Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Welcome to Waiting for 61, JTA's Israel election podcast, where we break down the fundamentals of Israel's 2026 elections, the politics, the players, and what's at stake as the country heads to the polls.

I'm Ami Eden, the CEO of 70 Faces Media, the organization behind the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

And I'm Ruth Eglash, JTA's senior Israel correspondent.

Today marks 15 days until Israelis cast their votes, and we're here to keep you up to speed on the latest twists and turns and give you the context you need to make sense of it all.

One note before we begin.

It's about history, not vocabulary.

JTA stopped using ultra-Orthodox in its copy.

Haredi or Haredi Orthodox.

Their editor, Ami Eden, said he doesn't accept that ultra is inherently negative.

Alison Kaplan Sommer has written for Politico, The New Republic, Foreign Policy.

The Jerusalem Post, the JTA, the Forward, and many other of your very best papers and magazines.

She is a columnist with Haaretz.

You have seen her on I-24 television and Al Jazeera TV, and you have heard her on NPR, PRI, and the BBC, and of course, the Haaretz podcast I just mentioned that she hosts with style and with ilan and with intelligence very often two times a week.

There was one piece that came out in May 2024 in the New York Times by James Kirchick that was titled, "'A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing.'" And there is another piece by Pamela Paul in the Wall Street Journal, which also explores the phenomenon of Jews in publishing amid the genocide in Gaza.

And on top of that, we had a piece by the writer Meg Keene writing in JTA saying that she kind of ran the numbers on this and said, raising the alarm about kind of a worsening situation since October 7th, in which Jewish books, books written by Israelis and American Jews and books with Jewish content and particularly Zionist content were having trouble being published.

The ADL recently entered the chat on October 1st.

which is also the day that the Jewish Currents Report dropped, basically alleging exclusion of Jews, particularly Zionist Jews, in many different arenas of the arts.

I wanna just read a message, brief sentence that I got from Yohanan from jail, uh, the, the other day.

He says, and this is after we informed him that The New York Times had covered his story, that Haaretz, and The Jerusalem Post, and JTA had all written articles favorably presenting the absurdity of the Trump administration's attack on him, which he thought was, uh, was amusing, especially The Jerusalem Post.

And he, and he says, "Thank you very much for everything.

When I know that I did something to help the Palestinians and Jews in this long struggle for peace and liberation, it makes me feel happy, and I know that I am serving God in the best way that I can." I think that is, that is Yohanan's message.