Daily Briefing Feb. 5: In France, PM sees Macron as a hawkish friend against Iran

Diplomatic correspondent Lazar Berman takes the Paris red-eye with Netanyahu, plus final Blinken thoughts; Diaspora affairs reporter Judah Ari Gross on Holocaust film’s censorship

Welcome to The Times of Israel’s Daily Briefing, your 15-minute audio update on what’s happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, from Sunday through Thursday.

Diplomatic correspondent Lazar Berman and Diaspora affairs reporter Judah Ari Gross join host Amanda Borschel-Dan on today’s episode.

We begin with a brief update on this weekend’s rallies, in which tens of thousands of Israelis protested the proposed judicial reforms for a fifth week in a row. Along with the main protests in Tel Aviv, smaller demonstrations were held in rainy Jerusalem, Haifa and elsewhere.

Speaking from the Haifa rally, opposition leader Yair Lapid said the protesters had come “to save the country.”

Berman landed early this morning from France where he flew to report on a meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and French President Emmanuel Macron, their first since January 2020. What are the headlines?

President of Chad Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno opened a new embassy in Tel Aviv last week. What makes this opening so historic?

The Times of Israel sat with CEO of the Conference of Presidents William Daroff last week in our Jerusalem offices. What struck Gross from the wide-ranging discussion?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region last week and Berman wrote an analysis that states that maybe his statements promoting democracy should be heard in a different light.

And finally, Gross describes what happened when the northern city of Harish canceled the screening of a Holocaust documentary because the film’s subject, Alfred Hirsch, a German Jew who saved children in Auschwitz, was openly gay.