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While Israel’s seven-front war raged for more than two years in the aftermath of the invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists and thousands of other Gazans on October 7, 2023, many Americans of all political backgrounds, shocked and appalled by the massacre and the mayhem, were desperate for English-language Israeli media that could be trusted to report on Israeli reactions to the horror and the inevitable counter-attack on Gaza and, after Hezbollah initiated its attacks on the Jewish State on October 8, 2023, the counter-attack on the Lebanon-based Iranian proxy army.
There is a lot of English-language media in Israel, but unlike long-time and well-known U.S. news platforms, the reputations of the various Israeli outlets are generally not well known across the U.S. Certainly, there are voices as reliable and objective on Israeli issues and politics as the best reporters and pundits you admire in the states, no matter your political orientation. But, as with American journalism, you have to work a bit to find reliable sources.
Israel’s political spectrum is wider than America’s to begin with, so its journalists are going to be at least as diverse as ours. These are journalists and commentators I follow who can help you understand the landscape in Israel and the rapidly changing Middle East.
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Ambassador Michael Oren is at the top of every list because of his long service as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, his extraordinary output as a scholar-historian and his service in an IDF uniform.
Oren has few equivalents in the United States that spring to mind because it is difficult to discern in Oren any ideologically-driven bias about issues and personalities in Israel. Perhaps General Jack Keane (USA, Ret.), Admiral James Stavridis (USN, Ret.) and other senior retired military who contribute on various networks are as close to American equivalents to Oren as I can come. Like Keane and Stavridis, Oren is a professional, confident in his knowledge and very fair in his analysis. Follow him on “X” at @DrMichaelOren.
Beyond Oren, how to find other voices, especially newcomers, to the American media scene?
Thank God for Dan Senor, an American with family in and deep ties to the Jewish state. Senor had written terrific books on Israel before 10/7, and his podcast, “Call Me Back,” became indispensable after 10/7 because Senor routinely interviewed Israeli journalists and would vouch for their credibility.
Because of “Call Me Back,” I have come to follow and read Haviv Rettig Gur, Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal. Each of these has been of unique value to me, and I am sure, to tens of thousands of other Americans.
Haviv is a force of nature. (He is on “X” @havivrettiggur and has his own podcast “Ask Haviv Anything.”) He is a gifted teacher and as eloquent as any speaker on Israeli history and contemporary issues. Long-time American national security reporter, analyst and podcaster (“Breaking History”) Eli Lake described Gur as a “Gaon,” which in modern Hebrew means “genius” and also, beginning in the 6th century, a title for the leaders of the great Talmudic academies in Babylonia. Either the new or the old understanding can apply to Gur, who has patiently guided American audiences through the conflict, always careful to note the genuine suffering of the innocents in Gaza, and always fiercely dismissive of strawman arguments derived from pseudo-intellectual attempts at describing Israel as a manifestation of colonial oppression.)
Haviv became familiar to American audiences because of Senor, and he was also a frequent guest of Amanda Borschel-Dan on the special Times of Israel podcasts which often ran on a near daily basis. Editor-in-Chief of the Times of Israel David Horovitz also became a key voice on that platform, as did his reporters Emanuel Fabian and Lazar Berman (@amanandabdan, @davidhorivitz, @manniefabian and @lazar_berman, respectively.)
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Also, courtesy of Senor, two Israeli political reporters became regulars on my X feed and occasionally on my program: Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal (@Nadav_Eyal and @AmitSegal). Nadav is to Israeli political coverage as Dan Balz, the recently retired national political reporter of the Washington Post, was to U.S. politics until he retired, whereas Amit may be best understood as very similar to Matt of the American Enterprise Institute and many other platforms. (Gur is 44, Eyal is 47, and Segal is 43 and like Continetti at 44, can join your feed and hopefully bring you serious analysis for another three-plus decades.)
If there was an English-language outlet from among the many platforms in the Arab world that came from a tradition of robust and often bare-knuckled political reporting and analysis, I would list the names of those on whom I had come to rely, but there is not yet a tradition of free expression in the Arab lands as there is in the U.S. and Israel, so counterparts are not available.
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But as the new Middle East emerges from the upheavals and battles of the past two years, add these Israeli voices to your media intake, as well as Yossi Klein Halevi (@ykleinhakevi) and Donniel Hartman of the “For Heaven’s Sake” podcast. Include as well as the daily podcast of Commentary magazine and the many superb offerings of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. These last two suggestions are U.S.-based but display daily a comprehensive grasp of issues in the Middle East.
The new Middle East is exponentially more complicated than red-blue America in 2025. Widen your lens but attach filters for excellence if you want to understand the ongoing massive reordering of a region critical to the entire globe.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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