The Fathom Podcast

Howard Jacobson is a British Jewish novelist and journalist who has written more than twenty books, including seventeen novels, and won the Booker Prize for fiction. This interview focuses on three of his books: The Finkler Question (2010), J (2014) and his most recent novel, Howl. Fathom spoke to him in early July.

In early June 2026, Fathom editors Calev Ben-Dor and Andrew Apostolou spoke to Elliot Abrams. Abrams is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and has previously served in senior roles in the US government, including as Deputy National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush and as Special Representative for Iran in the first Trump administration.

On April 23 2026, Fathom editors spoke to Lebanon expert Hanin Ghaddar, the Friedman Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute. As Israeli and Lebanese Ambassadors renewed talks under the auspices of the US, they discussed the current violence between Israel and Hezbollah, the group’s military capacity and political strength, the ability of the Lebanese Armed Forces to disarm the group, and the po...

In late March, Fathom spoke to Merav Roth (née Lapid) about her work treating trauma in Israel. She discusses the different circles of grief and reflects on her work with survivors from October 7 and returning hostages. 

In late March, Fathom spoke to Merav Roth (née Lapid) about her work treating trauma in Israel. She discusses the different circles of grief and reflects on her work with survivors from October 7 and returning hostages. 

With thousands reportedly killed by the regime, Fathom spoke to Iran expert Alireza Nader about the uprising in the country. He discussed what he terms the revolutionary movement in Iran, opposition perspectives on the late Shah's son, some of the challenges faced by the opposition in light of the 'frenzied killing' carried out by the Islamic Republic, and the approach of the Trump Administration...

Sima Shine, Alireza Nader, and Jonathan Rynhold consider the achievements of Israeli and American action in Iran. Were the aims to degrade or destroy the Iranian nuclear programme? What do they assess has been the true damage to the programme? What comes next in this war, and what do the latest developments signify in terms of the grip the Tehran regime holds on the country?

Tal Becker is the vice president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he leads educational initiatives on Israel in the Jewish world. He served until recently as a legal advisor with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has been a senior member of Israeli peace negotiation team in successive rounds of peace negotiations. He also played an instrumental role in negotiating and drafting the...

Fathom Co-editor Calev Ben-Dor spoke with Matthew Levitt, the Director of Reinhard Counter terrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Ksenia Svetlova, executive director at ROPES and a research associate at Chatham House. They discussed the current war between Israel and Iran and potential scenarios for how it might play out.

Six months after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was secured, Fathom editors Jack Omer-Jackaman and Calev Ben-Dor talk to Lebanon expert Hanin Ghaddar, Friedman Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute and author of Hezbollahland: Mapping Dahiya and Lebanon’s Shia Community. Ghaddar talks about Hezbollah’s current strength; whether the Lebanese government will succeed in its aim to dis...

Attorney Gilead Sher is a former Israeli senior peace negotiator and Chief of Staff to PM Ehud Barak. Formerly a peace negotiator under PM Rabin, he is a Rice University’s Baker Institute fellow and a former senior fellow at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Studies INSS. In 2023, Sher co-founded the Central Resistance Headquarters for the pro-democracy struggle. He has authored three books, co-ed...

Koby Huberman talks to Fathom about his insights from decades of work in regional peacemaking.

Najwa AlSaeed talks to Fathom about Gulf states' desire for a post-Hamas Gaza freed from Iranian influence; navigating President Trump's declared policy of US 'ownership' of Gaza; and the difficulties of being publicly supportive of normalisation with Israel in the Middle East. AlSaeed is a Saudi-born analyst, researcher, and news contributor, with a focus on the GCC and the MENA region. She is As...

Alan Johnson and Calev Ben-Dor spoke to Alexander Yakobson, co-author of Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights and a regular contributor to Haaretz and other Israeli publications. They discuss Israel's wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, including accusations of genocide, starvation as an instrument of war and the explosion of Hezbollah pagers.

Itai Anghel is an Israeli correspondent and documentary filmmaker and a staff reporter for Uvda, a television news program on Channel 12. He mainly covers conflict zones all over the world, including five separate trips to Syria between 2012 - 2019. In 2017 Anghel was awarded the 'Sokolov Award' which is Israel's highest award for journalism. He speaks to Deputy Editor Calev Ben-Dor about the coll...

Alan Johnson and Calev Ben-Dor spoke to Michael Walzer, the leading American public intellectual and author of Just and Unjust Wars. We discussed the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the charge of 'genocide' against Israel, the question of whether Israel is facilitating enough humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, as well as the pager attacks against Hezbollah operatives, and how Just War thinking applies to t...

Matt Levitt is the Director of Reinhard Counter terrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He and Fathom Deputy Editor Calev Ben-Dor talked about the second edition of his book Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God. They discuss Hezbollah’s role as a regional actor throughout the Middle East, acting in tandem with and at the direction of Iran’s Islamic...

In the third episode of the Fathom series ‘Those who tried: Conversations with the Peace Processors’, Yair Hirschfeld recalls his role in the process which led to the Oslo Accords. Hirschfeld argues, based on his experience in Oslo and subsequent peace tracks, Hirschfeld argues that attempts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict decisively, and all in one go, do not work. A gradualist approach...

Veteran negotiator Ambassador Dennis Ross speaks to Fathom about his experiences of multiple thwarted Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. A scholar and diplomat with more than two decades of experience in Soviet and Middle East policy, Ambassador Dennis Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process, dealing directly with the parties as the U.S. point m...

Azar Gat, Ezer Weizman Chair for National Security at Tel Aviv University, speaks to Calev Ben-Dor about the war in Gaza. Gat argues that failing to fully defeat Hamas would constitute an existential threat to Israel: not in the sense that Hamas alone can destroy Israel, but in the impact that Israel’s inability to defeat those responsible for 7 October would have on the psychological security of...

Counter-terror expert Matthew Levitt speaks to Fathom about Hamas’s vision and strategy. What is Hamas’s strategy for the destruction of Israel? Is it strategically divided? What are the chances of a rapprochement with Fatah? What does Levitt mean by Hamas following the ‘Hezbollah model’?

Fathom speaks to Toby Greene about two articles co-authored with Professor Jonathan Rynhold and dealing with the political future of a post-Hamas Gaza: ‘Beyond Humanitarian Aid: A Plan for Gazan Civilians Is a Strategic Necessity for Israel’ and ‘URGENT: An Israeli Strategy for a Post-Hamas Gaza’ . Despite Prime Minister Netanyahu’s repeated denial that Israel will support the involvement of the P...

Journalist and Middle East analyst Jonathan Spyer talks to Fathom about the Iranian threat and the Western response to it. Spyer is director of research at the Middle East Forum and the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict. He is a veteran of the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006 and has been a regular contributor to Fathom for a decade.

Jack Omer-Jackaman and Calev Ben-Dor interview Fania Oz-Salzberger, an Israeli writer, history professor and public intellectual. They discussed her thoughts about 7 October, the ensuing war, the Israeli government and her disappointment with parts of the international left. Oz-Salzberger is Professor Emerita at the University of Haifa Law School and previously taught at Princeton, Monash Universi...