HeyJaredMiddle East Sh#tshow - MESS
Yossi Alpher is a former Mossad operative and analyst, now in his eighties. His daughter Daniella is a Tel Aviv tech executive.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Aug 28, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 19, 2026
Latest episodes
Not My Zionism (opens the original)
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A listener in New York asked how Yossi became a Zionist, and what he makes of the word now. The answer starts in Washington D.C. in the mid-1950s, with a Jewish education in which the Holocaust took up two sentences and Israel meant nothing at all. It was the Eichmann trial in 1961 that changed everything. Daniella and Yossi Alpher trace one man's Zionism from a kibbutz to the Mossad, and ask what is left of it after 1967, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and October 7.
Sixteen Tons of Concrete: What a Quiet August Actually Means (opens the original)
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August is quiet, and Yossi doesn't trust it. He and Daniella map the fronts: Syria's new president signaling accommodation over the Golan Heights, settler violence turning the West Bank into the region's real flashpoint, encouraged by a government that needs those votes before elections, and why Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis each have reason to break the calm while Trump keeps Netanyahu on a leash until the American midterms. Underneath it all, the strange history binding Israel to the Houthi
Every Front Is Quiet but One (opens the original)
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Gaza is quiet. Lebanon is quiet. Even Iran, from Israel's standpoint, is quiet. So why does the West Bank look like it's being set alight on purpose? Daniella and Yossi examine the fear that Netanyahu wants conflict brewing before the end-of-October elections, violent enough to feed messianic-nationalist fervor, quiet enough to stay off international screens. Plus, the framework agreement with Lebanon and Iran's long arm over it, the funeral that got Bibi into the White House by a side entrance,
The Iran Regime Change Fantasy (opens the original)
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Reports that the Mossad explored working with former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as part of an effort to change Iran’s leadership sound almost too extraordinary to be true. Daniella and Yossi examine the reported plan and ask whether Israel confused its ability to penetrate Iran with an ability to understand and reshape it. Yossi also recalls being asked in 1979 whether the Mossad should kill Ayatollah Khomeini before his return to Tehran.
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