Haaretz Podcast

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."
Read more:
Op-ed by Anat Sargusti: Israeli Broadcasters Don Uniforms as the Media Becomes an Arm of the Military
Follow the latest updates from Haaretz on the U.S.-Israel war on Iran
One Killed, Two Wounded in Central Israel Following Iranian Missile Barrage, Emergency Services Say
'You Can't Live by the Sword': Israeli TV's Tel Aviv Street Interview Backfires
Iran's Cluster Missiles: What You Need to Know About the Controversial Weapon Targeting Israel
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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.”
Read more:
'I Might Have Forced Israel's Hand': Trump Denies Israel Dragged U.S. Into Iran War After Rubio Comments Draw Ire
As Israeli Defense Officials Push for a Long Offensive, Trump Still Has Doubts
'Both Sides Are Tired of War': Former PM Ehud Olmert Makes Two-state Proposal With Former Palestinian Minister
Police Report Average of Four Daily Incidents of West Bank Settler Violence in Early 2026
The latest reporting on West Bank settler violence
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“It is a time of fear and worry, but also a time of hope” in Iran after the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the early days of the U.S.-Israel assault on the regime in Tehran, said Iranian-American scholar and journalist Arash Azizi.
“The first thing [my family in Iran] told me was that they called me to say they were alive after Tehran was hit, and there are hundreds of civilian casualties,” said Azizi, speaking on a wartime edition of the Haaretz Podcast. Of Khamenei, he said “most Iranians are happy to see him gone.”
Azizi was sharply critical of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s calls for Iranian civilians to rise up and overthrow their regime.
“It's absolutely bonkers,” he said. “If you had a population that had organized networks ready to take over, you could imagine perhaps something like that happening. But we don’t. So both Trump and Netanyahu keep saying this, and it makes me wonder, do they really believe it?”
He also had harsh words for Iranian exiles like himself, who he said were unprepared for this moment. “We have not done the work, we have not built organizations, we did not get our act together in a way that would be ready to make a successful transition to democracy.”
Also on the podcast: Gregg Carlstrom, The Economist’s Dubai-based Middle East correspondent, reports on the growing anger in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sparked by the intensity of the Iranian assault that could fuel support among everyday people to pick sides in this conflict.
“The question is, what does that mean? Is it allowing America to use bases and Gulf countries to carry out attacks against Iran, or is it going a step further and militarily getting involved with their own warplanes and troops? I think it's more likely that they're willing to do the former than the latter.”
Read more:
Trump: U.S. Ahead of Schedule in Iran but Can Extend Fighting Beyond Projected 4-5 Weeks
Three Israeli Teenage Siblings Among Nine Killed in Iranian Missile Strike on Bomb Shelter
Analysis by Amos Harel | As Israeli Defense Officials Push for a Long Offensive, Trump Still Has Doubts
Analysis by Zvi Bar'el | Khamenei's Chosen Successor Could Offer Trump a 'Dream Deal' to End the Iran War
'Fire-Starter' or 'Historical Justice'? How Middle Eastern Media Frames the Iran War
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In this special edition of the Haaretz Podcast, recorded during the first hours of the dramatic joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, and as Tehran began its retaliatory strikes on Israel and on U.S. targets across the Middle East, Haaretz senior analyst Amos Harel joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer for a real-time update and discussion.
"The stakes are much higher than last time," Harel said, referring to the 12 day Israel-Iran war in June 2025. For Israelis, "there is a certain amount of danger," although it is impossible to say at this point how hard the country will be hit by Iran and its proxies. For Iranians, "this is going to get messy and bloody," not only because of the military strikes, but also because of growing clashes between government forces and those hoping to throw over the regime.
Read more on the escalating situation:
How the First Day of the Israel and U.S. War with Iran Unfolded
War for Regime Change in Iran: U.S. and Israel Have Ambitious Aims, but Will Trump Stay the Course? / Amos Harel
'Unnecessary, Idiotic, and Illegal' | After Strikes on Iran: U.S. Lawmakers Split on Party Lines As Congress Left in the Dark
Larnaca or Sharm el-Sheikh: Can Israelis Stuck Abroad Amid Iran War Get Back Home?
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For Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, the financial support and professional opportunities afforded by her fellowship at the Wexner Foundation, which plugged her into a network of the “the most powerful Jewish professionals in the country,” were substantial.
But as a feminist rabbi whose most recent book is titled “On Repentance and Repair,” she felt she could not ignore the disturbing reality of the close personal and financial ties between Leslie Wexner, the benefactor of the foundation, and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, she tells the Haaretz Podcast.
In a personal act of accountability and repentance, in 2019, Ruttenberg – “shocked, disturbed and unsettled” by the early revelations regarding Epstein and Wexner – donated the funds she took from the foundation to an organization confronting sexual violence and challenged others to take similar steps.
There was little reaction to her call at the time. Now, with new details revealed in the Department of Justice release of the Epstein files, she says “my only regret is not speaking out earlier and more forcefully, no matter the cost.”
She warned that “when we try to pretend that none of this is happening, we feed every conspiracy theory. And when we say that who matters are raped children, and when we center the people who are harmed, and when we live the values of our Torah and of every other teaching that we claim is holy, then we dispel those theories, because we become the people who we are supposed to be … the people who are living our values.”
Read more:
Island Visit, NYC Flat and 'Belarusian Girls': Ex-Israel PM Ehud Barak Addresses Jeffrey Epstein Ties
The Ferrari, the Meetings and 'The Redhead': Latest Jeffrey Epstein Files Reveal Ties With Popular Israeli-American Researcher Dan Ariely
Memorializing Jeffrey Epstein? Pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 Confuses Convicted Sex Offender With Beloved Israeli Singer
Life After Harvard: What's in Store for Wexner Foundation's Israeli Leaders Program?
From 2020: Wexner Foundation Named After Billionaire Philanthropist Distancing Itself From Founder
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