Welcome to another episode of Impacting Israel, where we hope to bring you – our English-speaking, Israel-engaged audience, a range of voices not regularly heard from in our circles. I am your host, JJ Sussman, and through my role as the International Director of Gesher, I am privileged to develop relationships with many of these important voices. Today, I'm excited and looking forward to speaking with our very special guest, Yitzik Crombie.

Yitzik Crombie is a seasoned Haredi HiTech executive entrepreneur. He is also the recent author of an important Hebrew-language book “When the Haredim Will be the Majority” analyzing the growing dominant Haredi demographic in Israel. In addition to founding Bizmax Business hub, his other ventures include iSale, the Haredi Hi-Tech forum and Mego. Bizmax – an innovative business center for Haredi men in Jerusalem – is run in collaboration with the Kemach Foundation, the Jerusalem Development Authority, and the Achim Foundation. Bizmax serves as a community and business center that caters to the Haredi community. The hub’s goal is to cultivate and nurture self-employed individuals, business owners, and entrepreneurs, and help them bring their businesses to the next level of success and productivity. He is a past researcher for,the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs. The Machon specializes in strategic planning, development, implementation and promotion of data-based policies and research in everything related to Haredi society in Israel. Yitzik lives In Kfar Chabad, a small village of Haredi people next to Ben Gurion airport, with his wife Efrat and their 5 children.

Today we are joined by Tal Shalev, one of the leading journalists in Israel and chief political correspondent for Walla News, Israel’s largest independent, 24 hour news and analysis website. With years experience as an international reporter, Tal brings insight and nuance to explaining and understanding the political landscape in Israel in a global context. As the daughter of Chemi Shalev born and raised on the news, Tal and her father continue to this day to debate current events and their likely future impacts. Five months into the war, she shares her thoughts on the US / Israeli relationship, the realignment of the Israeli electorate to the right, why the reservists are an unlikely political block unto themselves, and why the bigger issue than Haredim conscription is actually education and integration into the Israeli workforce of the future.

Please listen to our podcast, Impacting Israel, by our host JJ Sussman, to hear the full interview, and Tal’s provocative and candid reflections.

You can find Tal on Instagram here.

Impacting Israel is available on Google, Apple and Spotify. Reach out to me, JJ, with your comments and thoughts at jj@gesher.co.il.

On this episode we were joined by Emi Palmor. As a former Director General and career civil servant in the Israeli Ministry of Justice, Emi has been one of the leading voices in Israeli society fighting for the rights of minorities and for a more fair and balanced justice system for all Israelis. She serves on the Meta Oversight Board helping put its community standards and laws governing conduct on the platform into practice. Among her many professional accomplishments is her work with the legal non-profit Natal, the Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center (https://il.natal.org.il/?lang=en). For the past 26 years, Natal has drawn attention to and provided mental health services to communities and individuals experiencing PTSD.

We spoke with Emi about important topics such as eliminating racism in Israeli society, how to think about effective judicial reform, and the continued importance of addressing PTSD in our civil and military societies during this time of war in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks. Natal was itself on the front lines on that day, receiving calls from trauma victims from saferooms as the horrific events unfolded. Listen and be inspired by what we can each to do help.