Should the Left unite before the upcoming elections? What are we to make of Palestinian President Abbas’s odd & moving decision to republish a memoir by an Iraqi-Israeli author? And an activist campaign against the new natural gas pipeline calling everyone liars?

We discuss 1) the decision by the Religious Bayit ha-Yehudi party to run in these elections with the far-right Jewish Might party 2) a TV expose debunking claims that kids were kidnapped from immigrant parents in the ’50s 3) the most important people, events and trends of the past decade

We discuss 1) the Likud primaries which Bibi will almost certainly win 2) why young Israelis did so poorly on int’l standardized tests and what it says about our future 3) the decision by a Tel Aviv high school to have boys sit with boys and girls sit with girls during a meeting with visiting religious kids

We discuss 1) our third elections, what they’re about and whether we learned anything from our first two 2) whether the love/hate relationship with the PM is really a struggle between “First Israel” and “Second Israel” 3) whether or not native-born Israelis “get” the fear of anti-semitism that so many Jews around the world feel

We discuss 1) the idea of having a winner-take-all run-off between Netanyahu & Gantz 2) whether and how educators ought to address the sad spectacle of a PM under multiple indictments 3) who should decide the names of the stops on Tel Aviv-Jaffa’s new light rail system

We discuss 1) whether loyalty remains a virtue when applied to an indicted politician like PM Netanyahu 2) the claim of some scholars that the courts are wrong to criminalize the complicated you-wash-my-hands-I’ll-wash-yours relationships between politicians and journalists, of the sort at the basis of 2 of the 3 indictments of the PM

We discuss 1) the failed coalition-forming strategy of Benny Gantz 2) the fear that maybe the recent skirmish with the rocket-firing Islamic Jihad in Gaza was timed for political purposes 3) a brouhaha over an ultra-Orthodox-run NGO that helps people navigate Israel’s health care system

We discuss 1) a newly proposed constitution of the Jewish People, by the Jewish People, and for the Jewish People 2) whether and how American Jews have left an imprint on Israel, and Israeli Jews have left an imprint on America 3) the debate among leftist Jews over Zionism, that pits Jewish Zionists against Jewish Anti-Zionists

We discuss 1) Gantz’s efforts to channel the spirit of Yitzhak Rabin 2) a demand by the head of the union of IAI workers that the company be privatized 3) the bruhaha over the sale-at-auction of a 1937 letter written by an 11 year old who was later murdered in Auschwitz

We discuss 1) whether this period without a new gov’ is actually a good thing 2) the claim that no one in Israel’s history has done as much as Netanyahu to improve the practical circumstances of Palestinian Israelis 3) whether Tel Aviv sucks the oxygen away from other cities that could be great