202: Haredi or Not, with Miko Peled

The most radical truth in modern Jewish politics isn’t found in Tel Aviv or Washington—it’s in the prayer houses of Haredi communities who have refused Israeli military service for over a century, not out of ignorance, but as a principled, faith-based resistance to Zionism’s violent project. Miko Peled, author and founder of Palestine Freedom House, dismantles the myth of the Haredi as backward or misogynist, revealing instead a resilient, deeply spiritual movement that preserves Yiddish, resists state coercion, and upholds a moral clarity on occupation and genocide that mainstream liberal Zionism has abandoned. Their refusal to serve in the IDF, their fierce protests against forced conscription, and their unwavering commitment to a spiritual, not political, connection to the land position them not as enemies of the Jewish people, but as its most authentic moral guardians. Peled exposes the hypocrisy of secular progressives who dismiss Haredi anti-Zionism while ignoring their shared opposition to state violence, and condemns the Israeli state’s systematic attacks on their religious education and autonomy. The episode erupts into fury at a 2026 op-ed by Haggai Segel—a convicted terrorist who bombed Palestinian mayors and planned to destroy the Dome of the Rock—accusing American Jews of treason for not emigrating to Israel.