The World and Everything in It: August 4, 2026

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Do U.S. military members need more testosterone?

HEGSETH: It's about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities…

MARY REICHARD, HOST: We’ll have a report.

Also today, a former ambassador weighs in on a second front with Iran.

And, challenges to new guidelines for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.

Later, why one Democratic insider walked away from the party, and who she believes is driving it now.

BARKER: They have more disdain for the establishment Democrats than they do Republicans.

And WORLD Commentator Daniel Suhr on a tried-and-true way to question changing perspectives on Israel.

BROWN: It’s Tuesday, August 4th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Myrna Brown.

REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran latest » President Trump says Iran has one more opportunity to end the war at the bargaining table.

TRUMP: This is the last chance. This is not something that if it doesn't happen... This is the last chance for them to sign a good document

Trump says negotiators could sit down within a day or two. He called off a major strike Sunday, after Gulf states asked him to hold back.

Tehran says it’s not negotiating directly with the US, and is only talking to mediators.

But Trump insists the two sides are talking whether Tehran admits it publicly or not.

And he says if these talks fail, the strike he halted over the weekend is still on the drawing board, and Iran’s leaders are not safe.

TRUMP: I wanna give him every last chance before decapitation. Very tough to do what I, what we have planned, still planned. We'll see what happens

The president said phase one of a new deal would require Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz immediately, followed by talks to end their nuclear pursuit.

Blanche weaponization fund, key vote Tuesday » Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche looks like he now has the votes to win Senate Confirmation, to officially become the next attorney general.

Two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had been holding up the vote. They wanted a written order killing a proposed $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. It would have compensated people found to be the victims of political targeting.

Blanche met that demand, and Republicans John Cornyn and Thom Tillis say they'll back him now. The committee votes today.

But GOP Senator James Lankford says alleged victims of political targeting could still be compensated.

LANKFORD: I do hope the folks that were oppressed by the Biden administration do get justice, and there is a way to do that through the Judgment Fund. We want them to continue to be able to pursue it and to be able to get justice.

The Judgment Fund is a standing pot of Treasury money for legal claims against the government.

Democrats had panned the anti-weaponization fund as a taxpayer slush fund for Trump backers

Spokane fires » Some residents in the Spokane, Washington area have returned to devastated neighborhoods to find nothing more than a chimney and a pile of ash where their home once stood.

CLEMO: By our estimates, we've lost upwards of seven hundred structures. But there's still large question marks about the total loss

Tom Clemo leads the California interagency team brought in to help battle the blaze in eastern Washington.

Roughly 65,000 people were under evacuation orders Monday, with three fires still burning around the city.

CLEMO: The overwhelming amount of damage that has been done in this community, uh, and try to turn the corner and help you recover, it's gonna take a lot of effort, a lot of coordination, uh, and a lot of patience

About 400 people spent Monday night at the Spokane convention center.

FEMA approved emergency grants Monday. Governor Bob Ferguson says the federal govt. is standing by to pitch in.

FERGUSON: My understanding is things are staged here literally in Washington State already on many of the resources I've talked about. So it's up to the federal government, um, but from President Trump to Secretary Molin to FEMA, we've had only productive conversations

So far, no one has died. Deputies took nearly 300 missing-person reports and have cleared all but 14.

Indonesian ferry fire » Rescuers in Indonesia are searching the Java Sea for people missing after a ferry caught fire on Sunday. WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports:

MARY MUNCY: Crews still don’t know exactly how many people they’re looking for.

The ferry's manifest listed 271 passengers and crew, but authorities say more people than that were aboard. They're trying to piece together a count from families and survivors.

Rescuers have pulled roughly 230 people out of the water alive. At least five were confirmed dead on Monday.

The ferry caught fire partway through a 40-hour crossing. Survivors say the blaze started in a truck on the vehicle deck. Flames crossed it in under half an hour.

People jumped, and floated for about four hours before passing ships picked them up.

For WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

Russia blasts southern Ukrainian city » Russia is dropping glide bombs on Ukrainian cities, and Ukraine can't stop them.

Eight hit apartment blocks in Zaporizhzhia, killing a 71-year-old woman and wounding more than 30.

Glide bombs are old Soviet bombs with guidance kits bolted on. They carry up to three tons of explosives.

Ukraine is hitting back deep inside Russia. Its drones burned an oil refinery and a warehouse Monday.

Russian officials claim drone debris killed six people on the Black Sea coast.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up, a plan to boost testosterone levels in the U.S. military. And, a former Democratic fundraiser talks about why she left the party.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 4th of August.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up, Saudi Arabia gets pulled into the Iran war.

As the U.S. and Iran exchange strikes over the Strait of Hormuz, one of Iran’s proxy groups is opening up a second front on another Middle East choke point near the Red Sea.

BROWN: Houthi rebels have controlled parts of Yemen for over a decade. Last week the group launched attacks on Saudi Arabian oil tankers. In response, the Saudis on Thursday announced a defense coalition with nations like Egypt and Turkey to protect shipping in the Red Sea.

REICHARD: What does the conflict mean for the Middle East?

Joining us now to talk about it is Michael Ratney. He was US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2023 to 2025 and has worked in Middle East diplomacy for more than three decades. Ambassador, good morning.

RATNEY: Hi, good morning.

REICHARD: Well, this isn't the first time the Saudis and Iran-backed Houthis have gone to blows. Riyadh led a coalition against the group for seven years before a truce quieted things in twenty twenty two. So what brought that conflict to an end and how would you characterize the peace that followed?

RATNEY: The war was long, it was bloody, there were large numbers of civilian casualties, it was inconclusive and it it created tension with the United States and the Saudis around that time, both because of the inconclusive nature of the war and also because, kind of as a matter of national priorities, they started looking more inward.

They embarked on diplomacy with the Houthis. And it was a complicated thing because, on the one hand, the Saudis recognized a legitimate government of Yemen, most of whom were actually living and operating in exile in Saudi or elsewhere. But they saw no alternative to reaching out directly to the Houthis since their whole priority had become sort of not trying to reach a definitive conclusion of that or any other conflict in the region, but just trying to de-escalate all of the conflicts of the region so that they could focus on their major priority, which had become the internal development of their country.

When this Iran war started, at the beginning, the end of February and early March, the Houthis were sort of in abeyance in a sense. It seemed to me that they were being held in reserve. And think of the Houthis, you know, we think of them, certainly the Saudis think of them as a proxy of the Iranians, and they are in some sense that.

But the Houthis themselves think of themselves quite differently. They think that they are not a proxy of anybody. They're their own Islamic republic on a par with the Iranians. And so while they take support from Iran, in some cases direction from Iran, they do have a bit of an independence streak as well. And there was always this sense that it could get quite dangerous if they became part of it, if they opened another front. And that appears to be where we are now.

REICHARD: So plenty of history to understand there. And then last year the Houthis attacked ships near the Red Sea and the US responded to that, but that seemed to be tied more to the Gaza war, from what I understand. Can you explain what is different this time and how the conflicts in the Red Sea and the Strait are connected?

RATNEY: Sure. When the Gaza War started after October 7th, the Houthis quickly joined in. At first, the Houthis tried to fire projectiles at Israel with limited success. So they started targeting shipping, commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and also at times U.S. naval vessels. It became quite dangerous. The U.S. started a fairly concerted military campaign to put pressure on the Houthis to get them to back off of that, although Trump himself took a different approach, and it's still a little murky, but seemed to have reached some sort of understanding such that the Houthis would stop targeting U.S. ships. Effectively, that front was in abeyance for a while. Now they've started again, not related to Gaza or to Israel, but simply related to their effort to join in with the Iranians to pressure the Saudis, others in the Gulf, directly or indirectly the United States, in conjunction with this war that we and Israel launched against Iran at the end of February.

REICHARD: All right. Saudi Arabia now has organized a defense coalition with thirteen other countries to protect shipping in the Red Sea. Do you think Egypt and Turkey will commit resources or do you think this is more of a symbolic thing?

RATNEY: Yeah, you know, the famous answer is we'll have to see. I know that's not very satisfying, but you know, they assembled this group, and I think that's part and parcel of their approach, which is they need to figure out a way to do it, to to de-escalate, to end the Houthi threat, to ensure that there's no blockade of the Bab-el-Mandeb and their oil can get out to markets. They don't know a hundred percent where the United States is gonna be on that, although the US joined in on these airstrikes against Iranian supported militias in Iraq. It's not clear whether the U.S. is going to be prepared to help police the Red Sea, given all of the other military commitments. So they amassed this group, some of which I'm not even sure they have navies, some of which I'm not sure whether they're fully committed to deploying military assets in the Red Sea to do so. So we'll have to see. It was, I think, a natural diplomatic move for the Saudis, but actually giving it practical meaning is going to be a challenge.

REICHARD: Now you were ambassador to Saudi Arabia when Hamas attacked Israel on October seventh. And at that time, I think the Biden administration was encouraging the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords. And now the Trump administration is tying a civilian nuclear deal to normalizing relations with Israel. So what signs do you see that this might be more likely to succeed if you do?

RATNEY: It doesn't get less complicated, I'm afraid. In the Biden administration, the negotiation was not just about normalization. It was about this kind of big grand deal that would involve Saudi-Israel normalization. It would involve a U.S. Saudi mutual defense pact. It would involve measures of support for Palestinian statehood. At the core was these two things, this normalization deal between Saudi and Israel and a U.S.-Saudi mutual defense treaty. As you suggest, after October 7th, it became much, much more difficult. The Israeli government was not interested in talking about Palestinian statehood, and although the negotiations continued in one form or another, it didn't get over the finish line by the end of the Biden administration.

President Trump came to office feeling as though he had accomplished the Abraham Accords, which was this set of agreements with Israel and the Emirates and Bahrain and Morocco in his first term. And he felt bringing Saudi Arabia into the mix would be a major achievement. The Saudis have not changed their basic price for that, which is, among other things, they need to see an Israeli commitment to a pathway to Palestinian statehood. The Israeli government has not been able to do that for their own political reasons. And for the Saudis, that's just it's impossible for them politically to go ahead. So I don't see I don't see it moving ahead, absent some fundamental change in the approach by Israel at this point.

REICHARD: Michael Ratney is a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and now on the board of governors for the Middle East Institute. Ambassador, thank you so much.

RATNEY: Thank you.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Up next on The World and Everything in It: Preventing teen pregnancy.

On July 14, several advocacy groups including an arm of Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration for overhauling the federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. The move comes after the administration earlier this summer stopped funding groups that normalize teen sex outside of marriage.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The administration also announced funding for programs that encourage abstinence until marriage and teach kids about their bodies. Conservatives say the new guidelines could fill an important gap in sex education conversations.

BROWN: Congress created the grant program, commonly known as TPP, in 2010.

Many groups receiving that grant money partner with public and private schools to teach sex education. The first Trump administration also tried to change the funding guidelines to focus on abstinence with little success.

The latest overhaul makes changes to a common approach to sex education. Here’s Heritage Foundation visiting fellow Melanie Israel:

MELANIE ISRAEL: So under presidents Obama and Biden, a lot of that emphasis has been on, you know, basically this assumption that if youth are going to be engaging in sexual activity then we want them to be safe about it.

REICHARD: Other groups also see problems with sex ed programs that focus too much on contraception and not enough on how the body works.

Diane O’Toole of Boston Pregnancy Center.

DIANE O’TOOLE: There's a huge disconnect in the clients that come through our doors who are sexually active and then surprised that they're pregnant.

BROWN: Grace Stark is editor-in-chief of Natural Womanhood. She says one unique update this time around is an emphasis on what’s called body literacy.

GRACE STARK: Body literacy is basically what it says it is, which is giving young men and women the tools to understand how their bodies work. in a state of health so that they can protect their current health and their health and fertility in the future.

Stark says teaching teens about their reproductive health can empower them to make wise decisions in the long run.

STARK: If we're, you know, throwing condoms at kids and we're talking to them about making good decisions for their future, whether it's their health or relationships, we just can't have a thoughtful, coherent conversation if nobody understands how their body works in the first place.

Stark says changes to the TPP program mirror updates to the Title X family planning grant. She believes the Trump administration hopes to reframe family planning as broader than birth control.

STARK: I think we've done ourselves a real disservice as a society to just slap the family planning label on birth control and call it a day. Because birth control will help you not get pregnant, but it's not going to do anything for you when you want to get pregnant.

REICHARD: The groups suing aren’t mainly arguing about abstinence — at least not directly.

Congress wrote into the program that at least three-quarters of the money has to go to models already proven to work. The lawsuit contends that the new guidelines walk away from that.

The complaint states—quoting here: “HHS’s new policy flouts Congress’s directive that the TPP Program be guided by evidence — not ideology.”

The plaintiffs note that statistics from the CDC show teen births have fallen 59% since the program started.

But Melanie Israel says the decline began long before that.

ISRAEL: The teen pregnancy rate has actually been declining dramatically since the 1990s.

Whether a new approach works better may never get tested. A court blocked the first Trump administration’s overhaul before it took effect.

ISRAEL: In President Trump's first term, they tried to revamp this program a little bit. Well, then you have President Biden come in just a couple of years later and undo it all.

BROWN: Kristen Miele is the founder of Sex Ed Reclaimed, a curriculum for Christian families. She believes consistent talks about sex happen best at home. But she says Christians can still celebrate the changes to this federal program.

KRISTEN MIELE: If the goal is stronger families and fewer children born to teen parents, we should care about what is effective because we want young people to understand, you know, the weight of sex because we believe sex matters.

It’s unclear if this round of changes will stick. The lawsuit is asking a federal court to toss out the overall in favor of the previous framework.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next, does the military have Low T?

In July, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced a new policy.

HEGSETH: I'm authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our service members, ensuring you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Soldiers who have low levels of testosterone will be eligible for synthetic hormone shots.

Advocates say the move will help soldiers maintain stamina. Critics worry about dependency and damage to fertility.

WORLD’s Harrison Watters reports.

HARRISON WATTERS: Pete Hegseth says the policy has several goals.

HEGSETH: …It's about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.

He says service members, starting at age 30, will get screened as part of their annual health exams.

Out of more than a million active-duty members, that’s roughly 370,000 men.

What they’d be looking for in an exam is any number below 350.

Testosterone is generally measured in nanograms per deciliter.

Ideal levels for a man in his 30s range from 500 to 800. And The Endocrine Society says, at that age, any level below 350 is low.

Below age 30, it’s not common.

DR. ADRIAN DOBS: Young men, it's fairly rare, you know, probably about 2% of the population.

Dr. Adrian Dobs is Professor of Medicine and Oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore…specializing in sex hormones.

DOBS: …someone who's 40 to 50, some numbers say that it's as high as 40 percent of the population will have low testosterone levels at least when compared to younger men.

But for men in their 30s, the data suggest that percentage may still be in the single digits.

Some men have genetic conditions, injuries, or illnesses that affect natural production of testosterone. But the FDA does not recommend synthetic testosterone for men with typical age related decline.

Dr. Dobs says synthetic hormones can help restore healthy levels, but also have side-effects.

DOBS: …it decreases the man's own ability to produce testosterone and his own ability to produce sperm.

Synthetic testosterone can cause the systems that monitor natural testosterone and sperm to stop signalling the testes to make more. And if a soldier’s natural testosterone production is down, any interruption to synthetic treatments could cause problems.

If doctors recommend treatment, men in uniform can opt in for testosterone replacement therapy or TRT, for short.

But some soldiers with symptoms of low testosterone may be reluctant to ask a military doctor for help.

CRISOSTOMO-WYNNE : Testosterone replacement therapy can actually affect deployability and eligibility for Special Duty Status…

That’s Major Theodore Crisostomo-Wynne, a urologist for the Madigan Army Medical Center. Last December, he testified on a Food and Drug Administration expert panel on TRT.

CRISOSTOMO-WYNNE: They worry that the stigma and regulation may lead to a hit to their careers, so they may seek care outside the military health system.

Like telehealth care. And illicit supplements.

CRISOSTOMO-WYNNE: And I think decreasing the barriers to prescribing testosterone, to screening for it and treating it, as has been outlined here today, will help to avoid men seeking out these unproven or unsafe alternatives.

In June, Health and Human Services said it plans to change TRT prescription labels to remove what the agency calls outdated warnings about cancer and cardiovascular risks.

Better screening and prescription guidelines could help soldiers over 30 get better treatment. But others caution against treating symptoms like low energy and brain fog as simply a hormone problem. Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary Admiral Brian Christine is a urologist from Alabama.

CHRISTINE: I've seen plenty of men come into my office, particularly young men, who said, "Yeah, I think my testosterone must be low," and they'd give symptoms. When you check their levels, they're fine…

Healthy hormone levels vary person to person, depending on body mass and metabolism. And Christine told the panel many issues young men attribute to low testosterone may be due to other factors—like diet and exercise.

CHRISTINE: We can't simply ever let testosterone be used just to give testosterone without doing the right kind of workup and being good stewards and good caretakers of our patients.

The Pentagon has not said how much the program update will cost. Annual screening could cost anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars…and monthly hormone therapy could cost up to hundreds of millions more.

Dr. Dobs at Johns Hopkins questions the value of the plan.

DOBS: …screening of the entire population of military men is an extreme cost, and it's very difficult to decide what we should do with that information.

Hegseth, though, believes that potentially boosting the fighting capabilities of seasoned soldiers is worth it. His deadline to update the health assessment program is August 15th.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Think your fridge stinks when you’ve been away from home a while? Well, pity the poor folks of St. Mary’s, Newfoundland!

An abandoned seafood plant’s been fermenting 330,000 gallons of fish sauce in a hundred huge vats for twenty years.

Winter storms took out the walls of the building…and those noxious fumes wafted across town.

Last year, Deputy Mayor Yvonne Bishop described it:

BISHOP: I wouldn’t put my clothes on the line because the smell would go through your clothes.

Town mayor Steve Ryan explained the intensity:

RYAN: The worst rotted fish you ever smelled in your lifetime, times it by 10, times it by 20.

Finally, a cleanup crew is draining the tanks, mixing the ick with peat moss, and burying it under topsoil…putting this fiasco behind them… hook, line, and stinker.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 4th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: an insider's account of a changing Democratic Party.

Evan Barker spent years as a fundraiser for Progressive candidates. Her new book, Nothing Left, traces her experience with the party. In it, she explains why she believes today's Democratic Party has fundamentally changed and why she ultimately decided to leave.

WORLD’s Lindsay Mast recently spoke with her. Here’s their conversation.

LINDSAY MAST: I want to hear about that moment when you hit your breaking point. You said it was standing on the floor of the DNC in August 2024. What had you seen or heard there that made you say, I'm out?

BARKER: I'd like to say that my departure from the Democratic Party was slow and then sudden. And that was the moment that everything really hit me that they weren't going to go back to the party that I first fell in love with when I was working for Barack Obama's campaign in 2008. There was a slow disillusionment for me just watching how crazy they went in the years of 2020 and 2021. But, you know, at the DNC, I had gone there hoping that they would not do what they did, by just coronating Kamala Harris. I was hoping for an open convention. I was hoping that it would be a convention about debate and ideas. And instead I saw a coronation and I was very frustrated. My mom and grandma, they live in the middle of the country. They live in Missouri and they also used to support Democrats and have, you know, slowly over time become Republicans, basically. My grandma is a Republican now. My mom supported Donald Trump in the last election. And, you know, they were really struggling financially. And I didn't hear anything related to their lives or what they were struggling with at that convention. It was mostly just empty talk and an extreme focus on abortion. And it did not resonate with me. And I knew at that moment that she was going to lose. And I felt like they had gone so far that I had to leave. And it was a very emotional thing for me. I ended up leaving the convention a day early. I didn't even stick around to hear her speak on the final day.

MAST: I wanna ask a little bit about the rise of socialist candidates. I mean, really now, in many cases, socialist elected officials. That rise over the last year has surprised a lot of people. Did it surprise you?

BARKER: No, it did not surprise me at all because what a lot of people don't understand is that this, like many of the people, the media is talking a lot about the DSA, which they should be, right? But the DSA, the people that are involved in candidates like Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York and Claire Valdez and Brad Lander, they are the same people that have been at this for the past decade. Many of them originally came from the Bernie Sanders movement.

And so they've been working at this now for a decade and they're stronger than ever. And at the same time, it's sort of this perfect storm where the Democratic base has become much more radicalized and much more acclimated to the policies that they're pushing. And so they're truly ascendant. And unfortunately, I think they are the future of the Democratic Party.

MAST: Does that mean that in a sense there's an operation going on here right now? One one that you walked away from? And what is it, if so?

BARKER: It's a very professional operation, actually. It's a network of organizations, politicians, donors, consultants, and operatives whose mission is to remake the Democratic Party from within and to take power of it. That is their mission. And it started after Bernie lost in 2016. And to be honest with you, they have more disdain for the establishment Democrats than they do Republicans. But there is a bigger focus on pulling power aback from the old school Democrats and taking power than there is even even beating Republicans, which maybe makes sense actually when you think about how they push policies that aren't going to appeal to swing voters.

MAST: I think often about the term progressive and then I hear progressive and then we've moved to democratic socialists. Like is the ultimate end here communism? Like what's the end?

BARKER: For some people, yes, that is absolutely their goal. But it's interesting because I don't even know if many of them care that much about economic solidarity. I'm serious. I think for a lot of them it's about power and it's about changing society and culture more than anything else. Like even if you notice the most progressive DSA-aligned candidates right now, like Abdul in Michigan, for example. Like he's not really talking about affordability. He talks about abolishing ICE and doubles down on Defund the Police and has made, you know, they've made Israel like their number one litmus test for this cycle. So it's all very cultural and social to me. Like I don't really even know at the end of the day, if true communism is like … I don't see them giving up their vacation homes or their trust funds. Let me put it that way.

MAST: Well, Evan Barker is the author of Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative. Evan, thank you so much for your time.

BARKER: Thank you, Lindsay.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Recent polling by the Pew Center shows American’s opinions of both the Israeli government and the people have grown increasingly negative since the attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023. WORLD Commentator Daniel Suhr says a new book may help in talking about those views.

DANIEL SUHR: King Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes that there is no end to the making of books. That’s certainly true of books about the current conflict over Solomon’s former kingdom, the land of Israel and the problem of Palestine.

That’s why Roy Altman has accomplished something genuinely interesting in his new book Israel on Trial.

A former federal prosecutor, Altman was appointed by President Trump to the U.S. District Court in Miami in 2019.

His accomplished legal background is the backdrop for the book– he applies the tools of the legal trade to six main arguments at the heart of the Middle East controversy. The method illuminates the conflict in new ways, forcing advocates to more clearly define their terms, sift the evidence, and establish their case.

In a recent interview, Altman explains the basis for the book:

ALTMAN: I have had thousands of conversations with people about Israel, many of whom see the world very differently than I do. And I came to really understand what people were saying. In the end, all the claims about Israel really do boil down to six main claims, and at their core, each of those claims is actually a legal claim.

Legal analysis allows for centuries of human wisdom to be applied to resolving arguments and establishing facts. We have baseline rules that guide lawyers, judges, and juries: who bears the burden of proof? What does the evidence show? Can this witness be trusted, or is their credibility compromised or do their motivations make us question their memories?

Altman applies those standards to six claims about Israel, such as whether today’s Israelis are colonialists, imperialists, or invaders of the land? Does Israel engage in genocide? Was the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 legitimate under international law?

Readers will enjoy following Altman as he combines ancient history, as shown by archeology and ancient manuscripts, with very modern-day evidence like drone footage from a blast site in Gaza, trying to figure out if Hamas or Israel blew up a local hospital.

And while the framework is legal analysis, the book is written for a lay audience, which is fine because in the end most of the law is really just a formalized system of reason and common sense. The book is short – just over 200 pages – but with footnotes that back up every claim, as befits a lawyer’s careful craft.

Altman is himself Jewish, and in the end, there’s no doubt he comes down on the side of Israel. But in reaching that conclusion he equips readers with answers to common objections torn from the pages of the newspaper or the talking heads on cable television.

Israel finds itself on trial every day in the newspapers, the United Nations, and the halls of Congress. Her friends and advocates should come prepared with the best evidence in her defense, which they’ll find in Altman’s Israel on Trial. I’m Daniel Suhr.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: we’ll talk politics on Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker.

And, remembering the legacy of a rock and roll artist.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says,

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth in him.” Verses 7-10 of Ephesians 1.

Go now in grace and peace.

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