually scooped CNN on the Syr...

In this episode of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast , Marc Schulman speaks with author and historian Jeffrey Weiss about the past—and what it may tell us about Israel’s future. Weiss begins with the remarkable story of Mahal , the thousands of foreign volunteers who came to fight for the newly established State of Israel in 1948. Many were World War II veterans whose experience proved especially importa...

In this episode of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast , I speak with economist Professor Dan Ben-David , head of the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, about what he sees as the long-term trends threatening Israel’s future—and why the coming election may represent a rare opportunity to change course. Ben-David lays out some stark numbers. Roughly half of Israel’s children, he argues, are rece...

Israel may be experiencing the traditional August slowdown, but beneath the surface, very little is truly quiet. In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman looks at where Israel stands 70 days before the election. He examines the results of the Likud primary and what they reveal about Benjamin Netanyahu’s continuing control of the party, including the political downfall of former Jerusalem...

Israel has spent weeks living with a question that has become part of everyday life: What happens tonight? Will Iran attack? Will there be another escalation? Can people fly? Should they leave? Should they stay? In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , I am joined once again by veteran journalist Dan Perry , who spent many years leading the Associated Press’s coverage of the Middle East, for a wide-ran...

n this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , I am joined by historian and author Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn. , whose work explores Zionism, Israeli society, the settlement movement, and the evolving relationship between Israel and the Jewish diaspora. We begin with the dramatic developments surrounding President Trump’s last-minute decision to halt a planned military strike on Iran, examining whether diplomac...

This week on Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman returns with a wide-ranging solo episode examining the forces shaping Israel, the United States, and the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence. Marc begins with the uneasy calm that has settled over Israel after weeks of uncertainty surrounding Iran. While the missiles have temporarily stopped, few Israelis believe the crisis has truly passed...

In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman is joined by strategist, former National Security Council official, and Eisenkot campaign leader Lianne Pollack-David for an in-depth discussion about one of the most consequential moments in Israel’s modern history. Drawing on years of experience in the Prime Minister’s Office, the National Security Council, and international diplomacy, Pollack-Da...

For nearly forty minutes, I sat down with former Knesset Member, journalist, and Middle East expert Ksenia Svetlova for one of the most candid discussions we’ve had on Tel Aviv Diary . Drawing on decades of reporting across the Arab world and years in Israeli politics, Ksenia offers a sobering assessment of where Israel stands after the wars in Gaza and Iran—and why she believes the country faces...

n this episode of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast , I am joined once again by veteran Washington diplomatic correspondent Laura Rozen for a wide-ranging discussion of the renewed confrontation between the United States and Iran, the danger that Israel could be drawn back into the fighting, and the growing political uncertainty in both Washington and Jerusalem. We begin with the immediate question facin...

The End of Reading is Here What if It's Not the Phones This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe