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Israel's Central Elections Committee voted to bar every Arab party from the October 27 election. Jerusalem Post legal affairs correspondent Sarah Ben-Nun explains what happens next. The committee voted to disqualify Ra'am, the Joint List, Hadash MK Ofer Cassif and Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh. It rejected petitions against Otzma Yehudit and the Religious Zionist party Zehut. None of these decisions is final until the Supreme Court rules. Ben-Nun walks through the three grounds for disqualification under Section 7A of Basic Law: The Knesset.  She explains why Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara opposed barring the parties but backed disqualifying Abu Shehadeh over an article he published on October 8, 2023. She also explains why committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg's rare decision to cast a vote matters. "The committee is a political committee," Ben-Nun tells the host Jacob Laznik, "but it is also a really necessary mechanism." She notes that the Supreme Court has traditionally read Section 7A very narrowly and has barred candidates only a handful of times. The conversation also covers the stakes beyond the courtroom. Arab Israeli leaders have voiced fears of voter intimidation, and the Joint List could be thrown into chaos if a faction head is removed after the list deadline. Ben-Nun also explains why a ruling against Abu Shehadeh could set a lasting precedent for political speech during wartime. Throughout, she draws a line between a petition being filed, a committee vote, and a final court ruling, which voters often blur.

Israel is heading into what Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Zvika Klein calls one of its most consequential elections ever, and he explains why the right bloc is in "shambles." In this wide-ranging conversation with Jacob Laznik, Klein argues that Likud's last-minute candidate list, the delayed primary, the fight over "reserved" seats, a former hostage and a top defense figure placed in slots that "make no sense," has quietly hobbled Netanyahu's party even as it leads the polls. He contrasts that scramble with Gadi Eizenkot's disciplined, low-noise campaign, unpacks why the much-hyped "third bloc" collapsed, and walks through the coalition math around Ra'am and the Joint List. On the issues voters actually feel, he doesn't hold back: "It's insane that we don't have a probe. It's insulting." And he lays out what any next government must confront first, the haredi draft, a real commission of inquiry, and an overhaul of Israel's diplomacy and advocacy on the scale of "an Ariel Sharon magnitude" shake-up. It's a candid, insider read on Israeli politics, one that will frustrate partisans on both sides, from the newsroom leader who tracks the coalitions, the polling, and the personalities day to day. Whether you back the current government or want it gone, this is the context behind the headlines.

The UK targeted imports from Israeli settlements, and a dozen countries followed. Symbolic gesture or real economic threat? The Jerusalem Post's editor-in-chief, Zvika Klein, weighs in. In this episode of The Deep Dive, host Jacob Laznik sits down with Klein to unpack the UK's escalated measures on West Bank trade and the coordinated statement from roughly a dozen other governments, with Germany's notable absence. The two don't agree: Laznik argues the economic hit is minimal and the move is mostly "messaging," while the editor pushes back that Israel is misreading its own strength. "We don't see ourselves as strong as we are," he argues, warning that Israel's post-October-7 instinct to answer everything as if it were a military threat is widening the gap between how Israel reacts and how the world sees it. The conversation ranges from the BDS "slippery slope" and the SodaStream boycott that ended up hurting Palestinian workers, to Israel's expulsion of British coordination personnel from Kiryat Gat and what that means for the plan to replace Hamas in Gaza. With Israel deep in an election campaign, both hosts land on a striking irony: sanctions meant to pressure the prime minister may boomerang and strengthen him at the ballot box. It's a candid, occasionally combative look at the difference between a headline and its actual consequences.

Days before Israel's parties lock in their final Knesset lists, most polls show Gadi Eisenkot's bloc ahead of Netanyahu's Likud, and the right is scrambling to hold its votes. Jerusalem Post Knesset and political correspondent Keshet Neev joins host Jacob Laznik on The Deep Dive to break down the mergers, defections and coalition math shaping the race. They dig into the "third bloc" of new right-wing parties pressuring Netanyahu, Ofer Winter's headline-grabbing launch with activist Yosef Hadad at No. 2, and the Gilad Erdan–Yuli Edelstein list that pitched itself as the Likud alternative but never caught fire. Neev also shares the surprise from her own recent sit-down with Naftali Bennett, whose tone on a possible Netanyahu pardon has notably softened since the spring, even as he holds firm against sitting in a Netanyahu government. As she puts it, "the closer we get to the elections, the more nasty it's going to get." The conversation closes on what may be the most overlooked story of the cycle: Mansour Abbas keeping Ra'am out of the reduced Arab joint list while reportedly slotting a Jewish former police chief at No. 2, a first in the party's history that could reshape the coalition arithmetic. With lists due within days and elections set for no later than October 2026, this is the map you'll want before the campaign turns personal.

Everyone thinks the Iran file has stalled. Ex-IDF officer Or Horvitz argues the opposite: a quiet US strategy shift is already underway. In this Deep Dive episode, host Jacob Laznik sits down with JPPI Senior Fellow Or Horvitz, former head of the IDF's Hezbollah and Lebanon desk, to argue that Washington has quietly abandoned deal-making for a "maximum pressure 2.0" campaign aimed at the collapse of the Iranian regime, and that almost no one in mainstream coverage is naming it. Horvitz maps the two camps inside the Trump administration (Secretary Rubio betting pressure topples the regime, VP Vance betting it forces compromise), why he thinks negotiating with today's hawkish leadership is pointless, and how Iran's economic freefall sets a starting point far worse than the first sanctions era. "I genuinely now believe that there is no other way but to topple this regime," he says, while warning, "Iran is a bully, and you cannot appease a bully." Drawing on the Reagan-era pivot from containment to proactive pressure against the USSR, Horvitz explains why change has to come from inside Iran, what the West missed during the January uprising, his fear of a secret nuclear program in the desert, and the historic window opening in Lebanon as a cash-starved Iran can no longer fund Hezbollah. He closes on Syria's new leadership, the growing-but-lesser challenge of Turkey, and a plea to strip Israeli and American foreign policy of election-season politics. Sober analysis with, in his words, cautious optimism.

Host Jacob Laznik asks Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, a Talmud scholar and a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), whether Israel is doing itself long-term damage by deferring everything until October 27. Her answer, before the question is finished: yes. She argues campaign season structurally rewards extremism, and that she watches the bill come due in her day job, sitting across from European partners who quote Israeli ministers back at her. On Netanyahu's apparent silence, she pushes back hard: "He's not playing to win, he's playing to upset the other party." On the right accepting American control over Israeli security decisions, she's blunt, grateful Trump got the hostages out, but "it should have been our decision." Having spent October 7, 2023 as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Siegel makes a case Israel still hasn't absorbed: every Jew abroad is now identified with Israel, whether they chose it or not.

Iran's regime slaughtered its own people in January and the world moved on. British-Iranian journalist Jonathan Harounoff speaks on the people nobody is negotiating for. More than a month and a half after the US–Iran memorandum of understanding was signed, talks remain frozen in what Harounoff calls a Groundhog Day cycle of revived and denied negotiations. The Iranian people were never on the agenda in the first place. Speaking to Deep Dive host Jacob Laznik, he describes a "tale of two Irans" — a regime with a bottomless reserve for missiles and cutting-edge military technology, and a population facing blackouts, water shortages and inflation it cannot survive. His sharpest point cuts against Western assumptions entirely: the Islamic Republic's single greatest strategic asset is that it isn't a democracy. It doesn't answer to polls, petrol prices or public fury, so its strategy is not to defeat Washington and Jerusalem militarily but to out-suffer them in a war of attrition, with the Strait of Hormuz as its bargaining chip. Harounoff spent nearly two years as Israel's international spokesperson at the United Nations, and he is unsparing about what he saw there: a Secretary-General who took two to three weeks to issue a statement of concern after the January killings, when comparable events elsewhere in the region would have produced a response within hours. He argues the deeper problem isn't indifference but access, the longest internet blackout in recent history sealed off the voices that might have forced the story onto the agenda, the gap his book Unveiled: Inside Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt set out to fill. And he closes on the observation that most unsettles Western listeners: the people lobbying him hardest for continued operations against the Islamic Republic are Iranians themselves: At Nowruz parties in Brooklyn, from families with relatives still inside the country. The ones with actual skin in the game.

Netanyahu got his eighth Trump meeting, but no South Portico welcome, no cameras, no one-on-one. Former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz asks what that silence means. Three months before Israelis vote on October 27, Yaakov Katz argues the more urgent question isn't who won the room, it's whether Israel is still in it. Turkey may get F-35s, Saudi Arabia is moving on a nuclear agreement, and the presidents of Lebanon and Iraq received the White House embrace and Oval Office cameras Netanyahu did not. "Is it possible that there's a new regional order that's being written here, that Israel just might not be one of the coauthors for?" Katz asks. On the anti-Iran coalition forming without Israel: "Israel is not being invited to sit at the table." Host Jacob presses Katz on two reports that landed this week: unreleased documentary footage of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, in which Graham questions whether Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are suited to Middle East negotiations given their financial ties in the Gulf; and a New Yorker piece in which former Biden administration officials say they were misled about Israel's plans in Gaza. Katz, who knows many of those officials personally, makes an argument that cuts against both camps: Biden and Trump were both deeply supportive of Israel, and neither will be on the ballot in 2028. Israel, he says, needs to get serious about the America that comes next.

Israeli elections have barely been called and already the Shin Bet is warning of threats to their integrity, AI-generated attack ads are flooding the campaign, and Bibi's own coalition is turning on itself in public. The Jerusalem Post political correspondent Keshet Neev joins host Jacob Laznik on The Deep Dive to unpack the most volatile opening to an Israeli election season in years. They break down President Herzog's warning about election interference, the Likud AI ad depicting Eisenkot embracing Mansour Abbas, and why Eisenkot overtaking Netanyahu in the polls could shift the entire opposition bloc's momentum. As Keshet puts it, "the second that Likud isn't the biggest party anymore… it kind of shifts the sense" of the whole race.

Israel's most turbulent political stretch in four years just collided with an election date. As Netanyahu's Likud rams through two of the most contentious laws in the country's history, host Jacob Laznik breaks down what it means. With the vote set for October 27, the coalition has unleashed a legislative blitz, succeeding where it matters most, on the haredi draft exemptions, over the public warnings of senior officials and the IDF chief of staff himself. Laznik and the Post's breaking-news desk manager, Shir Perets, unpack why these laws challenge Israel's constitutional order, and why they land at Netanyahu's most vulnerable moment The fallout is already visible: Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel has resigned, and Minister Ofir Sofer says he won't run again.

As Trump meets Erdogan and F-35 sales dominate the headlines, former Israeli intelligence colonel Or Horvitz makes a contrarian case: Turkey is a real and growing threat to Israel, but it is not, and will not become, the next Iran. In this conversation with The Jerusalem Post's Jacob Laznik, Horvitz breaks with the alarmist consensus taking hold among Israeli decision-makers. He argues that Ankara "is not Abu Dhabi, but not Tehran either", a pragmatic actor Washington and Jerusalem still have real leverage over, from NATO corridors to the quiet air-force deconfliction seen over Syria. On the F-35 fight, he notes that Israeli officials themselves frame the sale as "very bad, but not a disaster," and warns against turning a manageable disagreement into a public rupture with Israel's indispensable ally. On Gaza, he's blunt: Hamas's move to disband its emergency committee is "only a charade," and the group will never surrender its weapons without military force.

Presidential historian Gil Troy returns to examine the aftermath of the Israel-Iran conflict, Donald Trump’s decision to end the fighting, Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and the uncertain future of the US-Israel relationship. In this hopeful conversation with host Jacob Laznik, Gil explains why declaring victory or defeat may be premature. He discusses Israel and America’s military achievements, the lack of a clearly defined endgame, concerns surrounding negotiations with Iran and the political pressures that could shape Trump’s next move. The conversation also explores growing anti-Israel sentiment in American politics, misconceptions surrounding US support for Israel and why Gil describes Israel as America’s “DIY and ROI ally.”

The US and Iran finalized phase one of talks this week. Israel was not in the room. In this episode of The Deep Dive, Shifra Jacobs (filling in for Jacob Laznik) is joined by Ezra Taylor, The Jerusalem Post's social media manager, for a roundup of a week that may shape the region for years. They unpack what the US-Iran deal actually contains, oil waivers, $12 billion in unfrozen Iranian assets, a reported $300 billion reconstruction fund, and Taylor's central argument that the deal makes the next war with Iran more likely, not less. They walk through research showing Hezbollah's October-7-style plans for the northern border have existed in broadcast form since at least 2012. Then they pivot to a string of antisemitic incidents across continents, Berlin, Haarlem, Manchester, Montreal, and what it tells us about a climate political leaders are still struggling to name.

The US and Iran are days away from signing a deal in Switzerland. Israel has been left out of it. And Yasmin Sayeh — an Iranian-Israeli strategic analyst whose family fled Iran — opens this conversation by saying it plainly: "This is probably the worst deal ever. I cannot believe it." In this episode of The Deep Dive, Shifra Jacobs (filling in for Jacob Laznik) sits down with Yasmin Sayeh — an Iranian-Israeli analyst with an MA in security studies, a member of Forum Dvora, a Persian speaker, and the daughter of immigrants from Iran. Sayeh works to bridge the gap between academic strategy and the human reality inside Iran, and she brings both to bear here. She walks through what the deal does and doesn't address, the way the regime has spent the past months brutally suppressing internal protest, and her conviction that any agreement that leaves the regime intact will simply hand it the resources to attack again — Israel, the Gulf states, and most of all its own people.

Israel strikes Beirut. Iran strikes Israel. Israel strikes Iran. Iran downs a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz. The US strikes Iran. All in roughly a week, and all while a 15-year US-Iran nuclear deal was reportedly days away from being signed. In this episode of The Deep Dive, Shifra Jacobs filling in for Jacob Laznik, sits down with Shir Perets, The Jerusalem Post's senior breaking news desk manager, to make sense of one of the most chaotic news weeks since the start of the war. They walk through the sequence that led from a single Israeli airstrike on Beirut to a multi-front exchange of fire that pulled the United States in for the first time in months, and they unpack what the latest round actually reveals: the central tension is no longer between Israel and Iran but between Israel and the United States.