The Promised Podcast

The “Synagogues & Stadiums” Edition

We discuss: 1) Why religious-Zionists opposed the hostage and prisoner release and ceasefire agreement more than any other sector of society 2) The simpatico between sports clubs, athletes and fans, on the one hand, and the hostages and their families on the other

Read More

The “Sins: Past, Present & Future” Edition

We discuss: 1) How the images of the gaunt, shrunken, clearly-tortured hostages cast into doubt the future of the present ceasefire 2) Historian Benny Morris’s dire warning that, unless something changes between Palestinians and Israelis, a genocide is inevitable

Read More

The “No One Expects the Pax Trumpiana!” Edition

We discuss: 1) Trump’s plan to move Gazans to Jordan and Egypt and turn Gaza into a riviera, and (2) Why Hamas men in black balaclavas and semi-automatic rifles give gift bags and souvenir swag to hostages they let go

Read More

The “Justices Supreme and Crises Constitutional” Edition

We discuss: 1) The Justice Minister’s refusal to “recognize” the newly selected chief justice of the Supreme Court, and 2) How this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day became a referendum on Oct. 7th

Read More

The “Word” Edition

We discuss: 1) The new “compromise” proposal for judicial reform, and 2) How the hostages became the aperture through which we understand most everything that has happened here since October 7

Read More

The “Ending this F*#!ing War” Edition

We discuss: 1) The hostage release and “permanent cessation of hostilities” agreement with Hamas 2) How the agreement came to be signed now (and not eight months ago or eight months from now)

Read More

The “Bear Missed the Train?” Edition

We discuss: 1) What Antony Blinken told the times about how it was Hamas, not Netanyahu, who scuttled the hostage negotiations 2) The Palestinian campaign to have low-level IDF soldiers arrested abroad for war crimes

Read More

The “Trauma-Rama” Edition

We discuss: 1) An expose showing that on Oct. 7, the IDF decided to double the number of civilians whose lives it was willing to risk in order to attack Hamas leaders 2) The assertion by Amalia Sa’ar that Israeli political discourse is filled with a “narrative of trauma” that keeps us from being able to have rational political discourse and make rational political and military decisions

Read More

The “What’s Changed” Edition

We discuss: 1) How we in Israel, and the lives we lead, have changed since, and because of, Oct 7th 2) How Jews around the world, and the lives they lead, have changed since, and because of, Oct 7th

Read More

The “Manifest Destinies” Edition

We discuss: 1) Why Israeli Jews who think it might be a good idea to set up Jewish towns in Gaza, think what they think 2) Whether an agreement that brings home some of the hostages might, in the end, be worse than no agreement at all

Read More