Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish world — right now.

On March 22, 2022, four Israelis were murdered in a stabbing attack in Beersheba. In the same week, a terrorist shot and killed five civilians in Bnei Brak. Days later in Hadera, another terrorist attack occurred in which two Border Police officers were killed and 12 civilians were injured.

After this bloody week, the IDF initiated Operation Break the Wave, which the army defines as “a counterterrorism operation conducted to thwart future attacks and apprehend those involved in terrorist activities against Israeli civilians.”

It’s been 15 months since the operation's launch and again this week Israel was rocked by a bloody week, including the killing of four more citizens in a terrorist shooting.

So we reached out to Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser. He is the former head of the research division in the IDF’s Military Intelligence division and former Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

Among his other current roles, Kuperwasser heads up The Institute for the Research of the Methodology of Intelligence. And at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) think tank, he specializes in the security dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

According to Kuperwasser, the current flare-up of Palestinian armed violence is not coincidental, but the fruit of a carefully cultivated extremism that surrounds Palestinians on all sides. And the region's many terror groups are all too ready to embrace any volunteer.

“That’s why I’m totally against this idea of lone wolves. These are not lone wolves. These are wolves that were bred by the incitement that comes from all these places. And once you prepare them mentally to be a wolf, eventually they are going to carry out a terror attack,” said Kuperwasser on Wednesday.

In this week of yet another surge in terror, we ask security expert Yossi Kuperwasser, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts.

IMAGE: Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of the research division in the IDF’s Military Intelligence division and former Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs outside the Nomi Studios in Jerusalem, June 21, 2023. (Amanda Borschel-Dan/Times of Israel)