Tel Aviv Diary Podcast

In this March 20 episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman speaks from Tel Aviv after the first full night of sleep in days, a brief pause in a war that has now reached the three-week mark. With Iranian missile fire shifting toward Jerusalem, Ashdod, Haifa, and the north, Marc steps back from the daily alerts and asks the larger question: What exactly has Israel accomplished, what were the real go...

In this hybrid episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman begins not with theory or politics from afar, but with the immediate reality of life in wartime Tel Aviv. Just before recording, missile alarms once again sent him, his dog, and his laptop down to the shelter, part of a now-familiar routine as Iran continues its attacks on the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Marc reflects on the exhausting rhyth...

In today’s Tel Aviv Diary podcast, recorded on Friday, March 13, Marc Schulman reports from a subdued and uneasy Tel Aviv on the 14th day of the Israel-U.S. war against Iran, as fighting with Hezbollah continues in the north. The streets of Tel Aviv are unusually empty for a beautiful Friday afternoon, a visible sign of a public mood that has shifted from early resolve to growing exhaustion and do...

Title: Tel Aviv Diary: War, Iran, and the Long View — A Conversation With Yitzhak Sokoloff Long Description: In this special episode of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast , Marc Schulman is joined by his longtime friend Yitzhak Sokoloff for a wide-ranging and deeply reflective conversation on the war with Iran, the goals of the current military campaign, and the uncertainty surrounding what comes next. Sp...

In this Friday edition of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast , I describe Tel Aviv on the seventh day of the war between Israel, the United States, and Iran. I begin with the reality on the ground here: the Iranian missile barrages have steadily declined in size, but the disruption to daily life remains constant. Even when only one or two missiles are fired, everyone still heads for shelter, because debri...

In this episode of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast , I’m joined once again by Dan Perry—former editor in chief of AP for Europe Africa and Middle East ; and a longtime observer of Israel and the region. We talk in real time as the latest war unfolds: why Dan says the conflict was “telegraphed,” what still surprised him, and why the visible, concurrent U.S.–Israel military partnership feels historically...

In this episode of the Tel Aviv Diary podcast, I sit down with Batya Kalish , director of the Social Venture Fund for Jewish-Arab Equality and Shared Society (SVF) , and Bashar Iraqi , a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel from Tira who is active in efforts to combat crime inside Arab society and is involved with the community initiative Qulnuna . Together, we try to understand what is driving the...

Recorded in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, February 21, I try to capture the mood that’s settled over the city—an anxious, pervasive uncertainty as Israelis brace for the possibility of another confrontation with Iran. A month after President Trump publicly encouraged Iranians to take to the streets, Tel Aviv feels tense in a way that’s different even from the Gaza war: people remember last June’s 12...

In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , I’m joined by Marina Rosenberg , Senior Vice President for International Affairs at the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) —a former Israeli diplomat whose life and career bridge continents and identities. Born in Buenos Aires and raised on Kibbutz Yechiam in the Galilee, Rosenberg spent more than 16 years in Israel’s Foreign Ministry, serving in multiple postings and...

In this week’s Tel Aviv Diary podcast, I’m speaking from Tel Aviv at a moment when the most important details for our immediate future are also the most elusive. Prime Minister Netanyahu is back from a fast, unusually secretive meeting with President Trump — no press conference, no statement, and almost no leaks — leaving Israelis to fill the vacuum with guesses, fears, and competing theories abou...

In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , I’m joined by Noa Asher , newly elected chair of the Israel–Japan Chamber of Commerce and a veteran of Israel’s economic-diplomacy world. Noa takes us through her personal and professional journey—from Jerusalem to Harvard’s Kennedy School, from startup-era law to an 18-year career in Israel’s Foreign Trade Administration—before landing in two posts that shaped...

This week’s Tel Aviv Diary opens with the uncertain aftermath of the Friday negotiations in Oman—talks that produced not a breakthrough, but what sounds like a framework for more talks. Iran, as Marc argues, has mastered the art of stretching diplomacy into an endless process, and the early signs suggest exactly that: no agreement to halt enrichment, remove stockpiles, or tackle missiles and other...

In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman welcomes Swiss Ambassador Simon Geissbühler for a conversation that moves from personal history to the mechanics of diplomacy in a region at war. Geisbühler begins with his own unlikely route into foreign service: raised outside Bern, trained in history and political science at the University of Bern, and drawn to the United States in 1994 for a ye...

In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman is joined by Miriam Herschlag , the Opinion and Blogs Editor at The Times of Israel , for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from the deeply personal to the sharply contemporary. Marc and Miriam go back decades — to Jerusalem in the early years of their lives here, and even earlier through Young Judea ties that connect Miriam with Marc’s wife,...

This week on Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman surveys a familiar Israeli paradox: a country living at the edge of war while trying to pretend—at least some days—that normal life is still possible. Up north, Israel continues striking Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and along the Lebanese–Syrian border, even as talk resurfaces about pressure on Beirut to explore formal peace negotiations. Marc t...

In this wide-ranging and unsparing conversation, Marc Schulman is joined once again by veteran Washington correspondent Laura Rozen, whose reporting on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East spans two decades. What begins as a discussion about Trump’s latest diplomatic theatrics quickly becomes a deeper examination of how global decision-making now works—or no longer works—when power is concentra...

On a cool, unusually relaxed Friday morning in Tel Aviv, the city feels like it has exhaled. After two tense days of rumors, alerts, and the sense that a U.S. strike on Iran might be imminent, the immediate danger appears—at least for now—to have receded. But that calm comes with a bitter underside: Iranian demonstrators who were encouraged to take enormous risks are now facing a regime that still...

This week on Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman sits down with Ruthie Blum —journalist, and commentator —for a wide-ranging conversation that begins with biography and ends in the fog of history-in-the-making. Schulman and Bloom first met as on-air foils on i24News—“the right-wing woman” and “the left-wing man,” as Bloom puts it—but their discussion quickly shows how much the political map has shifted...

January 9, 2026 finds Israel in a familiar but unsettling posture: waiting. In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman surveys a region caught between ceasefire talk and battlefield reality—Gaza’s “stage two” remains opaque, Hamas appears financially entrenched through control and taxation of incoming goods, and the final unresolved issue of a captive’s remains hangs over the process as a w...

In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc speaks with Russell Robinson, CEO of Jewish National Fund USA, about how descendent of a century-old institution—best known to many for the iconic blue donation box—became a driver of some of Israel’s most ambitious nation-building projects. Robinson recounts his own unlikely path from El Paso, Texas, into Jewish communal leadership, and the pivotal moment...

In this thought-provoking episode of Tel Aviv Diary, host Marc Schulman sits down with Dr. Chuck Freilich, former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council and current senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and Columbia University, to explore a bold alternative to the seemingly impossible Israeli-Palestinian stalemate. With decades of experience in Israel’s defense establishment and thr...

In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc is joined again by his friend Ehud Haik retired military officer, to take stock of Israel’s strategic reality—now that the landscape has shifted since Ehud’s last appearance. Last time they spoke it was before the ceasefire, before hostages began returning, and before it was clear whether the regional balance had changed or merely rearranged itself. This co...

In this hybrid episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman opens with a fast-moving roundup from overnight: the fallout from a Breslov Hasidim trip toward Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem/Nablus that ended in a hit-and-run of a Palestinian civilian, renewed friction around one of the West Bank’s most persistent flashpoints, and reflections—personal and political—on widening ultra-Orthodox riots in Jerusalem...

In this episode of Tel Aviv Diary , Marc Schulman sits down with neighbor and new olah David Schlachter, who moved his family from the Bay Area to Tel Aviv in August 2024 after a decade-long plan collided with the realities of October 7 and rising antisemitism in the United States. David describes the family’s debate—stay in California or make the leap during wartime—and what it felt like to land,...

In this week’s Tel Aviv Diary (December 12), Marc Schulman reflects on newly released IDF-captured Hamas footage of six hostages later executed in the tunnels under Rafah—images of young Israelis lighting Hanukkah candles underground, trying to keep their spirits alive, as the country watches with grief and fury. Marc returns to Hostage Square after the storm, noting what has been dismantled, what...