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PODCAST

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

"Ask Haviv Anything" is a podcast about history, a podcast you, dear listener, will help to shape and direct, focusing not just on what I want to talk about but on what you want to learn and discuss. Nothing is off limits. We"re going to talk about big and painful things, and also beautiful and fascinating things, wars and identities and painful history. And also more light-hearted things. Humor matters, especially when facing tough subjects. Join me on this journey. A podcast by Haviv

history

All Episodes

01:19:06

Episode 30: How the Middle East broke, a conversation...

Ask Haviv Anything ·

2025/07/21

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour was born and raised in Egypt before fleeing to the United States and dedicating his life to understanding how the Arab world came to be defined by state failure, religious extremism and all the rest of the region's many crises.His conclusions, laid out in a recent essay in the magazine Mosaic, are an extraordinarily innovative new path. It isn't a crisis of internal Islamic failure, as conservative thinkers argue, nor a crisis forged and sustained purely by Western

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00:55:42

Episode 29: After the Druze massacre, can Israel make...

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2025/07/17

The clashes in Sweida in southern Syria this week focused world attention on the plight of the Druze and questions about the nature of the new Syrian government. Videos and claims of atrocities drove hundreds of Golan Druze to rush into Syria to the rescue of their brethren. Israeli strikes in Damascus against Syrian forces raised the stakes and led to questions, including in Israel itself, about how Israel can protect the Druze while not sacrificing an expansion of the Abraham Accords.Rania Fadel

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00:45:29

Episode 28: The Gaza Paradox

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2025/07/14

As hostage talks seem stalled and the war grinds on into its 22nd month, doubts about Netanyahu’s strategy and intentions have become ubiquitous.Netanyahu has given many reasons to distrust him, including his simple refusal to explain the strategy for removing Hamas and Israel’s vision for a post-Hamas Gaza.But it isn’t enough to criticize Netanyahu’s strategy or even to argue he doesn’t have one. To offer an effective critique, critics need to suggest a better strategy for removing Hamas and

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00:55:31

Episode 27: Music amidst trauma - a conversation on...

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2025/07/07

There are many ways to process and manage painful and difficult times. After the massacre of October 7 and the multi-front war that ensued, many Israelis turned to music, and often to the powerful ballads and melodies of singer-songwriter duo (and married couple) Aya Korem and Adam Ben Amitai.Aya and Adam join us in a special song-laden episode to take a look back at 21 months of pain, resilience, solidarity and, in the end, also hope.This episode was sponsored by Bennett and Robin Greenspan of

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00:53:38

Episode 26: How Iran’s regime subverted Shia Islam -...

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2025/07/04

The Iranian regime has long claimed to be the bearers of Shia Islam's vision of messianic redemption. The Supreme Leader, who ruled under regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini's ideology of "wilayat al-faqih," or Guardianship of the Jurist, created a new model of a revolutionary conquering Shiism that was previously unknown in Shia Islam, at least in its Arab version.We are joined in this episode by Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a Shia Muslim writer and analyst in Washington DC and research

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00:47:42

Episode 25: What is happening in Gaza?

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2025/07/01

A bombshell Haaretz report last Friday concluded that IDF soldiers were responsible for a great many of the deaths of Gazan civilians outside aid distribution centers in Gaza.What should we make of the report? How reliable is it? And what does it tell us about the army's handling of Gaza and the progress of the war?This episode was sponsored by an anonymous donor in memory of the seven IDF soldiers who were killed on June 24, 2025, during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip. Their names were:

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01:04:17

Episode 24: With Iran down, Turkey steps into the...

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2025/06/26

(Update: audio issues corrected)Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel. I was an ally and vital trading partner for decades -- until the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the Islamist AKP party, who began pursuing a "neo-Ottomanist" foreign policy of Turkish influence and expansionism in the region, and specifically identified Israel as a long-term ideological enemy.Turkey is now forging alliances on all Israel's borders and looking to found an Islamic defense

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00:46:12

Episode 23: Iran bows out

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2025/06/24

There's now a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Who won the war? And what happens now?We offer some preliminary conclusions as the dust settles.This episode is sponsored by the Peters family, Tom, Shevi, Daniel, Ethan, Arielle, Yoni and David, in honor of BeLev Echad, an organization devoted to helping wounded Israeli veterans recover physically, medically and emotionally. To learn about how you too can help Israeli veterans recover, visit Belevechad.nyc.If you would like to sponsor an episode,

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00:47:18

Episode 22: A new dawn in the Middle East?

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2025/06/22

The United States has struck the Iranian nuclear program, marking a watershed moment for the region.It will take days to determine the scale of the damage and many years to understand the implications of President Trump’s decision. But a few things are already clear. A new relationship was established between the US and its ally Israel that defined a new security architecture for the American-led alliance worldwide. Israel did the heavy lifting, suffered the blowback, and only because it was willing

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00:59:32

Episode 21: Why won’t Haredim serve in the IDF? A...

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2025/06/20

Haredi Israelis make up some 13% of the population but have extremely low rates of workforce participation and military service. The growing welfare subsidies that sustain their communities have increasingly become a source of tensions and frustration for other Israelis, and the multi-front war that began on October 7 has now made their exemptions from military service a major political issue. Israel needs more workers, less welfare spending and many more soldiers to thrive in the future. Can the

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00:35:44

Episode 20: Regime change in Iran? What the 1979...

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2025/06/16

Twenty-four people have been killed in Israel since the outbreak of the direct Israel-Iran war. The Air Force is busy hunting launchers inside Iran to constrain Iran's ability to fire missiles at Israeli cities. Parts of Tehran are being evacuated as Israel continues to hunt down the IRGC leadership and demolish the country's nuclear program.But enormous questions remain unanswered. Can Israel actually destroy the nuclear program all by itself? If it can't, and America doesn't join

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00:36:15

Episode 19: Iran faces a humbler, more dangerous Israel

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2025/06/13

The astonishing Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program was the inevitable result of October 7, a day that convinced Israelis they do not actually understand their Islamist foes, cannot deter these foes and therefore cannot allow them to develop the capacity to destroy the Jewish state, no matter the cost.Israel woke up on October 7. Its enemies had been telling it they plan to destroy it for generations; on October 8 it finally started to listen. And the Middle East will never be the same.This

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00:54:21

Episode 18: Taking on the ayatollahs with Mark Dubowitz

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2025/06/12

The Trump administration has been trying to hammer out a deal to dismantle Iran's nuclear program. In the last 24 hours, the rhetoric has ratcheted up on both sides, as both Iranian and US officials have warned about impending military action.A week ago, we recorded a conversation with Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, on the Iranian regime's strategy, its nuclear aspirations and what it would take to disrupt those aspirations diplomatically or, failing that,

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00:52:36

Episode 17: The Gaza war began 25 years ago, a...

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2025/06/09

Last month marked the 25th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon after an 18-year guerrilla war that presaged everything we now think of as 21st-century warfare.I spoke to Matti Friedman, veteran of Lebanon and bestselling author of a memoir from that long war, Pumpkinflowers, about the history, the lessons drawn from it and how we're seeing the continuing effects of that conflict in Gaza today. This episode is sponsored by Julie and Frank Cohen, who believe that this podcast is a

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00:56:26

Episode 16: Hamas and the broken promise of 150 years...

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2025/05/30

Hamas's rule in Gaza is a theocratic dictatorship. But its roots lie in the 19th-century movement for Islamic reform that believes modernization, science and even political liberalization. How did the great liberalizing theologians of the late 19th century, from Al-Afghani to Abduh to Rida, become Hamas?Join us for a story that raises the startling possibility that the deradicalization of Gaza could come from within.This episode is sponsored by “the Frozen Chosen, Haviv's supportive

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00:20:01

Episode 15: Jerusalem Day, a modern redemption story

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2025/05/26

Jerusalem Day falls on May 25th this year. It is the day of Jerusalem's unification in the 1967 Six Day War, and so a symbol of both Jewish rescue from the genocidal plans of its enemies, a palpable experience of strength and redemption just two decades after Auschwitz, and also a symbol of the perils and moral problems of Jewish power, the day Israel found itself ruling another people.It is the day of the Jews' homecoming to their sacred places, but also of political grandstanding and ideological

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00:48:09

Episode 14: Should Israel give up on international...

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2025/05/18

If the requirements of international law mean that Israel is effectively prohibited from defeating its enemies or protecting its borders, should Israelis turn their backs on international law? Why do we need "law?" Isn't it enough to just do our best to be as moral as possible?After all, the institutions of international law seem so unfair to Israel. Just this past year, Israel was made to stand in judgment, accused of genocide, before a judicial panel whose president hails from an enemy country

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01:19:57

Episode 13: John Spencer on war, morality, politics...

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2025/05/13

After a delay (Haviv got a bad flu), we're happy to share a great panel with Haviv and Prof. John Spencer that took place at the Woodbury Jewish Center in Woodbury, New York on May 7.Thank you to Rabbi Jason Fruithandler and Rob Dwek for hosting, and to the Malin family for sponsoring the speaker series this event was part of.Haviv and John talked about whether victory was in the cards against Hamas, what it would require, and whether Israeli society would persevere; about claims of starvation

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01:02:06

Episode 12: How Qatar gets a free pass for Islamist...

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2025/05/02

Qatar has just 330,000 citizens but controls vast wealth due to its plentiful natural gas. It has used that wealth to support radical and violent terrorist groups and regimes throughout the Middle East and to wield enormous influence in the West, including among American politicians and universities.In today's episode, I asked Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and host of its Morning Brief podcast, if Qatar really is as bad as Israelis think,

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00:50:51

Episode 11: Iran is imploding - A conversation with...

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2025/04/28

As the Trump administration tries to strike a deal curtailing Iran's nuclear program, I turned to Dr. Sharona Mazalian Levi, an Iran expert and proud Persian Jew, to try to take us past the headlines and political elites to the conditions and hopes of ordinary Iranians.Dr. Mazalian paints a dire picture. Desperate shortages of clean water, electricity and gas, a collapsed currency, a third of the population under the poverty line, an oppressive religious police, the highest rate of executions in the

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