For the first time in nearly two decades in Israel, Jason Pearlman says he feels the ground shifting under the Jewish world, not only because of October 7, but because of what came after it.
Pearlman, the former international media advisor to President Isaac Herzog and previously to President Reuven Rivlin, told the ILTV Podcast that the past two years have revealed a deeper crisis of values, one that is shaping how Israel is covered, understood, and judged abroad.
“I've just marked nearly 19 years now in Israel, originally from the northeast of England, grew up in a place called Sunderland,” Pearlman said. “It's a city where the Jewish people came and were safe during a century when we weren't safe in many other places.”
He described his own journey to Israel as personal and historic, rooted in family legacy and Zionist history.
“My great-grandmother sat next to Herzl at the Zionist Congress in Basel and voted on the Uganda plan,” he said.
Pearlman said his decision to build a life in Israel began early, and in hindsight, he believes it was a warning about where Diaspora life was heading.
“My first decision to come and live in Israel was my first day on campus at a university in the UK,” he said. “I looked around me, and I thought, I don't really want my kids to have to deal with this.”
When he was asked how he became the English-language media advisor to the president of Israel, Pearlman described it as an unexpected path.
“The wand chooses the wizard, Harry. You don't choose the opportunities. The opportunities find you,” he said.
He said he understood the intensity of the job, but not what it would become after October 7.
“Listen, we could never have foreseen, or we didn't foresee, October seventh, and that really did change everything,” Pearlman said. “And I would say it's been a tremendous privilege to be able to contribute, in my small way, to our national effort to bring back the hostages.”
Behind the scenes, Pearlman described both Herzog and Rivlin as deeply personal leaders and said the President’s House itself projects a unique kind of accessibility.
“There's an atmosphere about the President's House,” he said. “It's not an ivory tower like other government buildings. It's part of the people.”
He also shared moments that rarely make headlines, including how quickly world events can upend even the most carefully prepared speeches.
“One of the most interesting things is the speeches that never get given,” Pearlman said, describing cases where a planned address would be overtaken minutes before delivery by a terrorist attack or breaking news.
But the most charged part of the conversation came when Pearlman discussed the foreign press and what he sees as an erosion of moral clarity since October 7.
“I had an extensive debate, a heated debate with a journalist about how much of a person's head needs to be removed from their body, and in what way, before the president can legally use the term decapitated,” he said, referring to the Hamas attack on October 7 and the killing of babies and other civilians. He argued that the same level of scrutiny is not applied to other claims in the region.
He described this shift as “life-altering,” and said he believes the international media has struggled to distinguish between sides in a conflict that, to him, are not morally symmetrical.
“The level to which the international media has sunk in its inability to have moral clarity, for its inability to look at two sides and say these two things are not alike, shakes me to my core,” Pearlman said.
He added that one of the deepest wounds, for him, has been the response to reports of sexual violence on October 7.
“Since October 7, the fact that the international community just refused to believe Jewish women leaves a taste in my mouth,” he said.
When asked what lesson he draws from it, Pearlman framed it as a warning about the forms persecution can take in modern life.
“Just because the forces that are seeking to persecute the Jewish people aren't wearing uniforms and goose-stepping through the streets doesn't mean that they don't exist,” he said.
Pearlman said Herzog was already focused on rising antisemitism globally even before key incidents made headlines, including attacks in multiple countries. He argued that the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora is changing.
“Whereas we used to think years ago, we need a strong Diaspora so they can speak up for Israel, I think that that pendulum has swung,” he said. “Now, actually, we need a strong Israel to speak up for the Diaspora.”
As he looks ahead, Pearlman said he sees his role as a bridge between Israel and the outside world, not only in language, but in culture and politics.
“I've always found myself as a translator between Israel and the outside world,” he said. “And when I say translator, I don't just mean words on a page. It's a cultural translation.”
He ended with a broader argument about what is at stake, beyond Israel alone.
“This is a values issue,” Pearlman said. “I am part of a value system that says freedom. It says individual choice, it says accountability of our leadership.”
And in one line that he said stayed with him, Pearlman quoted a leader from the United Arab Emirates.
“This isn't freedom of speech. It's freedom of hate,” he said.
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