The Promised Podcast

The “What to Remember, What to Forget” Edition

We discuss: 1) Yad Vashem’s decision not to be the venue for a speech by Ukraine’s President 2) The mysterious disappearance from news feeds of the Pegasus surveillance software scandal 3) Whether time has come to retire the notion of Amalek

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The “Showing Up” Edition

We discuss: 1) Whether Israel should throw open its borders to refugees from Ukraine 2) The decision by police to close the sexual assault investigation of one of the LGBTQ+ communities’ leading lights 3) The govt’s decision to spend ten million shekels to “strengthen Shabbat” and the huge backlash against it

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The “Seeing Ourselves and Others” Edition

We discuss: 1) Israel’s hesitant and muffled response to the war 2) The angry exchange between a Knesset member and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 3) What to make of the legacy of Menachem Begin

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The “Humans and Other People” Edition

We discuss: 1) Whether the political attitudes of Israel’s left is corrosive of our connection to the country 2) Recent efforts to grant legal rights to animals, streams, rivers and lakes, so people who harm them can be sued in court

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The “Losing Our Humanities?” Edition

We discuss: 1) What the new government economic plan will and won’t do 2) Calls to shut down the ultra-Orthodox IDF infantry unit 3) New plans to do away with high school matriculation exams in the humanities

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The “What Do We Need to Know?” Edition

We discuss: 1) The bombshell report that police used spyware against mayors, Knesset members, journalists and protestors 2) A powerful editorial saying we teach our kids all the wrong things about the Holocaust

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The “Turpitude Now, Turpitude Tomorrow, Turpitude Forever” Edition

We discuss: 1) The Amnesty International report everyone’s talking about 2) A proposed law that would ban people convicted of “moral turpitude” crimes from holding high public office 3) Whether our collective memories should be fashioned through political collective bargaining

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The “Ghosts” Edition

We discuss: 1) What to make of several men admitting, in a new docu, that when they were soldiers in the 1948 war they saw, or took part in, war crimes 2) A new TV docudrama revisiting a controversy that roiled the country eight years ago

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The “Can’t Spell ‘Plea Bargain’ Without ‘Rage’ and ‘Pain’” Edition

We discuss: 1) The outrage over a plea deal for former PM Netanyahu 2) What’s behind the government’s new pandemic policy 3) A report that Israeli politicians may be dragging their feet negotiating blanket Visa exemptions for Israelis in the US

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The “Pure of Heart” Edition

We discuss: 1) The new, 1B shekel program to double the population of the Golan Heights in 3 short years 2) The remarkable decade in politics of Yair Lapid and his “Yesh Atid” party, the longest any centrist party has ever survived in Israeli political history

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