The Promised Podcast

We discuss: 1) Gadi Eisenkot’s Sisyphean efforts to piece together a governing coalition out of parties that refuse to sit one with the other 2) What America’s elections augur for Israel: Is columnist Tom Friedman right when he warns Israel that “the America you knew is gone”?

We discuss three highly improbable scenarios for what happens next after last week’s elections, one highly-improbable scenario of which will probably happen.

We talk about the whos, whats, whens and whys of this week’s elections, and what they say about us today and augur for the future.

We ask, for each of the 13 parties that are most likely going to be in the next Knesset, why for their voters, they are just the party they want.

We discuss: 1) Whether or not the upcoming elections are the most consequential in the country’s history 2) How a small, new right-wing party might dash the hope that lots of us have for a better future after the elections.

We discuss: 1) Why, despite all the hardships and miseries of the past three years, Netanyahu is still a viable candidate for PM 2) What the hell are these elections about again?

We discuss: 1) The so-called “Statement of Principles” signed this week by the leaders of the “Parties of Repair & Hope”, and why it left us so-called “unimpressed” 2) How schools ought to mark the third anniversary of Oct. 7th.

In a very special episode in celebration of the holiday of Sukkot, Noah goes on about the etrog, its complicated past, and the hope it holds for the futures of all of us.

We discuss: 1) Why so many Jewish-Israeli politicians and parties rule out joining a coalition with Palestinian-Israeli politicians and parties 2) The eventful week in Israeli cinema.

We discuss: 1) The weird party mergers and odd-couples running together for Knesset in the upcoming elections 2) The “Nili force”, started after Oct. 7, dedicated to capturing or killing every last one of the 5,000-odd Gazans who poured over the border on that day.