The Fathom Podcast

32: Sima Shine, Alireza Nader, and Jonathan Rynhold - Insights from the 12 Day Israel-Iran War

Sima Shine, Alireza Nader, and Jonathan Rynhold consider the achievements of Israeli and American action in Iran. Were the aims to degrade or destroy the Iranian nuclear programme? What do they assess has been the true damage to the programme? What comes next in this war, and what do the latest developments signify in terms of the grip the Tehran regime holds on the country?

31: Tal Becker - Those Who Tried: Conversations with the Peace Processors (7)

Tal Becker is the vice president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he leads educational initiatives on Israel in the Jewish world. He served until recently as a legal advisor with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has been a senior member of Israeli peace negotiation team in successive rounds of peace negotiations. He also played an instrumental role in negotiating and drafting the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. America. In this interview, Becker recounts his time negotiating during the Annapolis process and the Abraham Accords, and shares his insights about creating a better future in the Middle East.

30: The Israel-Iran War: What's Next?

Fathom Co-editor Calev Ben-Dor spoke with Matthew Levitt, the Director of Reinhard Counter terrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Ksenia Svetlova, executive director at ROPES and a research associate at Chatham House. They discussed the current war between Israel and Iran and potential scenarios for how it might play out.

29: Hanin Ghaddar - Lebanon Six Months After the Ceasefire

Six months after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was secured, Fathom editors Jack Omer-Jackaman and Calev Ben-Dor talk to Lebanon expert Hanin Ghaddar, Friedman Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute and author of Hezbollahland: Mapping Dahiya and Lebanon’s Shia Community. Ghaddar talks about Hezbollah’s current strength; whether the Lebanese government will succeed in its aim to disarm the organisation through negotiation; and Iran’s response to the apparent weakening of the ‘crown jewel’ in its regional ‘ring of fire’.

28: Gilead Sher - Those Who Tried: Conversations with the Peace Processors (6)

Attorney Gilead Sher is a former Israeli senior peace negotiator and Chief of Staff to PM Ehud Barak. Formerly a peace negotiator under PM Rabin, he is a Rice University’s Baker Institute fellow and a former senior fellow at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Studies INSS. In 2023, Sher co-founded the Central Resistance Headquarters for the pro-democracy struggle. He has authored three books, co-edited two, contributed numerous chapters in edited volumes and published dozens of articles in Israeli and international media.
In this conversation, Sher recounts the reasons for the failure of the negotiations he was involved in during the Barak era. He argues that personalities and tactical issues were secondary - although he believes Arafat was unwilling to seriously negotiate and make the requisite compromises. Sher explains that too little time was spent trying to resolve all the myriad issues: 'not enough time and not enough continuous effort was put into the purpose of ending the conflict.' He also critiques the 'package approach' that meant nothing was agreed until everything was agreed, and suggests replacing it with a gradual formula whereby what is agreed should be immediately implemented, which Sher believes would create positive traction on the ground, allowing people to realise that something is changing.
In the later part of the conversation, Sher details his current vision for creating a better future for Israelis and Palestinians in the aftermath of 7 October.

26: Koby Huberman - Those Who Tried: Conversations with the Peace Processors (5)

Koby Huberman talks to Fathom about his insights from decades of work in regional peacemaking.

27. Najwa AlSaeed - 'The Gulf wants a non-Iranian aligned Gaza'

Najwa AlSaeed talks to Fathom about Gulf states' desire for a post-Hamas Gaza freed from Iranian influence; navigating President Trump's declared policy of US 'ownership' of Gaza; and the difficulties of being publicly supportive of normalisation with Israel in the Middle East. AlSaeed is a Saudi-born analyst, researcher, and news contributor, with a focus on the GCC and the MENA region. She is Assistant Professor at American University in the Emirates, Dubai-UAE, and a columnist at Al Ittihad and Israel Hayom.

24: Alexander Yakobson - Israel's Wars against Hamas and Hezbollah

Alan Johnson and Calev Ben-Dor spoke to Alexander Yakobson, co-author of Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights and a regular contributor to Haaretz and other Israeli publications. They discuss Israel's wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, including accusations of genocide, starvation as an instrument of war and the explosion of Hezbollah pagers.

23: Itai Anghel - The Collapse of the Assad Regime

Itai Anghel is an Israeli correspondent and documentary filmmaker and a staff reporter for Uvda, a television news program on Channel 12. He mainly covers conflict zones all over the world, including five separate trips to Syria between 2012 - 2019. In 2017 Anghel was awarded the 'Sokolov Award' which is Israel's highest award for journalism. He speaks to Deputy Editor Calev Ben-Dor about the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the blow to the Iranian sponsored regional axis, and Israel's opportunity to ally with the Kurds.
 

22: Michael Walzer - Are Israel's wars just?

Alan Johnson and Calev Ben-Dor spoke to Michael Walzer, the leading American public intellectual and author of Just and Unjust Wars. We discussed the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the charge of 'genocide' against Israel, the question of whether Israel is facilitating enough humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, as well as the pager attacks against Hezbollah operatives, and how Just War thinking applies to the conduct of war by a country in an existential battle against non-state actors.