As the Israeli streets explode in protests against the renewed effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to “neuter the judiciary,” Haaretz English editor-in-chief Esther Solomon joins host Allison Kaplan Sommer on Haaretz for an overview and explanation of the charged state of Israeli politics.

The current push in the Knesset to eliminate the “reasonableness standard” which allows the High Court of Justice to block irrational government decisions has been a dramatic turning point, Solomon says, and is just the first step in executing a full overhaul to weaken Israel’s courts in favor of its politicians.

It is all part of Netanyahu’s efforts “to try and appease the most extreme members of his government ever since he set up… the most theocratic and ideologically pro-settler government that Israel has ever seen. And what happens if you sit down with the far-right is that you end up being pulled towards where they are.”

Also on the podcast, Haaretz writer Anat Peled tells the story behind the kidnapping of high-profile Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli citizen who is being held by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, why Israeli academics like Tsurkov take the risks they do when researching the Middle East, and the efforts underway to bring her home safely,