Zehava Galon, former head of the left-wing Meretz Party, who served in the Knesset for 16 years, is also the child of Holocaust survivors. For this reason, she finds it personally painful to see Israel’s government refusing to explicitly condemn Vladimir Putin and refraining from sending arms to Ukraine. 

“We have to protect the rights of people around the world – people who need our help,” says Galon, who now heads the human rights organization Zulat, on the latest episode of Haaretz Weeekend. In an interview with host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Galon also discusses the state of Naftali Bennett’s “coalition of change” and how many bitter pills she believes the left should be willing to swallow in order to keep it intact. 

Later on the podcast, Haaretz technology editor Omer Benjakob explains the latest revelations regarding NSO Group and its Pegasus spyware. While most of the headlines in recent years have focused on how authoritarian governments are using the Israeli spyware, new reporting shows that even democratic countries are not immune to the dangers of the surveillance age.