Haaretz Podcast

U.S. President Donald Trump “needs to find an off ramp” from the war with Iran as soon as possible, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said on the Haaretz Podcast.
While Shapiro said the military results of the war – the decimation of Iranian military assets and elimination of top leaders – are “incredibly impressive,” the United States must recognize that “the weaker party has cards to play, and their cards grow more influential as this conflict drags on,” pointing to the choking of world oil supply in the Strait of Hormuz, draining of U.S. and Israeli anti-missile resources, and attacks by proxies and terrorist groups.
Shapiro, who was ambassador from 2011–2017, said he wants regime change in Iran, but “not through a military campaign. That's not really something we're capable of at any acceptable cost.”
Additionally, he warns, a fall of the Iranian regime will spark “a great deal of chaos, a great deal of spillover of instability to neighboring countries, perhaps a civil war, waves of terror outside of Iran” and more.
“All of that has the potential to suck the United States in much further to the whole region. I could imagine that this is not a high concern for Israelis. Israelis could live with that set of concerns in ways that the United States and the American people will maybe feel differently about and certainly have not been prepared for.”
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Under the shadow of the Gaza war, even before the current conflict with Iran, Israeli filmmaker Hilla Medalia found it “very surprising” that her short film “Children No More: Were and Are Gone” was nominated for an Academy Award – but she was thrilled.
Despite the atmosphere in Hollywood even before the U.S.-Israel military attack in Iran, with petitions to boycott Israeli filmmakers circulated, two Israelis are nominated to take home golden statues at the March 16 ceremony: Medalia's film, in the category of Best Documentary Short, along with Meyer Levinson-Blount’s “Butcher’s Stain,” which is nominated for Best Live Action Short Film.
The nominations are “an incredible achievement of course for both Meyer and I, but also for the entire Israeli film community,” she said, speaking on the Haaretz Podcast.
Medalia’s film follows a group of Israeli activists who in March 2025, after the second cease-fire between Israel and Hamas collapsed, learned that 139 Palestinian children had been killed in a single day by IDF attacks in Gaza.
The small group decided to print out photographs of the children, and stand holding the images silently as an accompaniment to the raucous demonstrations taking place in Tel Aviv calling for a cease-fire that would bring back the Israeli hostages.
Over time their action, Medalia explained, “slowly grew into this bigger vigil that had more than 1,000 people. On each poster there is a picture of a child, their name, their age, where they're from, the day that they were killed. That's it. No political slogans. And they stood in silence.”
She was inspired and impressed by the group’s commitment to remaining silent – even as passersby insulted and cursed them.
Unlike the other films Medalia is competing against, “Children No More” did not make the rounds of the prestigious film festivals to increase its Oscar chances – its path from conception to filming to release was unusually rapid.
“We felt that we could not wait to share with the local Israeli audience and the world.”

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Reports of U.S. anger with Israel for targeting Iran’s oil fields in the intensifying conflict have been “massively exaggerated,” said Haaretz senior defense analyst Amos Harel on the Haaretz Podcast.
While the American president “probably felt that Israel took this a step too far,” Harel said, “the truth of the matter is that the Israelis and the U.S. military are deeply coordinated.”
Regarding the entrance of Hezbollah into the expanding war, Harel said that the Lebanese group is “still quite capable of creating damage” to Israel, which is why the IDF has deployed large-scale force against them with airstrikes across Lebanon. Still, he said, “most of the effort and most of the focus remains on Iran.”
Despite the disruption to life in Israel, he pointed out that in the first 12 days of this war, there has been far less actual damage and loss of life in Israel during the two weeks of war last June.
Also on the podcast, Haaretz Jewish World Editor Judy Maltz visits an underground parking lot tent city populated by Tel Aviv residents without adequate overnight protection from missiles - many of whom were second-time refugees.
“Most of the people I met had been there in June” she said. “When Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran, they just packed their bags and came back. They knew the drill already.”

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Recalling the first day of the war with Iran is still traumatic for journalist and activist Anat Saragusti, whose apartment building in central Tel Aviv began to shake as she ran to seek shelter from Iranian missiles targeting the city following the U.S.-Israel attack that morning.
"I didn't believe my eyes," she says of what awaited her when she returned. "The whole living room was covered with broken glass - the carpets, the sofa, the chairs - all over. It was really so scary."
Matching the shattering of the glass in her home, said Saragusti, who monitors press freedom at the Union of Journalists in Israel, is the ongoing shattering of her trust in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government as the war continues, and her dissatisfaction with what she views as an overly-compliant media.
Most Israelis, Saragusti said on the Haaretz Podcast, are "glued to television screens" where retired IDF generals spout military facts and statistics. "There is no room for alternative voices, questions or doubts" regarding the war and "what the end game will be."
"They promised us in the last war in Iran in June that we destroyed the majority of the infrastructure for the ballistic missiles and the nuclear plan of Iran. Then in nine months, [Iran rebuilt] everything from scratch? I don't understand that. I feel that they are lying to us."
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While the Iranian regime “by and large, needed to be punished” and “did not deserve any mercy,” according to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, it is possible that “a little bit more flexibility” in the negotiations for a nuclear agreement leading up to the U.S.-Israel assault might have meant they “would have resulted in a different way.”
Olmert made his remarks in a dialogue with Haaretz Global Editor Noa Landau, featured in a plenary at the J Street Convention in Washington D.C. – and coinciding with the initial days of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
Olmert expressed satisfaction that U.S. President Donald Trump pushed back on remarks from prominent Republicans that Israel pushed the US into the war and “did not pretend to say that he was fighting for us. He said in the most explicit manner: ‘They are American enemies. This is an American war. I'm fighting for America, and I had to do it for America.’ No one saved Israel, or no one got mixed up in a war in order to save Israel.”
In his dialogue with Landau, Olmert also discussed the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative he is pursuing with former Palestinian Authority foreign minister Dr. Nasser al-Kidwa to “move forward into entirely new realities on the basis of cooperation and mutual respect and compromise and compassion.” He harshly condemned the ongoing and record-setting settler violence in the West Bank as “obnoxious” and “heartbreaking.”
Speaking out against such actions, he added, "is essential if you want, as a Jew, not to be linked to these actions. You have to speak up.”
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