Unholy: Two Jews on the News

Watch this interview in Hebrew and English subtitles: https://youtu.be/zh-KenD4s5w

Ra'am has done something no Arab party in Israel has tried before—put a Jewish, Zionist former police major general on its slate. With the election weeks away, Likud wants the party disqualified, much of the opposition insists it won't sit with it, and some in his own community call its leader a traitor. Yonit and Jonathan sit down with Mansour ...

Decision day approaches for the judges who will determine who is - and who is not - allowed to stand in the Israeli elections on 27 October. The supreme court is likely to overturn a move by the government to ban the main Arab parties, but more unpredictable is the fate of one individual politician from the Arab nationalist party, Balad - a man who seemingly wrote in praise of the 7 October attacks. Yonit and Jonathan debate the le...

With Israel deep in an election campaign and the country still grappling with the strains of a multi-front war, the fiercely contested exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from the IDF draft remains the issue threatening to tear Israeli society apart.
In this week's  candid, combative, and illuminating conversation, Yonit and Jonathan sit down with MK Yitzhak Pindrus of the United Torah Judaism party  to interrogate the the...

With Yonit feeling a little under the weather, Jonathan is joined by friend of the podcast, Haaretz military affairs analyst Amos Harel (also, author of 6:29). They discuss a new poll showing Benjamin Netanyahu gaining ground in his contest against former general Gady Eisenkot - with nearly six weeks to go till Israelis vote, is this a blip or did Eisenkot peak too early? Plus: the Israeli right declares war on a film almost no one...

As Israel heads into what may be the most consequential election of its history, the country is still arguing less about where it's going than about how it got here. This week, Yonit and Jonathan sit down with a titan of Israeli broadcasting — Ilana Dayan, anchor of the investigative program Uvda for three decades — who returns to Unholy to make sense of it all. She traces how Netnayahu survived a moment that should hav...

September 8th was the deadline for Israeli parties to file their lists — and Netanyahu reached it less organised than he'd have liked, with a rival on the right running alone, a reserved slot for his own Channel 14 broadcaster, and barely a handful of women anywhere near the top.

Then Britain, joined by France, Canada and nine others, sanctioned settlement goods, and used the words "ethnic cleansing" about settler violence in ...

The Jewish new year arrives with the word ‘Zionist’ deemed an insult and a technology that never forgets anything that anyone has ever said or done. Following Unholy tradition, Yonit and Jonathan usher in the season of awe and the High Holydays with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who leads New York’s Central Synagogue and whose congregation was rushed by an intruder during a packed Friday night service weeks before this c...

Seven weeks out from an election that in many ways is a referendum on culpability for October 7th, Benjamin Netanyahu tells Channel 14 that if only they had woken him earlier that fateful day, everything would have been different — and his wife goes considerably further about Yair Golan, a man who drove towards the gunfire that morning and saved lives. Yonit and Jonathan take Mrs Netanyahu’s accusation apart, then turn ...

The former UK Prime Minister and Chancellor joins Yonit and Jonathan for the latest of our Unholy Conversations — on the void populist nationalists have moved into, on the difference between hope and optimism, on the father whose projector slides taught him the kings of Israel before the kings of England, and on the Middle East peace deal he watched come apart in 2009.

Chapters:

00:06 Introduction to Gordon Brown and His New ...

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With sixty days to go until the Israeli elections, the political jockeying enters into overdrive. Yonit and Jonathan break down the high-stakes coalition arithmetic facing both Benjamin Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot, from the crowded field of small right-wing parties—including the entrance of retired general Ofer Winter—to the battle on the center ground. Me...

It's the end of summer, and Yonit and Jonathan are taking a break from the news with a nugget of pure Jewish joy. Andy Nyman — the West End actor, writer, director and magician currently starring as Max Bialystock in The Producers, and previously as an acclaimed Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof — joins the show for an Unholy Conversation. Why does Mel Brooks' nearly-60-year-old joke about Hitler still land? What makes Max B...

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Sixty-eight days from the election, the hardest problems on Benjamin Netanyahu's desk are arriving from Washington. Jared Kushner is meeting Hamas directly, and the Gaza withdrawal deadlines he is carrying — thirty, sixty and ninety days — all land inside the Is...

Acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore returns to Unholy to discuss his sweeping new book, The Cauldron: A History of the Middle East between 1900 and 2026. He tells Yonit and Jonathan that understanding the region today requires starting at the dawn of the 20th century — thanks to the long shadow still cast by the Ottoman Empire and its collapse. They talk of the often underestimated significance of Saudi Arabia, the con...

Benjamin Netanyahu has said no to Donald Trump's 15-point Gaza plan, and the refusal is flat rather than fudged. In the West Bank, extremist settlers have besieged two Palestinian families in the village of Qusra, apparently hoping to take their homes. The IDF went in but came away with mission very much unaccomplished. With Yonit away, Jonathan is joined by Hadley Freeman, columnist for London’s Sunday Times and author of th...

Three of the oldest myths about Jews — relating to money, blood and the way they look — were forged in medieval Christian Europe, mostly in places where there were almost no Jews to observe. Miri Rubin, professor of medieval and early modern history at Queen Mary University of London, tells Jonathan how each one of those myths was built — and explains how that medieval way of seeing Jews often remains the lens thr...

With Yonit away, Jonathan is joined by Anshel Pfeffer, Israel correspondent of the Economist, as they discuss the muted reaction to the announcement made by Donald Trump of what he hoped would be hailed as a breakthrough in Gaza. It turns out that most people in the region are waiting to see if Washington’s hopes turn into anything more concrete.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu is setting about ensuring his political opponents...

Just over 400,000 Jews call the country home, a community that lived through what many call a golden age of acceptance before watching it fracture. Jewish Canadians, under 1% of the population, are now the target of the large majority of religiously motivated hate crimes in the country. This week, Heather Reisman — founder and CEO of Indigo, Canada's largest book, toy and lifestyle retailer, and co-founder of the HESEG Founda...

Ninety days before Israel votes, the campaign is revealing much about both the candidates and the country. The defense minister boasts about applying different detention rules to Jewish and Arab citizens — at a primary event, into a microphone. Two sets of pollsters are predicting completely opposite outcomes, and someone smashed Channel 12's doors and left death threats for the second time in a month.

Yonit and Jonathan tak...

Fresh off his tour of Israel and Europe, this week on Unholy Conversations, Yonit and Jonathan speak to Rahm Emanuel—former Chief of Staff, Congressman, Chicago Mayor, Ambassador to Japan and perhaps future presidential nominee.

They dive into his recent charged conversation with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, his take on Israel’s current choices, whether he considers himself a Zionist, and if he’s any closer to m...