Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs Podcasts

More than once, Jonny Gould’s Jewish State has circled back to a previous episode with startling new revelations. In episode 88, I sat down with my old friend, Jonathan Freedland to discuss his latest bestseller, The Escape Artist, about the two young Jewish men who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of the horrors within. Rudolf Vrba and Alf…

“Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world.” is a brutal sentence from the start of “Rise and Kill First”. Our guest is Ronen Bergman, author of the New York Times bestseller, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It’s the product of a thousand interviewees, some of whom Ronen quiz…

This is my second sit-down interview with Trevor Horn and you’ll hear why it’s nothing like the first time. The previous one (episode 43) made an impression with Wikipedia’s editors, who included Trevor’s “I believe in Judaism, more than I believe in anything else” as a reference.On leaving last time, Trevor told me at the door, "no one ever asked …

This is Sarah Idan’s story, Sarai more informally and publicly. She used to enter beauty pageants “to help bring people together”. But as Iraq’s winning Miss Universe in 2017, she got much more than she bargained for. Sarai’s new life as a renowned Human Rights campaigner started there and then, when she took a selfie with Adar Gandelsman, particip…

These are the sage words of President Isaac Herzog as Israel's Head of State tries to bridge the gap between his people, the biggest schism in the young country’s history.Jonny poses the questions and well-positioned experts and well-positioned protestors present opposing arguments.PLUS we have an exclusive interview with Professor Avi Bell from th…

The unedifying scurry by BBC management to get Gary Lineker back on air after suspending him, diffuses both a row with its staff and kicks the can of impartiality into the long grass. A couple of tweets by the BBC’s lead football presenter brought down the entire coverage of the Corporation’s TV and radio sport for a weekend. Lineker compared the g…

A shining light in the shimmering city.“If you build it, they will come”, said Kevin Costner in the baseball movie, Field of Dreams – and there’s a similar vision for BNJC, Brighton & Hove’s new Jewish community synagogue and residential property development.There are around 4,000 to 5,000 Jewish people in the East Sussex city and this audacious pr…

Big things are happening in the United Arab Emirates, really big things. As the nation which reached out to Israel in the most expansive expression of peace yet with an Arab partner, it’s time Jewish people understood more about this nation.Abu Dhabi is the stage for a new era of religious pluralism. The Emirati capital has opened the Abrahamic Fam…

Israel's judicial reform row is proving an awful spectacle for the watching world.I wanted to find voices of moderation and considered opinion - and in particular, within the ruling Likud Party: is there anyone willing to stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu over the division this is causing?As a diaspora Jew, I look on in dismay at the threat to unity o…

Emily Schrader was back in London with Yoseph Haddad on a whistlestop UK speaking tour, which included a nasty confrontation with pro-intifada students on campuses in London and Nottingham. Scroll back an episode for one of his energetic and hopeful speeches from the tour.Emily is an American-Israeli journalist and opinion former, a regular on the …

Yoseph Haddad is an Arab Israeli who believes with body, mind and soul in his country.And by his country, I mean the State of Israel, Yoseph joined up with StandWithUs UK at one of London’s oldest continuous communities, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in west London. Being counterintuitive, Yoseph is the target of constant protest, even death…

This is a truly heroic story which starts in Holocaust disaster and heads to the glory of winning Europe’s greatest football prize. David Bolchover is the author of a biography on Bela Guttmann, “The Greatest Comeback, From Genocide to Football Glory”. David recounts the story of Bela, the ultimate Jewish footballing hero, who survived to become a …

Uri Geller went around the world, found and fame and fortune and has now returned home to Israel. Before Gal Gadot and Lior Raz, who was Israel’s biggest celebrity? Uri magnetised the world - literally - with his amazing feats of showmanship. Jonny Gould’s Jewish State wouldn’t be complete without a record of the life of Uri Geller!So what’s he doi…

A new era has started for your favourite Jewish podcast: http://www.jewishstate.radioJonny Gould's Jewish State is now also a 24-hour radio station.Featuring the best interviews from the series and the very latest news from the Middle East and beyond, Jonny Gould's Jewish State Radio aims to engage an even bigger audience who want to hear different…

John Ware is the BBC Panorama documentary maker who took on the Corbynites - and won.His 2019 documentary “Is Labour Antisemitic?”, which was aired on BBC1, launched three long years of bitter legal struggle. It’s unusual for a journalist to sue for defamation - but everything was at stake for John - from his own reputation to the basic principles …

“Being a Zionist is the path to peace”.There is hope in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Dr Einat Wilf is a deep thinker on the Israel’s ever present challenge: the pursuit of existence in peace and security.It was an honour to host the Q and A session for StandWithUs UK as Einat addressed London's South Hampstead Synagogue. She was born in Jerusal…

Mumford and Sons were huge. Over 14 glorious years, Winston Marshall and his friends rocked stadia in front of hundreds of thousands of adoring fans and headlined Glastonbury! If you remember all the bearded hipsters and the tweed the kids were rocking, it’s likely they were listening to the Mumfords on their AirPods. But Winston left the band in 2…

This is the second podcast of discussions from a first ever trip to the United Arab Emirates.I attended the Global Media Congress in the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi, an impressive showcase of regional media with a clear message: “The UAE is reaching out to the world in peace and cooperation”.Amjad Taha is a well-known influencer in the Gulf Cooperat…

What do you know about the United Arab Emirates? Want to know more of Israel’s newest and perhaps most important partner in peace? I’ve just returned from my first ever trip to an Arab nation. I went to the capital, Abu Dhabi, to the Global Media Congress, a highly impressive showcase of regional media - with exhibitors from further afield includin…

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem with an ambitious eye on the future.Her flying visit to the UK gave us a chance to chat on Jonny Gould’s Jewish State for the second time.Another year to go in office in Jerusalem, but will she stand for another term? There’s a Likud government to be a part of - and given her unique background, what …

You’ve never heard a story like this. Catherine Perez-Shakdam lives in the UK. She was born and raised in France and also lived in Yemen and Iran. While living in Tehran and married with kids, she mixed in the regime classes, socialising, even going on pilgrimages to Iraq.Nothing unusual about that, you say. But Catherine is Jewish, of French Sepha…

The decades old Israel-Lebanon maritime border dispute is making headlines again with the planned Israeli start-up for drilling for offshore gas in Karish in the Mediterranean.But escalating rhetoric from Iranian-sponsored Shiite terror group Hezbollah threatens war. Their leader Hassan Nasrallah claims some of Karish sits north of Lebanon’s border…

Jason Greenblatt joins us for a second time as he looks on at how the Abraham Accords has matured since those historic signings in 2020.In our last instalment, Jason had just left Washington DC after co-writing President Trump’s "Peace to Prosperity Plan for Palestinians and Israelis" with Jared Kushner and US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.I…

The Elizabethan Age draws to a close. Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest serving monarch passed away peacefully at Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire on Thursday 8th September 2022 after 70 years on the throne. Her loss is indescribable and her passing has sparked the most extraordinary outpouring of grief from across the world. But what did she m…

Hillel Neuer is so often the lone voice talking truth to power at a United Nations seemingly on interminable mission creep. Western countries are loosening their resolve in countering dictatorships.And worse still, power groups inside the UN Human Rights Council are trying to silence him.Hillel is Executive Director of UN Watch, the human rights NG…

She’s one of Britain’s most successful and irreverent writers.I met Julie Burchill at one of her favourite places on the Sussex coast - in Hove, actually, her home town for the last 27 years.Julie started her glittering career at the NME in 1976, aged 17 and left when after just two years as she thought that people in their twenties who still wrote…

Only four Jewish prisoners ever escaped the vicious SS guards, their ferocious dogs, rows of tall electrified fences and men on watchtowers wielding automatic weapons of Auschwitz-Birkenau. But Walter Rosenberg, just 19-years-old used knowledge, cunning and patience to do what no Jew had done before. He and Alfred Wetzler, in his early twenties, es…

Our guest today is a Rabbi raised in Kharkiv, Ukraine from the age of 6 months, it’s pretty much all he’s known. Rabbi Mendel Moskovitz moved there as a baby with his parents, Moishe and Miriam as his family servedas Chabad emissaries to rebuild Jewish life in Kharkiv, following the fall of Communism. Graduating as a rabbi in Sydney, Australia, Rab…

Our guest today is Douglas Murray, best-selling author of The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity and Islam and The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity - and now The War On The West, how to prevail in the age of unreason.All the narratives and assumptions which underpin our understanding of the western societies we grew up in ar…

Ambassador Ron Dermer and Ed Husain addressed a live audience for StandWithUs UK, which I hosted in Central London. These two friends were instrumental in creating the pathway which led eventually to the Abraham Accords.This was no ordinary occasion and I won’t forget posing the questions, just as those in attendance will remember being there. We t…

Len Khodorkovsky is an American story. The same one repeated throughout generations of Jewish history. And his comes from today’s Ukraine where in 1981, young Len and his refusenik parents and grandparents fled the Soviet Union for the USA.Because by 2017, Len took an oath of office in the US State Department. “That’s quite a trajectory”, he says w…

The National Jewish Assembly's held its inaugural reception for brand new members and interested parties at London's Jewish Museum in Camden Town.CEO James Marlow and Chairman and founder Gary Mond were joined by members of the new advisory board to outline their plans and directions.So why has this all come about?What’s wrong with Anglo-Jewish lea…

Our guest today is Israel Bonds executive director of sales and operations in Europe and Latin America, Arnon Perlman. It’s never been easier or more accessible to invest in the State of Israel. This episode explains how (and you can follow the link below to do so). Arnon’s led a life of public service in Israel. Before joining Israel Bonds, he ser…

Malcolm Green, filmmaker, innovator and storyteller who targets new audiences with new medium. “Finding Abraham” is his movie on how the most important diplomatic breakthrough of our age is filtering down to ground level across the Middle East.It follows a trip through Israel with the “Leaders of Tomorrow, a group from Israel, Bahrain, the UAE, Egy…

"If you erase the Jewish connection with the Holy Land, where does it leave us? Islam just floats in the air".Our guest today has an unequivocal message of peace between Muslims and Jews and his solution comes from faith and identity - from religion, not secularity.His name is Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, also known as the Imam of Peace. He has an extrao…

When it comes to Israel, there’s no more powerful a journalistic voice across the Arab world than Edy Cohen. This is his one-man story.You likely won’t have heard of Edy, but note the name, because he tweets mostly in Arabic. Edy has half a million Twitter followers, almost exclusively in the Middle East and North Africa.Educating, informing, enter…

When Tuvia Tenenbom’s in London, it’s always a pleasure to catch up with him. The Taming of the Jew, Tuvia’s book on British antisemitism and Anglo Jewry’s approach to it was showcased at London’s Jewish Book Week. And while his dim view of British Jewish leadership is pretty much the same as when he was finalising his findings back in 2019, the wo…

What an excitement to have a very sudden opportunity to talk to Professor Dershowitz.My friend Lawrence Ryz dropped him an email on my behalf, he said “yes”, I sent him a Zoom and off we went.And the conversation was as vibrant as it was rich in anecdotes. Just need to talk to him again after this.Among the Jeffrey Epstein/Prince Andrew trial, we d…

Yosef Haddad and Emily Schrader educate the world and rebut the lies told about the State of Israel.They’re an Israeli couple who are engaged to be married, but that doesn't mean they're a Jewish couple. Yoseph is an Arab Israeli from Nazareth while Emily, who’s Jewish is originally from Seattle, Washington in the US.They are both implacably commit…

“I’m a proud Babylonian Jew”. Carol Isaacs is an author, cartoonist, accordionist and keyboard player. This is a wonderful creation matched by a wonderful conversation with Carol. And she’s poured every part of her extraordinary musical and graphic gifts into recounting her family‘s history in Babylon across 2,600 years. “The Wolf of Baghdad” is a …

As Israel's skies reopen to the world, it's time to reacaquaint ourselves with Israel's national airline, El Al.This is the story of two torrid years for the airline industry, just as things were getting really good for air travel in early 2020.So how did El Al deal with the darkest days of Covid lockdown, what lessons did they learn from this unpr…

While the Prime Minister fended off opposition derision and revolt from a few of his own backbenchers with his statement on Sue Gray’s pandemic partying, I was upstairs awaiting our guest who was in the chamber listening to Boris’ party piece. But it was peace of quite another kind I’d come to Parliament to talk about - with The Right Honorable Dr …

Did Saul Singer and Dan Senor imagine their best-selling book, Start-up Nation, would reframe Israel’s brand - even its perception - right across the world? The book describes our guest today as “one of Israel’s legendary business ambassadors… whose taken on a role that anywhere else, would typically belong to the Chamber of Commerce, Minister of T…

Are you a member of a mainstream Orthodox Jewish community? Do you regard yourself as a “liberal” whether your political views are left or right? How should we include Jewish LGBTQ+ people in our communities? At the moment, they live on the fringes of the mainstream, neither included or excluded. Is that fair? Would it be so difficult to accommodat…

What has happened to American foreign policy since Joe Biden took the presidency from Donald Trump?Is every despot in the world emboldened by the shocking withdrawal from Afghanistan?And what does this mean to Israel as it faces the existential threat of Iran edging closer to nuclear capability? As the latest round of JCPOA talks between Iran and t…

He’s been the youngest ever chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee with a military career served in Iraq and Afghanistan.Tom Tugendhat MBE MP is an Arabic speaker and a fervent supporter of Israel who names of one the Jewish state’s Prime Ministers as a political hero(ine), Golda Meir.He takes this opportunity to pay tribute to the small ban…

A crowd of around 250 gathered to hear Gideon Falter of the Campaign Against Antisemitism demand of the BBC, “Where is the proof? Tell the truth”.This is about a bus load of Jewish people heading down London’s Oxford Street in high spirits, dancing and singing celebrating Chanukah - only to be attacked by an aggressive group of men shouting anti-Zi…

Beatie Deutsch, elite marathon runner, Israel’s three-time national champion, Olympic and World Championships hopeful, face of the Adidas “Impossible is Nothing” campaign - and Orthodox Charedi mother of FIVE. She won the 2021 Tiberias Marathon, which she called “a useful practice run”. Her running style and extraordinary pace isn’t the first thing…

President of Israel Isaac Herzog’s visit to Great Britain in November 2021 set a new high mark in the nation-to-nation relationship.His Excellency met the Prince and Princess of Wales, who themselves just returned from a Royal tour of the Middle East in Jordan and Egypt and an exhibition at Chelsea FC, honouring elite Jewish athletes murdered in th…

Today’s guest is the UK Ambassador to Israel, His Excellency Neil Wigan. Britain and Israel have never been closer. Values are converging in the post-Brexit and the Abraham Accords eras: two nation states with common values, industries and defence challenges.And Ambassador Wigan is the embodiment of that; he’s married to an Israeli, Yael and they h…