Haaretz Podcast

• Behind the scenes of the explosive Haaretz 'killing field' Gaza expose that Netanyahu called a 'blood libel'

  An explosive expose by Haaretz featured testimonies from IDF soldiers and officers that they were ordered to use live fire to disperse thousands of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza who had crowded the handful of stations set up to distribute humanitarian aid. The story grabbed international attention, and sparked fury among top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who both called the article a “blood libel.” On the Haaretz Podcast, one of the three journalists who wrote the story, Nir Hasson, takes listeners behind the scenes of his reporting, explaining the reasons soldiers decided to speak to him and his fellow journalists. The soldiers’ motivations, he said, were two-fold. First the “moral issue” of being put in the position to use deadly force to stop “hungry people trying to get some food for their family” bothered them. “The second thing they spoke about was the fact that this was not the IDF that they used to know. These were not values of the army that these reservists used to serve in,” Hasson added. “They told me, this is not the way a professional army deals with a civil population. They were very angry at their commanders for telling them to use this kind of tool to control a crowd,” and even refused to employ non-lethal methods like tear gas. Also appearing on the podcast: Haaretz columnist Amir Tibon, who pointed out that the formation of these distribution centers appeared to be aimed at creating such intolerable conditions that Gazans seek to leave, while "doing nothing" to serve Israel's proclaimed war goals – returning the hostages and ridding Gaza of Hamas. The current operation, Tibon said, “is not serving real security interests of Israel, is not helping us get back the hostages, and it is part of a dangerous fantasy that is leading us into a ‘forever war’ in Gaza.” Read more: 'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid Israeli Army Says 'Lessons Learned' From Army Fire Incidents on Gaza Aid-Seekers After Haaretz Exposé A Fatal Failure: Israel's Gaza Aid Policy Leaves Dozens Killed Daily as They Seek FoodSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Why 'emboldened' Jewish settlers are now attacking Israeli soldiers in the West Bank

  Destructive attacks on Palestinian communities by West Bank settlers “emboldened” by support from powerful far right-wing figures in the Netanyahu government have received little attention as the country has focused on the war in Gaza and the recent clash with Iran. Last week, dozens of settlers descended upon Kafr Malik, a Palestinian town north of Ramallah, attacking residents and their property, as well as IDF soldiers who arrived at the scene. The outpost – illegal even under Israeli law – was dismantled by the Israeli army later that night, triggering multiple riots at a nearby army base and police station. The settlers’ attacks on Israeli soldiers sparked widespread public outrage and even condemnation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz. Haaretz West Bank correspondent Hagar Shezaf joined host Allison Kaplan Sommer this week for a behind-the-scenes look at the ongoing tension and the “Jewish terrorists” so dedicated to driving Palestinians off of their land that they are willing to attack IDF soldiers when they stand in their way. Noting that Israelis generally “support the soldiers over the settlers,” she shared insights about the evolving political climate toward violent extremists in the West Bank. “I think in settler society – and to an extent, broader Israeli society, it has become much, much, much more normalized post October 7 – the sense that these people are guarding the land.” Attacks on IDF soldiers, she said, are “obviously always controversial in Israeli society – but attacking Palestinians? Not so controversial anymore.” Subscribe to Haaretz.com for up-to-the-minute news and analysis from Israel and the Middle East in English. Read more: Dozens of Israeli Settlers Attempt to Break Into West Bank IDF Base, Army Source Says Six Settlers Arrested for Assaulting IDF Troops in West Bank; Netanyahu: Bring Them to Justice Five Days After Building an Outpost on the Edge of a West Bank Palestinian Village, Israeli Settlers Drove Locals OutSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Trump forced an end to the Iran war. Is Israel's war in Gaza next?

  Israel’s military achievements in its war with Iran will mean little if they are not “anchored to a diplomatic agreement that will ensure that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons,” Shira Efron, research director of the Israel Policy Forum, said on the Haaretz Podcast. Without such a guarantee, she fears, the “fragile cease-fire” in place will not hold and there will be a regression into the “tit-for-tat war of attrition” that the Trump-imposed cease-fire managed to halt. Bringing the Iranians back to the negotiating table in good faith, however, she said, will be challenging. From their perspective, after they showed willingness to negotiate, Israel and the United States struck militarily. “What incentivizes them to trust the negotiation process again? How do you bring them to the negotiation table and make it clear to them that their situation without a nuclear weapon would be better than having a nuclear weapon? Because they can choose, theoretically, the path of North Korea and say ‘If we had a nuclear weapon, no one would have struck us, so getting one is what we should be doing.’ Our challenge is to make sure that this doesn't happen. And I think it's not going to come only from kinetic strikes. It also has to come from diplomacy.” The quick resolution to the Iran conflict highlighted the depth of the quagmire of the Gaza war, she noted. “The juxtaposition of Gaza and Iran couldn't be more pronounced. You see an adversary that Israel actually feared and prepared for. There were actual goals of war that were defined and articulated, and we knew when to leave on time. In Gaza, we have very unclear objectives of the war like ‘total victory’ and ‘complete elimination’ of Hamas.” Efron admitted that she had held out a “fantasy” scenario in which there had been a backroom deal that when Donald Trump committed to attacking Iran, he had conditioned it on Israel agreeing to end the Gaza conflict. However, she said, based on conversations with Israeli officials, “There are no indications that this condition was there. But there's no question that the president does want to end the war in Gaza. He wants to bring back the hostages.” Subscribe to Haaretz.com for up-to-the-minute news and analysis from Israel and the Middle East in English. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Tel Aviv's underground tent cities: How Israelis found refuge from Iranian missiles

  Israel's decision to attack "regime targets" in Iran like Evin prison, and its open desire to encourage an overthrow of Ayatollah Ali Khameini's government is misguided and potentially dangerous, a top expert on Iran said on the Haaretz Podcast. "I have serious doubts that something positive will come out of it," said Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies' Iran and the Shi'ite Axis Program and a former Iran specialist in Israeli military intelligence. The Israeli military has had "amazing" operational success against Iranian nuclear and military targets, he said, but expressed worry that there appears to be "no exit strategy that will help us preserve our achievements while ending this war" and that the decision to attack targets like Evin Prison, state television and other non-military locations "have been taken very lightly" and "actually might cause us to erode our achievements against Iran." He warned that Israel moving to assassinate Khameini would transform the war "from a political to a religious dispute" and "find ourselves in an endless conflict" that would also fail to spark a revolution in Iran and "do far more harm than" good. Also in this episode, host Allison Kaplan Sommer ventures out of the studio and goes underground into a makeshift tent city in the parking lot of a sprawling mall, where Tel Aviv residents seek nightly protection from Iran's ballistic missiles. The voices from the encampment under Dizengoff Center represent the millions of Israelis caught without anywhere to securely spend the night under fire. "It's humid, the floor is rock hard, there's no good circulation, and there's constant activity even when there's no siren," said Jeffrey Lubata as he settled into a tent for the night with his family. But, he noted, it is safe. This episode was recorded before a cease-fire was announced between Israel and Iran on Tuesday. Subscribe to Haaretz.com for up-to-the-minute news and analysis from Israel and the Middle East in English. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Israel and Iran at war: 'Trump and Netanyahu set a trap for the Iranians'

  The sweeping military success of the IDF's surprise preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities coupled with the devastating retaliatory ballistic missile strikes have left Israelis "feeling triumphant and scared at the same time," columnist Amir Tibon said on the Haaretz Podcast, adding that "the vast majority of the public in Israel support this war." Tibon, Haaretz's former diplomatic correspondent, reviewed the progress of the war over the first week with host Allison Kaplan Sommer, along with the ways he sees the conflict potentially playing out. "The best-case scenario for Israel is either an American attack on the underground Fordow nuclear site or an agreement that causes the Iranians to give up the uranium there," he said. "The worst case scenario is a war of attrition with Iran, in which we continue to bomb them but cannot fully eliminate some of their sites, and they continue to bomb us and wake us up three times every night with ballistic missiles." In retrospect, Tibon said, "the 10 days before the Israeli strike were a joint American-Israeli trap set for the Iranians" in which U.S. President Donald Trump deceptively declared he was pressuring Israel to stand down in deference to diplomatic efforts. Also on the podcast, Professor Amit Schejter, one of the tens of thousands of Israelis stranded abroad after the war shut down Israel's airports, discusses the challenges of finding his way back home. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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