Episode 13: John Spencer on war, morality, politics and the fight for the future.

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 and genocide and the role of propaganda in conflict; about whether Gazans all support Hamas; about the distinction between civilian and combatant and what it might mean for the IDF to be, as many Israel defenders say, the "most moral" army; about Netanyahu's leadership and politicking over the past 19 months; about whether Israel could go it alone on Iran; and finally, about what the rise of a new American antisemitism might mean for the biggest diaspora Jewish community in all of history.

Lots and lots of topics, so it went on a bit longer than our usual episodes.

This episode is sponsored by someone who asked to remain anonymous and to dedicate the episode to someone who fell on October 7. We are dedicating the episode to Yoram Bar-Sinai, architect, kibbutznik and grandpa, who died age 75 in a gunbattle with Hamas terrorists while defending the home of his daughter Ruti in Kibbutz Be'eri. Yoram died in that firefight, but not before forcing the Hamas gunmen to give up on the house, saving his daughter and grandchildren who were inside. May his memory be a blessing.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, friends.
0:06.6	Welcome to another episode of Ask Khaliv Anything.
0:09.0	Thank you for joining me.
0:11.5	Apologies for my voice.
0:12.6	I had a flu for a few days in between flights, and so we are late on this latest episode.
0:20.3	My voice kind of had to recover. But it's good to be with you.
0:24.3	Don't worry. This is not what this episode is going to sound like. This is actually a special episode,
0:29.1	recorded live on Wednesday, May 7th, at the Woodbury Jewish Center in Woodbury, New York.
0:34.3	I shared the stage with my friend and teacher, Professor John Spencer,
0:39.9	who has also appeared on this podcast. The event was part of the Malin Family Speaker Series
0:45.7	at the synagogue, and thank you to them for sponsoring the event. And the discussion was moderated
0:52.2	by our very gracious host, Rabbi Jason Fruit Handler and
0:55.8	Rob Dweck of the Woodbury Jure Center, who also kindly allowed us to post the conversation
1:01.6	onto the podcast. A lot of it I found really interesting. The questions that came up were critical.
1:07.9	We talked about whether Israel has a kinetic military
1:12.1	option for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program without American support, something
1:16.2	that is a really hot topic at the moment, whether Israeli soldiers are guilty of war crimes
1:21.6	in Gaza and whether we can trust international discourse about these kinds of issues because
1:26.4	so much of it seems so ideologized and politicized.
1:30.3	We even got into the future of American Jewry.
1:34.2	Professor Spencer did not opine too much on that question.
1:38.1	That one was mostly fielded to me in this moment where American Jews are experiencing.
	...

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