Welcome to +972’s Sunday Recap!

Israeli composer and drummer Regev Baruch recently released “Super Sparta,” an unapologetic half-hour album that channels his revulsion at the Gaza holocaust and cult of Israeli militarism without surrendering the belief that this reality can change. Timna Rose sat down with Baruch in his south Tel Aviv studio to talk about an album that is fast becoming an unofficial protest anthem for Israel’s radical left (originally published on Local Call).

Local Call’s Gil Gertel wrote about a new Adalah report exposing disciplinary apartheid in Israeli academia. Since October 7,  Palestinian students have been suspended for social media posts — often before universities even investigated whether the accusations against them were true — while Jewish students’ calls to annihilate Gaza have gone unpunished.  

Hundreds of Palestinian children have passed through Israel’s prison system in recent years. Jared Hillel tells the story of 15-year old Zaid, who was violently separated from his parents and taken into Israeli custody, where he endured ten months of beatings, starvation and abuse. 

Palestinian parties and politicians have long faced attempts to bar them from Israeli elections. But the disqualification of Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh marked a troubling departure, Samah Wattad argues: Support for banning him stretched from Ben-Gvir’s ultranationalist right to Yair Golan’s Zionist left — and ultimately won both the backing of the attorney general and the Supreme Court. 

And Sebastian Ben Daniel (John Brown) wrote about why “NAZA” has proved so unsettling to respectable Israeli society. By turning its gaze on the prestigious, highly educated soldiers who bear most responsibility for its genocide in Gaza — the film shatters their illusion of moral superiority.

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