Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan.

This week, we speak with The Times of Israel's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur about the controversial Netzah Yehudah battalion that is on the docket for blacklisting by the United States under the 1997 Leahy Law.

In August 2022, Israeli troops from the religious Netzah Yehuda battalion were filmed beating two Palestinian detainees in the West Bank in a video posted to the TikTok video-sharing site. Three soldiers were seen repeatedly kicking two Palestinian men near Ramallah as a fourth soldier stands nearby. They were suspended and investigated.

This well-publicized beating came months after the death of Omar As’ad, a 78-year-old Palestinian-American who died after being detained, handcuffed, blindfolded, and later abandoned in near-freezing conditions by soldiers of the battalion.

As Washington is increasingly clamping down on extremist Jewish settler violence in the West Bank, the State Department probed Netzah Yehuda and several of the other units in the Israeli security forces for well over a year due to alleged human rights violations.

While the State Department looks into thousands of allegations of Leahy Law violations each year, it created a special panel known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum that exclusively vets allegations against the IDF and Israel Police due to the political sensitivity of the issue.

So this week in which an IDF unit may be defunded by the United States, we ask Haviv Rettig Gur, what matters now?

With contributions from Jacob Magid.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.

IMAGE: Israeli soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda Battalion patrol near the Israeli-Gaza border, October 20, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan.

In a post-October 7 Israeli reality, is any new security threat outside the realm of imagination?

This week, when over 300 projectiles were sent from Iran to Israel, we pose this question to journalist and hit Israeli drama "Fauda" co-creator Avi Issacharoff.

Legions of fans around the world know of Issacharoff’s fiction writing from the popular television series, loosely based on his experiences in the IDF’s elite Duvdevan unit, that is written alongside "Fauda" star Lior Raz. (We'll hear a story of their post-October 7 real-life bravery during our conversation.)

But Issacharoff is first and foremost a long-time, die-hard journalist and analyst of the Arab world -- one who has put his life on the line in the past to cover a story.

We pick Issacharoff’s brain as we unpick the knotty situation Israel is currently facing with enemies on our borders, and Iran as a puppet master who is coming increasingly closer to a nuclear bomb.

So this week, we ask journalist Avi Issaharoff, What Matters Now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.

IMAGE: Mideast analyst Avi Issacharoff, one of the co-creators of the Israeli TV drama 'Fauda,' (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan.

Speaking in our Jerusalem office, The Times of Israel editor David Horovitz offers a rare in-depth look at the professional challenges and personal conflicts he’s faced in covering the war against Hamas for the past half year.

Horovitz gives a candid survey at what it is to run a site that, following the surprise October 7 Hamas infiltration of southern Israel and massacre of 1,200 people, jumped 600% in its readership to become, according to news site Press Gazette, the fastest-growing news website in the world in October and November.

The Times of Israel's 24/7 coverage remains unabated as we mark six months of war.

So this week we ask Times of Israel editor David Horovitz, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.

IMAGE: David Horovitz, editor, The Times of Israel (Amanda Borschel-Dan/ToI)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.