Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Yonit Levi of Israel's Channel 12 News and Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian are two of the most prominent journalists in the world today. They are also Jews. Each week, join what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow calls "two great, smart smart smart hosts" as they dissect and debate current events shaping Israel, Jewish life - and the wider world. Their blend of nuanced discussion and sparkling conversation, featuring a dazzling range of guests, is why New Yorker editor David Remnick calls himself a “proud, avid listener," why Ira Glass says he "completely enjoys this show" and why Malcolm Gladwell calls it an "incredibly fun podcast". For a weekly fix of globally informed talk – including nominations for the greatest act of chutzpah and outstanding mensch of the previous seven days – there’s only one destination. Make every Friday morning Unholy. Contact us via: unholy@unholy-media.com
Episodes
This week’s Unholy conversations is a rare interview with Nir Bar Dea, CEO of Bridgewater—the world's largest hedge fund. Bar Dea moves beyond market trends, framing our current moment as a volatile collision between a changing world order, and an unprecedented technological revolution fueled by AI. He offers a sobering perspective on why the comfort of the last several decades has perhaps left us less resilient than th...
Yonit is joined by Yaakov Katz, author, columnist and former editor of the Jerusalem Post, and together they try to make sense of a week that had it all: a 17-hour mini-war with Iran, Trump growing visibly impatient -- and Netanyahu caught between his base and the White House. Israeli politics see the Israeli PM focusing on the rising political threat of Gadi Eisenkot, who for the first time has pulled ahead of Netanyahu in head-to...
Israeli children are still running to shelters. The hostages are home, but the wars keep coming. And somewhere underneath it all — the October 7th trauma, the Iran strikes, the hostages, the endless sirens — something is being passed down to the next generation, whether we mean to or not.
This week, Yonit sits down with Dr. Galit Atlas, psychoanalyst and author of Emotional Inheritance, to ask the questions most of us a...
Iran broke a two-month ceasefire on Sunday night, launching missiles at Israel after Netanyahu struck Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut. By Monday, Trump declared an immediate stop — but the questions it raised won't close that easily.
In this emergency update, Yonit and Jonathan are joined by Amos Harel — Haaretz's military affairs analyst and author of 629: Anatomy of a Failure — to break down the cal...
The fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government is overshadowed by an already notorious phone call where Donald Trump reportedly dropped multiple F-bombs on Benjamin Netanyahu for threatening Israeli strikes on Beirut. Yonit and Jonathan dissect the increasing strain in the US-Israel relationship - and a new equation set by Iran that will alarm all Israelis.
Meanwhile, two warning signs this week for the ...
This week, Yonit and Jonathan sit down with acclaimed military and intelligence analyst Amos Harel to discuss his new book 6:29 -Anatomy of a Failure — a devastating, meticulously reported account of October 7th and the collapse that preceded it. Drawing on internal investigations, intelligence materials, battlefield testimony and conversations with senior officials, Harel reconstructs how Israel failed at every level: ...
A US-Iran deal appears to be taking shape — and Israel isn't in the room. As diplomatic back-channels buzz and American strikes on Iran continue under a ceasefire that apparently requires bombing to maintain, Netanyahu finds himself watching from the outside: no seat at the table, no answers on the nuclear file, no movement on proxies. Meanwhile, two hostage parents — whose sons were held in Gaza at the same time &mdash...
Franklin Foer is the man who declared that the golden age of American Jewry is over - or at least ending. Two years on — in the aftermath of October 7th and the Gaza war, collapsing bipartisan support for Israel, a wave of antisemitism from both left and right, and a military misadventure in Iran — he thinks he underestimated the problem.
This week, Yonit and Jonathan sit down with Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic and...
This week Jonathan is in celebratory mode—and no, it's not only because it’s the festival of Shavuot, but because his beloved Arsenal finally won the Premier League, sparking a spontaneous tribal gathering of ‘marauding revellers’ in North London.
Meanwhile, Yonit and Jonathan unpack the volatile situation with Iran, and ask where President Trump’s vague threats of a renewed strike are heading.
Then, i...
Two and a half years after October 7th, the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children has published its comprehensive report — 300 pages of meticulously corroborated evidence documenting what was done to women, men, children, and hostages on that day and in captivity since. This week, Yonit and Jonathan speak with Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the founder and chair of the Commission, 2024 Israel Pr...
Yonit and Jonathan discuss a week brimming with unresolved questions. Did Benjamin Netanyahu really travel to the UAE during the war with Iran? Why would he leak it now, and what led the UAE to issue such a quick denial? After a trip to China, where is Donald Trump heading on Iran?
And inside Israel, as the political drama intensified with United Torah Judaism threatening to break ranks with the coalition over the draft bill's fail...
Maoz Inon lost his parents on October 7th. They were in their safe room, 200 meters from the Gaza border wall, when Hamas came. Aziz Abu Sarah lost his brother — the person who raised him — after he was tortured in an Israeli prison during the First Intifada. Two days after October 7th, Aziz wrote Maoz a letter. Maoz wrote back. That exchange became a friendship, a journey across the Holy Land, and now a New York Times ...
The Iran war may be over — or it may not. In the space of a few hours this week, Washington ordered warships into the Strait of Hormuz, paused the operation, threatened to resume bombing at higher intensity, and then declared peace was near.
Yonit and Jonathan cut through the chaos — and ask the question the ceasefire deal still hasn't answered: what happened to Iran's nuclear stockpile?
Also this week: Beza...
Forty days of war with Iran. Four weeks of an uneasy ceasefire. And one verdict that nobody in Washington wants to say out loud: the Islamic Republic came out of this stronger.
Dr. Suzanne Maloney, Vice President of the Brookings Institution's foreign policy program and one of America's most trusted voices on Iran, joins Yonit and Jonathan as US warships attempt to escort vessels through a Strait of Hormuz that Iran still effective...
As stabbing against Jews in Golders Green rises up, again, the question of security of Jewish communities around the world, Israel starts the countdown: 6 months to the elections. Yonit and Jonathan discuss the Golders Green knife attack and the wave of antisemitism hitting Britain since October 7th; the Bennett–Lapid merger and what it means for Israel's October elections; whether the Iran–Israel war is on pause ...
Howard Jacobson has screamed "liar" at the BBC, lost friends over a newspaper article, and started asking his wife whether it's still safe to live in London. Now he's written a novel about all of it.
*Howl* is the story of Ferdinand Draxler — Jewish headmaster, reluctant marcher, man on the edge — who watches the world he believed in applaud the October 7th massacre and descends into a rage that may or may not be madnes...
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Israel's 78th Independe...
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Rachel Goldberg-Polin has stood before the UN, met with presidents, and worn a number on her chest every single day until there were no more hostages in Hamas captivity. Now, months after Hersh was murderd, she sat down and wrote a book.
When We See You Again is not a hostage story and not a political reckoning. It is, as Rachel describes it, a painful love story — a gri...
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As Israel marks one week out of 40 days of missiles from Iran, Yonit and Jonathan take apart the week's impossible contradictions: Netanyahu delivering a triumphalist Yom HaShoah speech while 400 kilograms of enriched uranium remain intact in Iran; a fragile Lebanon ceasefire that almost no one trusts; 40 Democratic senat...
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Day 40 of the US-Israel war on Iran — and it's ceasefire. But the relief is complicated: Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah in Lebanon has already shifted the world's anger from Washington back to Jerusalem.
Bret Stephens, opinion columnist at the New York Times...
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