Podcast / On the Nose
On the Nose is our biweekly podcast. The editorial staff discusses the politics, culture, and questions that animate today’s Jewish left.
Scrutinizing the Gaza Ceasefire Deal
Duration
0:00 / 31:54
Published
January 22, 2025

On Sunday, Israel and Hamas entered into the first phase of what could become a permanent ceasefire. Under the agreement that led to the pause, Israel will release hundreds of Palestinians, many held without charge or trial, from its prisons in exchange for the release of 98 Israeli hostages by Palestinian militants in Gaza. The deal also allows Palestinians forcibly displaced from the north of Gaza to return to that area, promises a surge in humanitarian aid to a Palestinian population that was starving as a result of Israel’s siege, and leaves open the door for further negotiations resulting in a permanent ceasefire. But significant questions remain about the deal—foremost of which is whether it will lead to the permanent end of Israel’s bombardment and hermetic siege of Gaza, an assault experts have termed a genocide. To discuss why Israel agreed to stop its bombing after 15 months, whether the ceasefire is likely to last, and the future of Gaza’s governance, Jewish Currents senior reporter Alex Kane spoke to analysts Yousef Munayyer and Zaha Hassan.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Further Reading

“A long-awaited ceasefire has finally begun in Gaza. Here’s what we know,” Sophie Tanno, Lauren Kent and Christian Edwards, CNN

“Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable,’” Patrick Wintour, The Guardian
“Ben Gvir says he repeatedly foiled hostage deals, urges Smotrich to help him stop this one,” Times of Israel staff, Times of Israel

“UNRWA said preparing to shutter Gaza, West Bank operations ahead of Israeli ban,” Times of Israel staff, Times of Israel


“Gangs looting Gaza aid operate in areas under Israeli control, aid groups say,” Claire Parker, Loveday Morris, Hajar Harb, Miriam Berger and Hazem Balousha, The Washington Post


“The Pro-Israel Donor With a $100 Million Plan to Elect Trump,” Theodore Schleifer, The New York Times


Transcript

Alex Kane: Hello and welcome to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. I’m Alex Kane, the senior reporter at Jewish Currents, and I’ll be your host. Today, we’re going to be talking about the momentous news that broke last week: Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal in Gaza. The deal’s basic contours are that Israel will release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 98 Israeli hostages held in Gaza by militants. On Sunday, the first exchange happened with three Israeli hostages being released and 90 Palestinians being let out of Israeli jails. Meanwhile, Palestinians displaced from the northern part of Gaza are slowly returning to that area, although many of their homes have been destroyed. The amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza has dramatically increased, and Israel has stopped bombarding Gaza, although soldiers remain within the territory. But significant questions remain, first and foremost of which is whether the first temporary phase of the deal, scheduled to last about six weeks, will lead to the permanent end of Israel’s bombardment, occupation, and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces, which is what the second phase calls for. The answer to that question will have profound implications for Hamas’ future, the stability of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, US foreign policy in the region, and for Israelis and Palestinians on the ground.

AK: When the ceasefire news broke, I got in touch with two of my go-to sources for understanding developments in the region: Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine Israel Program and a Senior Fellow at Arab Center, Washington, DC. Zaha and Yousef, thank you so much for coming on to the show.

Yousef Munayyer: Thanks for having us.

AK: So I guess the first question that I think is on a lot of people’s minds, given that we’ve heard about ceasefire talks ever since this bombardment of Gaza began, is: Why now? Basically, we’ve heard about these talks for so long. There was a week-long pause in November, which broke down, and Israeli bombardment continued. So why is a ceasefire being reached now after so many months of what seemed like fruitless discussion, and in particular when this very same deal seemed to have been on the table since last spring?

Zaha Hassan: There’s three reasons: Trump, Trump, and Trump. This administration clearly had an opportunity back in May when this deal—which is virtually identical, the deal today is virtually identical to the deal that was on the table in May, which Hamas accepted and Israel rejected immediately after. The administration had a chance then to force Israel’s hand in the same way that Trump now is forcing Israel’s hand. The US has amazing leverage. Trump is not even in the White House. But there’s a credibility behind the fact that Trump will use the leverage of the presidency to force Israel’s hand in terms of accepting the deal.

ZH: I say that with qualification, though, because I am very pessimistic about whether or not this is an actual permanent ceasefire deal or whether it’s an attempt to appease Trump with a temporary ceasefire that he can then claim is proof of his success—and proof of the difference between what a Trump administration can do and what a Biden administration can do. That’s because the Israeli governing coalition has put a lot of investment into clearing Gaza of its people and clearing it of the essentials of life. It’s constructed military bases; it has created this buffer zone internally, bisecting Gaza in two. And it’s got plans on the table by members of its coalition that are seeking to colonize, recolonize Gaza. So, I don’t know that Israel will walk away from all of that and walk away from an opportunity that it sees in front of it to permanently deal with the Palestinians inside Gaza.

ZH: But I think there was a lot of pressure on Israel because Trump has an amazing ego, an ego like no other—wants to be able to claim on day one that he was able to achieve a ceasefire. Trump wants to be able to work with the Saudis on a normalization deal, and the Saudis need a stable situation in Gaza and need to see that there is some movement on a peace process that will lead to a Palestinian state, whatever that ends up being qualified by, in terms of Israel’s willingness on that front. And also, Trump had a team in place and an envoy who has relationships in the Gulf, like the Trump Organization does lots of investment there. He has a lot of personal leverage as well as he’s entering to take over the reins of government. So I think there was a sense from Netanyahu that he has to at least present himself as being willing to an agreement and make it look like there is an agreement.

ZH: But we just saw, immediately after the ceasefire deal was signed, more than 70 Palestinians killed, bombing in Gaza. I mean, no ceasefire comes without a price for Palestinians, or no notion of a ceasefire comes without a price. And so, I’m very leery of whether or not we actually have an agreement, but I’ll let Yousef offer what he thinks where we’re headed.

YM: Yeah I certainly agree, Zaha, with all three of your reasons in explaining the timing. I certainly think this is about Trump. I think where I am a little bit more skeptical is about this idea that an agreement was produced in this moment because of some degree of leverage that the incoming Trump administration, through its envoy, was able to bring on Netanyahu. I don’t think that that is the case. I think that is a convenient narrative for some, but I don’t think that that’s what actually went down here. I think the reality is that this ceasefire was going to happen at some point. This exchange deal was going to happen at some point, and one of the few things that the Israelis were actually able to control after October 7 was the timing of that, to a degree. I think they understood on October 7—while they did not want to speak about it publicly, while they didn’t want to acknowledge it, while they were much more comfortable with putting out narratives of total victory and so on and so forth—the conditions were such that it was going to take an exchange deal to get Israelis back out of Gaza. And the question then became: Under what conditions would the Israelis create that, would make it most politically palatable for its current government (a government that was responsible for the worst security disaster in Israeli history) to make that agreement?

YM: And I think that they understood very well that there was an election coming up in the United States. Netanyahu is probably as astute a student of American politics as he is of Israeli politics. They understood precisely what kind of cost the continuance of this war and support for it by the Biden administration was putting on the administration and their re-election chances. And they understood that Trump was waiting in the wings. And so while they had previous opportunities to make this deal, the Israelis understood that there was a reward to be had here from Trump. And I think that they played this out, in a way, along with American politics, and now they are going to deliver for Trump images of Trump being sworn into office alongside images of Israeli hostages being released from Gaza, fitting in with this narrative of Trump having this magical peacemaking power. Remember, he has long said that had he been in office, this never would have happened. Right? He never said, “This is how I would deal with it.” He simply said, “No, if I was in office, this wouldn’t happen.” As if he had some magical capacity to prevent these things from taking place. And lo and behold, much like Ronald Reagan, who came in on his first day of office with the release of American hostages being held in Iran, the second Trump administration looks like it will start with the same optics, courtesy of one Benjamin Netanyahu.

YM: And the question in my mind is: What does Netanyahu get in return for that? We’re going to have to wait and see. He has an extensive agenda. They would certainly like to continue their war in Gaza, which I think is a very real possibility. They would like to expand and escalate violence into the West Bank; they have great designs on annexation there. They obviously have an agenda with Iran, and they would like to see the United States get into direct confrontation with Iran. They see this as a unique moment in which to do that. They have a government in Israel now that’s hard right, a government in the United States that’s hard right. And they’re looking at this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East in a way that ensures Israeli dominance for generations to come. So I think all of this is on the agenda for them. And you have to wonder the extent to which Trump is going to go along with this, and which one of these things he’s going to say yes to. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the Israelis came to the decision that this made the most sense in terms of timing because it was beneficial for them, alongside developments in American politics.

AK: And why do you think Netanyahu wanted to please Trump so much more than Biden? Was it simply that Trump is more friendly to him, so he wanted to give him a gift? What is the explanation for why Trump’s not even in office and his presence contributed to this agreement?

YM: I think Netanyahu understood that Biden was tremendously vulnerable and that he had a degree of leverage over him, and also that Biden was simply not going to call his bluff. And we saw that. We saw the White House, no matter what the Israelis were doing to embarrass them, either on the ground or with their allies, they just kept sending record amounts of military aid to Israel. And he has seen for a year—over a year, 15 months—that the Biden administration was simply not going to challenge the Israelis. He was going to greenlight everything and anything that they would do in Gaza. And if there was any disagreements, alleged disagreements, none of them happened publicly in any way. In fact, we heard the secretary of state come out and say we believe that any daylight, public daylight with Israel was only going to make it harder for the Israelis to come to some agreement. So they were fully on board with enabling what Israel was doing. And Netanyahu knew that. He knew he had them. And so I think he understood that he could play this out throughout the extent of the Biden administration. And then there was the opportunity, right at the very end, setting them up for their relationship with the new Trump administration coming into town this week.

ZH: At the end of the day, Netanyahu is about Netanyahu, and it’s about him staying alive in government and out of trouble—his legal trouble and his political trouble. And while, yes, he would love to be able to say, “I got some hostages out,” at the end of the day, he has to think about his coalition. And now, he’s in a bit of trouble, and it remains to be seen whether he can maintain a coalition and have this go through. So I’m not entirely sure that this was pre-cooked between Trump and Netanyahu. I think it feels to me more like a recognition that he’s got to give him something to be able to take to inauguration day and say, “I did this,” but also trying to balance the situation he’s in politically.

ZH: And what’s really bizarre to me, to be honest with you, is that Netanyahu has so much wiggle room in the ceasefire deal; he could get through phase one and then say, “Oh, Hamas, they’re all over the place again, violating the agreement,” and create a narrative in which there was never a phase two or three. I mean, that’s always on the table. So I feel like this is more about appeasing Trump and giving him the victory that he wants so that there can be some engagement later. And if you think about it, the Trump plans, if you look at his Peace to Prosperity plan, if you think about what his son-in-law had in mind for Gaza—evacuating all Palestinians and having a nice beachfront property for future investments—it’s not so different than Netanyahu’s for the occupied territories. In fact, it was Netanyahu that helped prepare the Peace to Prosperity plan back during the first Trump administration. And so, I don’t think there’s necessarily a disagreement between the two on what should happen in Gaza or what should happen in the West Bank, but I do think there is more of a sense from Netanyahu that Trump has a huge ego and that he can be very unpredictable when you cross him, and do things that you can’t really predict, that could be very detrimental. I mean, it’s this madman notion about Trump. You don’t want the madman to come out. So do what you can do to massage his ego. But at the end of the day, Netanyahu—I agree completely. He’s a very smart strategic actor, both in terms of understanding the US Context and the Israeli context.

YM: Can I just add one thing about Israeli politics really quick—is you have these extreme right characters in the Israeli government. The other day, we heard from Itamar Ben Gvir basically declaring that he alone, on multiple occasions, has foiled several opportunities to get to a ceasefire deal. And I think these characters are sometimes held up as reasons why Netanyahu has not been able to come to a deal. But I actually think the reality is quite the reverse. I think he uses those characters to make the argument that his hands are tied, to make the argument that his coalition will fall apart. It’s one of the reasons why he included those folks in his government. The truth is, in Israeli politics, Netanyahu has a pathway to government without those characters. They don’t have a pathway to government without Netanyahu. At the end of the day, he really has the leverage over them, and he’s been able to use them quite effectively, I think, for these purposes. Right now, the vast majority of the Israeli public wants this deal—not the vast majority of Netanyahu’s coalition or their voters, but the vast majority of the Israeli public wants this deal. And I think Netanyahu sees an opportunity: 1.) to appease Trump, and 2.) to get back some of the hostages that they realize will not be brought back in any other way. And if that means a deal for six weeks and then returning to war, which I think is probably the most likely scenario, I think that’s something that Netanyahu, his coalition, and the vast majority of the Israeli public would find a way to live with.

AK: I wanted to follow up on that last point you said—with both of you, because both of you are indicating some answers about what I think is obviously the crucial question, which is whether this first temporary phase, in which I think 33 Israeli hostages are slated to be released over a period of six weeks in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and then on day 16 of this phase, there will be some negotiation between Hamas and Israel, brokered by US, Egypt, and Qatar about what a permanent end to the war means. So, it seems like both of you are saying you don’t expect the second phase to actually happen.

ZH: I hate to say that’s what I believe, that we will never get to the second phase. And it’s because so many that celebrated up until Israel started bombarding, they were celebrating this idea that maybe there is hope. Maybe there is hope that the bombing will stop, that people will be able to get essential supplies, get food after months of deliberate starvation. Maybe there is a possibility of safety again, and going home again (what’s left of home), and rebuilding. I want to maintain that idea—that there is some hope here. But I just also—the analyst in me has to be realistic about who we’re dealing with and what we’re dealing with in terms of Gaza. Right now, Hamas is celebrating this as a victory. They’re saying: We’re still standing; we got Israel to sign on the dotted line that we can stay in Gaza; we will live to fight another day, that we will be able to get in supplies to the population, that we’re still a political actor; we have damaged Israel’s reputation, we have damaged them economically. There are legal cases now in the Hague on genocide—and they’ve never bowed, they’ve never waved a white flag. So this is the narrative that Hamas has right now, and the Israeli government is aware of this. And if you think about what they had said from the beginning and what they continue to say: Hamas cannot be in Gaza at the end of this. Yet the ceasefire agreement envisions that.

ZH: That’s why I feel certainly we won’t ever get to a phase three. And I have my serious doubts about getting to even a second phase because there is this sense even among the Israeli population that they don’t want to have any more threats coming out of Gaza. And once the hostages are out, they’re fine with doing what needs to be done to ensure that there isn’t any more of a threat. And for many Israelis, a threat is equivalent to the notion of a Palestinian living in Gaza at this point. So, I mean, we need to take all of that in mind and remember that this is month 15 of unimaginable horrors that have been going on; horrors that, in modern times, we have not seen before, in terms of the completely willful killing of people, and starving people, and maiming people, and denying them basic humanity. And I don’t know how you go back from that. So that’s where my pessimism comes, even though I want to celebrate the idea that there is a light at the end of this tunnel.

YM: Yeah, I wish I could say I disagree with you, but I don’t. I’m very skeptical of it. Look, I don’t think there has ever been an agreement that Benjamin Netanyahu has ever entered into that he has not found some way to wriggle out of because of this word, or that word, or this comma, or that period. That’s been his M.O., historically. And this particular agreement is replete with opportunities to wriggle out of it at different stages. In fact, you can see from the way that they’re behaving since it was announced that a deal was reached that they’re already trying to renegotiate terms before it even goes into effect and gets implemented. And I expect that we’re going to see that over and over again, even in phase one. So, I think that there are going to be multiple moments throughout this process where this can fall apart as it is implemented. And I also think this is going to be quite a chaotic several weeks as this gets implemented, particularly within Israeli society, as they begin to digest the fallout from all of this, to assess the strategy over the past 15 months, to understand the costs. And there are already significant debates happening within Israel right now over this deal, whether or not the strategy over the past 15 months has really resulted in a whole lot. And while there are certainly those on the Israeli right, in government and elsewhere, who are going to be itching for a continuation of this war, the question is: To what end? And I think there are some in Israel who will say, “This is our opportunity to try to push the Palestinians in Gaza out to Sinai,” and you may finally have a president in the United States to whom that solution might make a lot of sense, and they may feel that this is our chance to really work with Washington to press the Egyptians to accept this outcome. And they may try it. They may try it, but we’re going to have to wait and see. And as I said, I find it hard to believe that this gets beyond phase one. But I certainly hope and pray, particularly for the people in Gaza who suffered so much, that it holds.

AK: Does the ceasefire have any implications for the future of Gaza’s governance? There is obviously a power vacuum at the moment, which is being filled by humanitarian organizations (including UNRWA, which, by the way, we should say Israel’s trying to cripple and might even force it to stop its operations at Gaza). But again, it’s another speculative question, but what do you think the future of how Gaza is run will be, given the ceasefire and all the uncertainty about the ceasefire?

ZH: I mean, we don’t need to get too far into the future. I mean, just think about this notion in phase one about surging humanitarian assistance and getting aid delivered where it needs to go inside of Gaza after all this destruction, and given how the population is now living, the challenges are enormous, just in the immediate six weeks. Think about the fact that there isn’t the kind of security on the ground that would allow for that kind of surge in supplies. Think about the fact of how the Israeli military has worked so deliberately with gangs to prevent delivery of aid. And how might those gangs operate after there’s a surge? Thinking about how all of the various warehouses that were storing food in Gaza have been looted and destroyed—and how is UNRWA by the end of January, they’re supposed to not have the conflict anymore with Israel and they are going to be unable to really operate on the ground. What is the substitute for UNRWA? So just in the six weeks that we’re thinking about here in phase one, there’s enormous challenges. And then, you get to the notion that you’re going to have a future in Gaza, like future governance. If you listen to the different authoritative (or at least influential, let’s say) think tanks in town—the ones that are particularly connected to various policymakers that have been tapped for the Trump administration—their ideas of governance in Gaza have nothing to do with any national Palestinian representation. They’re looking at local governance. And when they talk about local governance, what will be the local authority will be the gangs that have been working with Israel. So that prospect doesn’t look very good for Palestinians in Gaza, and there is no sense from even the more liberal-leaning people in the Netanyahu government that they would ever countenance a Palestinian Authority. Anything with the word Palestinian or National in its title is not something they want to see. They’re working to actually dismantle the Palestinian Authority and just fragment the Palestinian population further into just localized groups. And so, thinking about the long term is very problematic, given what we know about US policy under the first Trump administration and the way it worked with Netanyahu in reconceiving what peace looks like for Palestinians.

YM: I think it highly depends on what Trump actually wants to do in the White House. Is he going to have some actual foreign policy agenda for the region? Are there specific goals that he wants to achieve, whether it is the grand normalization agreement that the Biden administration tried to advance based on the so-called Abraham Accords, or is it war with Iran, or something else altogether? Or is he going to take the approach of, “I don’t really care. Netanyahu can handle his own business, and I’m going to stay out of the way.” And, depending on which one of those approaches that they’re going to take, I think it will work out differently in Gaza. I think if the Trump administration actually wants to attempt to achieve something else in the region, it doesn’t help for this crisis to continue in an unending way and to only get worse if this ceasefire falls apart, and I think that’s where it is likely to go. This is going to continue to be an issue, if not on Trump’s agenda on the regional agenda, which is going to complicate things for Trump elsewhere if he actually wants to do things in the region.

YM: Now, if he doesn’t, then it can certainly continue and continue to get worse. And he can perhaps focus here in the United States on some of the things that he wants to do, and pretend like the Middle East does not even exist. But I’m not sure that that’s how they are going to go about it. In terms of governance, there’s all kinds of fantasies out there about putting together a couple of clans that are going to run this part of Gaza or that part of Gaza. These are all cockamamie ideas that are being put together to try to come up with solutions for what the Israelis want to do, but they’re not going to actually work. You’re not going to be able to have reconstruction in Gaza without some form of governance, and you’re not going to have stability without reconstruction over time. So these are questions that need to be answered in serious ways. And the slapstick stuff that’s coming out of some of the Netanyahu-friendly think tanks in town are just not going to cut it. So, we will see what happens on that front. But I think the fundamental choice remains with Trump: What do you want to do in the region? And if you actually want to make progress elsewhere, you can’t let this thing go on. And I think if there is going to be change, and it’s scary to say, it’s going to come down to whatever Trump decides he wants to do.

ZH: And just to tack onto Yousef, he has to balance this desire. He has to be the Dealmaker, you know, Deal of the Century 2.0, with this debt he owes to Miriam Adelson to the tune of $100 million. So, he has to do something. Will he be guided by an interest in seeing Saudi-Israel normalization and making that grand deal and having to do something on the Palestinian front that’s meaningful? Because Saudi Arabia, after October 7, they can’t just have any old Bantustan relabeled as a Palestinian state. They really do have to see a meaningful two-state solution. Whether that’s full sovereignty or merely the trappings of sovereignty remains to be seen, but there has to be something that the Saudis can take back to the region in the Gulf and say, “We also came through for the Palestinians in a serious way, taking them from the brink of annihilation back to a national group that has a territory, has a state.” They need that now. The calculations for Saudi Arabia has changed as well. But I think this push from folks like Miriam Adelson, the Christian Zionists in the US, is going to be a really tough balancing act for Trump. And it’s unclear where he’s going to land.

AK: And given that reality, how are you assessing the movement, mostly within the Democratic Party and progressive organizations, to change US policy toward Israel in the Trump era? Does Trump 2.0 present some of the same opportunities that we saw during the first Trump administration, where there was a greater willingness upon Democrats to criticize Israel, or is there something different that we should expect to see in terms of this push to change US policy?

YM: I do think there are some similar opportunities to Trump 1.0. I mean, I think the biggest issue is, over the past four years, any dissent has been directed at a Democratic president, and that has limited how much actual dissent there could be. And there was still a remarkable (and historic, I think) amount of dissent from Democrats that we haven’t seen before, including a large number of senators, for the first time, calling for a halt to weapons to Israel. I think the fact that the person in the White House now is no longer a Democrat makes it even easier for certain people to speak out. And at the same time, that’s going to be balanced out by a number of very strong interest groups and elected officials who want to crack down and silence all dissent. And there has been a huge increase in funding behind these efforts. Zaha mentioned Miriam Adelson’s contributions to Donald Trump, but she’s one of, I think, several major pro-Israel donors who have given a lot to the Trump campaign, and also have an extensive congressional agenda as well, where they want to see a lot of repressive legislation make its way forward, to try to essentially clamp down on any dissent at all against Israeli policy. So those things, I think, are going to be playing out alongside each other. And at the end of the day, this remains part of a growing generational shift. And I think one of the things that’s yet to be seen, and I think it will be quite profound, is the lasting impact that this war has on shaping the perspectives of an entire generation of American voters moving forward, in the ways that major events tend to shape the perspectives of generations for years to come. I think, for the generation that is coming into political consciousness now, this is their starting point of understanding of Israel and US support for Israel, and that is support for a genocide. That’s not something that’s going away anytime soon. And that is something that I think is going to shape politics around this for the next generation to come.

AK: Thanks so much, Yousef and Zaha, for joining us at On the Nose. We’re going to be continuing to follow the ceasefire story at JewishCurrents.org and on the podcast. So please stay tuned for all of our coverage. We’ll see you next time.


Feb 6 2025
Israel’s Ever-Expanding War on the West Bank (38:24)
Alex Kane speaks with journalist Azmat Khan and analyst Tahani Mustafa about Israel’s escalating military assault on the northern West Bank.
Jan 22 2025
Scrutinizing the Gaza Ceasefire Deal (this page)
Alex Kane speaks to analysts Yousef Munayyer and Zaha Hassan about why Israel agreed to stop its bombardment—and why the pause is likely only temporary.
Jan 10 2025
Voices from Gaza (41:37)
Peter Beinart speaks with the editors of the new anthology Daybreak in Gaza.
Dec 19 2024
Preparing for Trump’s Repression (51:15)
Mari Cohen and Alex Kane speak with Emma Saltzberg and Dylan Saba on the coming crackdowns on pro-Palestine organizing.
Dec 5 2024
Jesse Eisenberg's Holocaust Road Trip (39:27)
Arielle Angel, Menachem Kaiser, and Maia Ipp discuss A Real Pain, a new movie about American Jewish cousins who take a trip to Poland.
Nov 14 2024
Volatile Emotions (48:23)
Arielle Angel speaks with Naomi Klein and Hala Alyan about the role of feelings and affect in the movement for Palestinian liberation.
Nov 5 2024
Bipartisan Empire: Foreign Policy, Regional War, and the 2024 Election (01:13:52)
Alex Kane talks to Stephen Wertheim, Maya Berry, and Spencer Ackerman about the presidential election.
Oct 31 2024
The Other ADLs (43:43)
Aparna Gopalan speaks with Mari Cohen, E. Tammy Kim, and Prachi Patankar about the Hindu American Foundation and the Asian American Foundation.
Oct 17 2024
What Ta-Nehisi Coates Saw (40:23)
Peter Beinart speaks with the acclaimed author about his new book, which confronts the reality of Israeli apartheid.
Oct 10 2024
Palestinian Liberation After the Destruction of Gaza (01:01:35)
In a conversation from Jewish Currents Live, Arielle Angel speaks with Noura Erakat, Fadi Quran, Dana El Kurd, Amjad Iraqi, and Ahmed Moor about the future of the movement for Palestinian freedom.
Oct 2 2024
Between the Covers Live: Dionne Brand and Adania Shibli (01:08:22)
In a conversation from Jewish Currents Live, David Naimon speaks with the renowned writers about contesting colonial narratives.
Sep 26 2024
The Dig Live: Internationalism After Third Worldism (01:31:09)
In a conversation from Jewish Currents Live, Daniel Denvir speaks with scholars Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana about the past and present of left internationalism.
Sep 5 2024
Talking About Antisemitism (01:00:55)
Arielle Angel speaks with Ben Lorber and Shane Burley about recent antisemitic trends online—and navigating difficult conversations about antisemitism.
Aug 9 2024
The Killing of Ismail Haniyeh (31:51)
Ilana Levinson interviews Tareq Baconi about the assassination of the Hamas political leader and what his killing means for the prospects of a Gaza ceasefire.
Aug 7 2024
The Escalating Regional War (48:18)
Alex Kane speaks to Trita Parsi and Karim Makdisi about Israel’s assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders—and the likely dire consequences.
Aug 1 2024
Chevruta: Voting (33:56)
Raphael Magarik leads Palestinian American political strategist Rania Batrice in a chevruta exploring the ethics of voting for “the lesser of two evils.”
Jul 25 2024
J.D. Vance’s Foreign Policy Vision (40:12)
Alex Kane talks to Matt Duss and Suzanne Schneider about the vice presidential candidate’s break from neoconservatism and his hawkish approach to China and the Middle East.
Jul 10 2024
The Fraught Promise of Arab-Jewish Identity (49:00)
Jonathan Shamir speaks to Hana Morgenstern, Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud, and Moshe Behar about the potential and limits of Arab-Jewish politics.
Jul 5 2024
Jamaal Bowman’s Primary Loss (27:09)
Alex Kane talks to Ryan Grim and Waleed Shahid about AIPAC’s electoral strategy and the future of the movement to elect leftist Democrats.
Jun 20 2024
“Beyond the Capacity of English to See” (27:50)
A conversation with Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah about his new book, [...].
Jun 13 2024
Synagogue Struggles (51:44)
Nathan Goldman, Cynthia Friedman, Raphael Magarik, and Devin E. Naar discuss the role of politics in synagogue after October 7th.
Jun 6 2024
Religion, Secularism, and the Jewish Left (46:30)
Arielle Angel, Nathan Goldman, Judee Rosenbaum, and Mitch Abidor argue about the evolving role of religion at Jewish Currents.
May 23 2024
The End of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (52:02)
Jewish Currents discusses the conclusion and legacy of an iconic Jewish American sitcom.
May 16 2024
On Zionism and Anti-Zionism (50:58)
As protest encampments have forced a reckoning with the meaning of Zionism, Jewish Currents staffers discuss the different ways they describe their opposition to Jewish statehood and supremacy.