Rawan Osman was raised to hate Israel. Now she calls it home, and she dreams of living there as a Jew.

Rawan Osman is a Syrian-born German activist and writer confronting antisemitism in the Arab world.

She grew up between Damascus and the Beqaa Valley, believing the Jew was her enemy. Then she crossed the one line no one from her world is allowed to cross, knowing she could never go back. Today she speaks for Israel to audiences around the world.

The cost was steeper than she expected, and it came from the people closest to her.

At the Kotel, she found herself furious with God. What a rabbi saw in that anger changed how she understood it, and why she keeps walking toward Judaism while her conversion moves through Israel's careful security review.

This is not the story of how she stopped hating Israel. It is the story of what comes after, when you have chosen a people and are still on the road to becoming one of them.

And at the end, Avi Jorisch asks her a question she calls painful.

Statecraft with Avi Jorisch is a production of IEF. Conversations with the people shaping the destiny of Israel and the Jewish people.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

02:15 Looking across the border

04:45 The feisty girl and the nun

06:09 The God she was given

10:03 Not Jewish yet

12:03 Blocked after October 8

16:41 A wine bar in Damascus

20:49 Strasbourg and a collapsing worldview

23:14 Her grandmother's words

27:04 The DNA test

30:22 Why convert at all

36:14 Trusting the process

39:22 What she wants for Israel

46:34 The Palestinian question

50:13 What each side gets wrong

55:28 Lightning Round

1:01:27 What home means

"I'm probably not supposed to, but I will anyway."

Dara Horn is about to describe a meeting she has never discussed in public. Harvard's deans, in one room, and what she calls extremely disturbing.

It opens a conversation with the author of The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living, a New York Times best seller. She argues that antisemitism is a lie, not just a hatred, and that the community has been fighting it with the wrong tool. She describes a coordinated effort to shape what AI believes about Jews. And when Avi Jorisch asks whether American Jews need a Plan B, she refuses the question.

She says the strategy is clear. Almost no one, she says, is pursuing it.

Statecraft with Avi Jorisch is a production of IEF. Conversations with the people shaping the destiny of Israel and the Jewish people.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

02:32 A Jewish Home Built From Scratch

06:40 Tinoket in a Class of Retirees

08:49 The Data Poisoning Plot

12:12 Rethinking What Antisemitism Is

14:33 How People Love Dead Jews Began

17:44 The Premise of The Final Solution

21:54 A Proposal in a Harvard Library

23:49 The Meeting With Harvard's Deans

29:09 American Jewry in 2050

32:55 Irwin Cotler's Warning

39:22 The Plan B Question

45:26 Inside the Tell Institute

49:43 Lightning Round

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum thinks Israel is fighting the wrong war. And she thinks she knows what needs to change.

Born into Gibraltar’s most prominent political family, Fleur trained as a barrister in London before moving to Jerusalem at the height of the second intifada. She went on to serve as deputy mayor of Jerusalem, build bridges in the Gulf before the Abraham Accords, and, after October 7, become one of Israel’s most recognizable voices on international television.

But this conversation goes well beyond the talking points.

At her home in Jerusalem, Fleur tells Avi Jorisch about the political legacy she inherited, the moment someone tried to buy her, what she risked in the Gulf, and the experiences that have forced her to rethink some of her own long-held assumptions. They talk about what Israel is getting wrong, the challenges it can no longer afford to avoid, and why Fleur may not be finished with politics.

She also opens up about the personal cost of public life and the questions she is still wrestling with.

Statecraft with Avi Jorisch is a production of IEF. Conversations with the people shaping the destiny of Israel and the Jewish people.

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome to Statecraft

02:07 The father who built modern Gibraltar

06:27 A decision at 14

08:19 Moving to Jerusalem in the second intifada

12:36 From the innovation ecosystem to city hall

16:20 Why the narrative war has no strategy

20:55 Campus Israel and a possible run

23:13 October 7 and the BBC call

26:21 When someone tried to buy her

29:23 The mind she changed on two states

33:58 The Emirates before normalization

40:16 The personal cost

42:55 What she still wrestles with

45:26 Israel at 100

48:21 Lightning Round

56:45 One final question