Episodes
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Dr. Harel Menashri helped found the Shin Bet's cyber division in the 1990s, when his superiors dismissed his warnings as "mumbo jumbo." He has spent 25 years being proven right. In this interview with Jerusalem Post senior military analyst Yonah Jeremy Bob, Menashri describes the demonstration that changed the Israeli government's mind: a tiny Trojan, downloaded off the internet, that he says could have produced damage "very similar to Hiroshima" and killed much of the population around the Haifa Bay. He walks through exactly how code kills people, manipulating SCADA sensors on a gas pipeline until pressure hits a lethal number, or attacking a rail signaling system so a chemical train derails in central Tel Aviv.
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He grew up in the triangle between the Knesset, Hebrew University and the Israel Museum, the son of a Bank of Israel official. At 12, he cried when Menachem Begin won.
Today Gadi Taub is one of the most influential intellectuals of the Israeli right. In this interview with The Jerusalem Post, historian Dr. Gadi Taub retraces the defection that took him from Peace Now demonstrations to the front line of the fight over Israel's Supreme Court, its media and its national identity.
He dates the break to Camp David in 2000, "Why would they not take it, even if they want the whole?" and says October 7 closed the case: "The optimism of the left was unfounded and the pessimism of the right was prophetic."
But he is no loyalist. He calls Itamar Ben-Gvir "a lot of noise and not enough substance," faults Netanyahu for letting the judicial problem fester for decades, and admits there is "a lot" of sloppy journalism on the right. -
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Ten years after Elie Wiesel's death, his son answers the American politician who told Israel it has become a pariah. Elisha Wiesel, chairman of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, former Goldman Sachs executive, and the only child of the Nobel laureate, sat down with the Jerusalem Post at Yad Vashem.
He explains why he refuses to say what his father would think today ("there are very few privileges to being dead"), and why he believes the fight over the word "genocide" is a war Holocaust museums are uniquely obligated to enter. It is a rare interview that moves between the intimate and the geopolitical without flattening either. -
Iran's missiles have stopped. Its cyberattacks haven't. Former Unit 8200 intelligence officer Julia Kogan Ehrlich explains the war nobody sees. Israel's national cyber chief, Yossi Karadi, says hostile cyber incidents tripled to roughly 4,800 in a single month and that unlike the kinetic realm, there's no ceasefire in cyberspace. Kogan Ehrlich, a cybersecurity executive who served nearly nine years in the IDF's elite Unit 8200, tells Yonah Jeremy Bob why she agrees. "The ceasefire is only for the missiles," she says. "Our infrastructures are constantly under attack." Each of those incidents, she explains, is a potential strike on water, power, rail or hospitals, the 2020 Iranian breach of an Israeli water system being the case study nobody forgot.
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Lindsey Graham is dead at 71, and Israel has lost the man Netanyahu called its greatest friend in Washington. Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel on what that actually costs. Hours after Graham's sudden death, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister told the Jerusalem Post it will be "very, very difficult, whether it will be impossible literally, to replace him." Haskel traces what Graham built, the Taylor Force Act that cut US aid over the Palestinian Authority's payments to terrorists, his push behind the Abraham Accords and the embassy move to Jerusalem, and his role in bringing Washington into the Iran war he called worth "every single penny." With the Iran ceasefire fraying, Gaza stalled and Hamas still armed, she argues the loss is less about policy than about a vanishing kind of politician: "He didn't speak in two different languages, one publicly and one behind the scenes."
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Born in Jerusalem, raised in Colorado, building a creative career in LA, until October 7, and rising antisemitism sent Zoe Manor back to Israel, in the middle of a war.
Manor grew up between two worlds: an American, Ashkenazi mother from Long Island and a Moroccan, Sephardic father, with Hebrew as her first language but no initial memory of the country she was born in. She spent years feeling she fit neither the "tourist" nor the "native Israeli" box. After October 7, working in Los Angeles news production, she says she felt her body was in one place while her heart and mind were in Israel, and that inside her own creative community, she suddenly "had to leave half of myself at the door."
A two-week volunteer trip became a turning point. She joined a Masa Israel Journey program as a soft landing, and a spur-of-the-moment offer to edit audio grew into Talking Unfiltered, a podcast exploring dating, bureaucracy, community, faith, and identity from both native-Israeli and diaspora perspectives. In this conversation, she reflects on why she'd rather live under rockets than as "a shell" of herself, what native Israelis still don't understand about antisemitism abroad, and how she made peace with her accent, recalling her brother's line that everyone who built this country once spoke Hebrew with one. -
Obama's former chief of staff and a lifelong defender of Israel, Rahm Emanuel came to Tel Aviv with a blunt message: this alliance can't survive as it is. In this Jerusalem Post interview, recorded after his Tel Aviv University address, Emanuel argues Israel now sits at its lowest standing in the U.S. since 1948, and that the collapse is a series of choices, not fate. "You've gone from being known as a startup nation to Sparta," he tells us, warning that among Americans under 30, support has cratered. He pushes back hard on the idea that this is a Democratic Party problem: "You have an America problem." He lays out his "23-state solution," calls for conditioning U.S. aid and sanctioning settlers, officials, and banks tied to illegal settlements, and recounts what he told incoming New York mayor Mamdani to his face about "river to the sea."
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Jailed for 804 days in Iran on false spying charges, academic Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert refused the Revolutionary Guard's offer of freedom, if she'd spy for them. In this Jerusalem Post interview, Moore-Gilbert describes surviving IRGC detention and Iran's public prison system, being stripped of her identity down to a number, and holding on to who she was as an act of defiance: "I just didn't break." She explains how the Guards blackmail and recruit prisoners, why she insists ordinary Iranians are nothing like the regime that rules them, and where she believes the country goes from here. A Middle East scholar and author of the memoir The Uncaged Sky, Moore-Gilbert is now one of the most prominent voices against "hostage diplomacy." Her read on the current moment is bleak, "the regime thinks that it won", and she warns the West against easing the economic pressure she sees as the regime's greatest vulnerability. Her message to Iranian women right now is sombre: lay low and wait.
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Doron Almog was the first Israeli soldier to land at Entebbe in 1976. Now, 50 years later, he chairs the Jewish Agency and sees history repeating.
In this rare interview, Almog draws direct lines between three defining experiences: leading the 1976 Entebbe rescue with only 12 hours of preparation; raising a severely disabled son whom he calls "my greatest teacher" and for whom he built a village of 3,000 residents in southern Israel; and now stewanding the Jewish Agency's global response to the post-October 7 wave of antisemitism. He describes his son's village as "a social Entebbe," a rescue from the captivity of stigma, and argues that the same ethic of mutual responsibility that sustained Jewish people for 2,000 years is the only guarantee of Israel's survival today. "One for all, all for one," he says, "this is the secret of the existence of Jewish people."
As chairman of the Jewish Agency, Almog oversees 3,000 emissaries in 66 countries, a new security fund for diaspora communities, and an ambitious plan to settle new olim in the emptied communities of Israel's north and south. He calls October 7 "the biggest crisis of the State of Israel since its establishment," and he believes the response must be a new wave of Aliyah to rebuild the periphery, just as a million Soviet Jews rebuilt Israel in the 1990s. Almog's perspective is shaped not by ideology alone, but by a lifetime of loss, a brother killed in the Yom Kippur War, a son who never spoke a word, friends lost at Entebbe, and an unbroken conviction that an inclusive, loving society is Israel's "absolute victory." -
American businessman and longtime US diplomatic insider Harley Lippman returns to Israel for the first time in two years to give a blunt geopolitical assessment: the US-Iran MOU shocked the system, American public opinion has flipped against Israel, and three converging forces: media optics, far-left ideology, and Qatari money, are driving a crisis that didn't exist five years ago.
Lippman, who has met with world leaders including Erdogan, offers a rare two-sided analysis of the Trump administration's ceasefire deal with Iran: the pessimistic case that Israel was sold out, and the optimistic case that Trump is managing midterm politics before pivoting. He argues Iran "outmaneuvered everybody" by closing the Strait of Hormuz and warns that Turkey may actually be a greater regional danger than Iran, a point that surprises even his interviewer, Jerusalem Post's editor-in-chief Zvika Klein. On the Palestinian question, he floats a controversial but conditional solution that he believes could finally end the broader Arab-Israeli conflict.
Lippman has served in advisory roles across multiple US administrations from both parties and built two companies from scratch. His warning about the Democratic Party's drift toward antisemitism, the Qatari university infiltration strategy, and what he calls Israel's failure to fight the PR war as effectively as it fights conventional wars makes this a wide-ranging and candid conversation. -
Montana Tucker, dancer, content creator, and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, is hosting the 2026 Maccabiah Games delegation parade and debuting an original song live in Jerusalem.
Tucker, who has visited Israel nine times since October 7, 2023, sat down with the Jerusalem Post ahead of the opening ceremony to discuss what this moment means for the global Jewish community. "We truly do need this now more than ever," she said, explaining why she sees the Maccabiah as a direct counter-narrative to what she calls media distortion of Israel's image. She'll be performing her new single "We're Not Strangers," a unity anthem whose lyrics reflect the divisions she's witnessed both in Israel and across the world.
Tucker's connection to Israel runs deep: her grandparents' experience as Holocaust survivors shaped her belief in Israel's significance, and it was that personal history that drove her to begin posting about the conflict on social media after October 7, eventually leading to her Maccabiah involvement. Former hostage Daniela Gilboa will also perform at the ceremony, making the opening an emotionally charged event that balances celebration with commemoration. -
Six years ago, Dr. Anna Harwood-Gross and her team began designing one of the world's most ambitious psychedelic therapy trials, an Israeli study testing whether MDMA-assisted therapy could help soldiers with combat PTSD that hadn't responded to standard treatment.
They received ethics approval in the summer of 2023. Their first drug delivery was scheduled for October. Then October 7 happened. In this conversation with Sam Halpern, Jpost's senior field reporter, Dr. Harwood-Gross, senior faculty at Ariel University and lead researcher at Herzog Medical Center, walks through the trial's protocol, the bomb-shelter logistics now built into every session, and the comparison arm her team has developed without psychedelics at all (SEAIT — Somatic, Experiential, Acceptance-based, Intensive Trauma therapy).
She's candid about the early stage of the work, the academic boycotts complicating international collaboration, and what the FDA's recent refusal to approve MDMA-assisted therapy means for where the field goes next.
A careful, hopeful, deliberately unhyped conversation with one of the researchers Israel will be hearing more from. -
74% of young Jews worldwide say they can positively shape their community, nearly twice the optimism rate of Jews over 60.
After October 7, hostile campuses, and the Iran war, that wasn't the finding anyone expected. In this conversation, Dr. Shelley Kedar, Chief Impact Officer of The Jewish Agency for Israel, walks through the One People Report, the agency's first global survey of nearly 1,500 Jews across Israel and 18 countries, and what its data says about a generation rising into the moment.
She discusses the toll on Israel's "serving generation" of reservists, the Jewish Agency's expanding camp and emissary programs (including 300 children of long-serving reservists heading to European camps this summer), and the widening Israel-Diaspora conversation.
Kedar closes on the line that has become the report's unofficial thesis: "We shouldn't confuse unity with uniformity." -
The White House's point man for the 2026 World Cup, Andrew Giuliani, on how the US is bringing Iran's national team into Los Angeles, and why he insists Iran policy hasn't bent for the tournament.
Speaking to Idan Kweller in an interview recorded days before kickoff, Giuliani details the security architecture behind the first 48-team World Cup: more than 400 law enforcement agencies coordinating, counter-drone (counter-UAS) coverage across 150-plus day-of events, and visa wait times cut from as high as 700 days in Brazil to under two weeks.
Asked whether President Trump wanted calm with Iran to keep the tournament quiet, Giuliani says it "has not influenced any decisions from a national security perspective," while framing the event around America's 250th birthday.
The conversation turns pointed on Iran. Giuliani lays out the choreography of moving all 31 Iranian players from Tijuana into Los Angeles, home to the largest Iranian population outside Tehran, and addresses whether fans can wave the pre-revolution flag, drawing a line between FIFA's in-stadium rules and First Amendment expression outside. He also delivers a direct message to Israeli fans traveling to the US and closes on Trump's "America first… but it doesn't mean America only" framing. -
Dr. Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO Monitor, traces how Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which he says has documented Hamas ties, helped shape a viral New York Times op-ed on Israeli sexual violence, published the day before a landmark report documenting Hamas atrocities on October 7.
In this wide-ranging interview, Steinberg explains how NGOs with combined budgets in the billions coordinate simultaneous media campaigns to reframe Israel as perpetrator and Hamas as victim, what he calls "The Eighth Front" of the October 7 war. He details open-source evidence linking Euro-Med's founder, Rami Abdu, to Hamas leadership, including photographs with senior Hamas figures and a 2011 Israeli Defense Ministry designation of his activities as part of Hamas's propaganda operation. On Nicholas Kristof's column's central "dog" allegation, Steinberg points to a critical inconsistency: the lawyer who made the claim had given an extensive interview to a separate outlet just days earlier, with no mention of the incident. "Every NGO actor in the Israel demonization world knew this report was coming," Steinberg says. "It could be a headline story. That's the name of the game."
Steinberg, who is stepping down as NGO Monitor president after 25 years to hand leadership to Olga Deutsch, places today's campaigns in a historical arc stretching from Soviet-era anti-Zionism through the 1975 "Zionism is racism" UN resolution to the Durban process, arguing that a network of radical-left and Arab-aligned actors captured the NGO sector by the early 2000s and now operates as a largely unaccountable political industry with no checks, no competition, and billions in annual funding. He says cracks are beginning to show, and the blowback against the Kristof column may mark a turning point. -
Dr. Shmuel Legesse, an Ethiopian Jewish writer and activist, described his life’s mission as a call to strengthen Jewish unity, defend Israel’s legitimacy, and give voice to the Ethiopian Jewish experience during a conversation on The Jerusalem Post podcast.
Legesse said his sense of purpose began in childhood in Ethiopia, where his father would bless him and tell him he would one day “speak to the whole world” on behalf of his people. -
In this conversation with The Jerusalem Post's senior field reporter Sam Halpern, Rabbi Dr. Kenneth Brander, President of Ohr Torah Stone (OTS), opens up about the haredi draft, women in combat, the Jerusalem Day flag march, and the dangerous misuse of the term "Amalek."
Anchored by the death of Maj. (res.) Itamar Sapir, the 26th OTS alumnus killed in the war, Brander argues that religious Jews who refuse to enlist are violating Jewish law, rejects the phrase "settler violence" while condemning the "1% of 1%" who cross the line, and says flatly, citing the Talmud, that there is no longer a nation of Amalek.
Brander leads a 32-institution Modern Orthodox network whose students and faculty are serving at extraordinary rates. His son has done over 400 days of reserve duty. He speaks not as an outside critic but as someone whose community is bearing the cost. -
Dr. Yizhar Hess, Vice chairman of the World Zionist Organization and a 10th-generation Jerusalemite, argues Israel has created an "unholy connection between state and religion" that pushes Jews away from their own tradition. In this candid Jerusalem Post interview, Hess unpacks the most consequential World Zionist Congress in years: how MERCAZ (the Masorti/Conservative slate) nearly doubled its mandates, why Itamar Ben-Gvir's faction was deliberately frozen out of the coalition, and what the Haredi entry into the Zionist movement really means. He explains why he believes "polite people seldom change the world," why he attended the judicial reform protests as a sitting WZO official, and why a pending Knesset bill criminalizing non-Orthodox prayer at the Kotel — punishable by up to seven years in prison, would be devastating for Israel-Diaspora relations. Hess offers a rare insider's perspective on the political body Theodor Herzl founded as "the parliament of the Jewish people."
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Khosro Isfahani, research director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran, said anger is building inside Iran following months of war, internet shutdowns, economic damage, and mass repression.
Speaking with The Jerusalem Post, Isfahani said Iranians see the Islamic Republic as unchanged, despite what he described as a regime effort to project normalcy after the recent conflict. -
Alon Wald never met his father, a paratrooper killed at Ammunition Hill during the Six-Day War when Alon was just 10 months old. Today, he runs the memorial site where his father fell.
In this rare personal interview, Alon traces a life shaped by one absence, and by the extraordinary decision of his father's surviving unit to skip their own victory parade and knock on the doors of every bereaved family instead. Ten of those men became his surrogate fathers. Their promise: "You will never stand alone." Years later, Alon would follow his father into the paratroopers, convincing his widowed mother to sign a military waiver to make it happen. He also shares a little-known story from the battle itself: with no orders, his father's unit buried 17 fallen Jordanian soldiers and carved in English: "Buried here 17 brave Jordanian soldiers, Army of Israel, June 1967." Jordanian officers later came quietly to visit.
Now director of Ammunition Hill for nearly 17 years, Alon connects generations: veterans, students, soldiers, and after October 7th, 22,000 displaced civilians who found shelter and strength at the site. His mission: making sure the other 99% of these men's lives, not just the battle, is never forgotten.
Alon Wald is director of Ammunition Hill National Memorial Site in Jerusalem. The son of Captain Rami Wald, killed there in 1967 at age 32, he served as a paratrooper and IDF officer before dedicating his career to preserving and teaching his father's generation's legacy. - Show more
