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- [00:04]
Podcast Host
You are listening to an art media podcast.
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Deborah Pardes
It's Wednesday, August 12th. This episode was recorded at 7:00pm New York time on Tuesday. I'm Deborah Pardes and this is Ark News Daily. There's been little progress made on Iran's nuclear program, but the US Is seeing some success elsewhere in Syria. On Monday, Axios reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA will soon remove nuclear materials stored at a secret site in Syria. Israeli officials call it site 99. They bombed it back in 2007 and mostly destroyed Syria's nuclear program. But it still contains some nuclear material, including yellow cake. That's a powder from uranium ore that is not wet weapons grade, but it's the kind of raw material that could be fed into the enrichment process. For more than a year, Israel has told Washington it won't tolerate that material sitting there. According to Axios sources, it threatened to strike the site again. Syria's government said it didn't even know the material existed. But a few weeks ago, Israel reportedly detected activity suggesting Syria was trying to access the site and suspected Turkey might be helping. That suspicion is uncontrollable, confirmed, but it's what analysts say pushed the US to bring in the IAEA rather than let Israel respond on its own. Adrienne Fricke is a researcher at Harvard's Middle East Initiative and a member of the Syria Transition Lab. She told us the fact that the sides agreed to secure this material is considered an extraordinary development.
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Adrienne Fricke
The current climate involves unchartered territory, and with that comes tremendous opportunity, but also a significant amount of risk.
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Deborah Pardes
She explained that after 14 years of civil war, the Syrian people are tired of fighting and hungry for economic development.
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Adrienne Fricke
Ultimately, Syrians are very mercantile and very practical, and I think they see opportunities in the conditions that we're living through right now to develop economic opportunities and strengthen political relations with all kinds of countries. And if beginning conversations with Israel helps support the feeling that they are a partner that can be dealt with, then it lines up with their incentives.
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Deborah Pardes
Syria's new leader, Ahmed Al Shara, was once an Al Qaeda militant. He cut ties with the group in 2016, and when he took power in 2024, he said he was focused on reuniting his and reviving its economy. Then in November of last year, he became the first Syrian leader to visit the White House in decades.
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Podcast Host
He's a very strong leader. He comes from a very tough place and he's tough guy and we'll do everything we can to make Syria successful because that's part of the Middle East.
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Deborah Pardes
Less than a year later, Trump notified Congress of his intention to remove Syria from its list of countries it considers state sponsors of terror. His administration has now helped push forward this new nuclear agreement, and just yesterday, Syria's government sentenced Bashar al Assad to death for crimes committed during the civil war. That marks the first legal conviction against the ousted leader since the regime's fall. All of it seems like positive momentum for a country that's trying to rebuild, but it's too early to say whether it's a permanent shift and a real transformation for the Middle East. Many of New York's rabbis have openly said what they think about their mayor's rhetoric, but this week they said it directly to his face. On Monday, Mayor Zoramdani sat down at city hall with 10 rabbis spanning Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Modern Orthodox congregations. They held an hour long closed door roundtable organized by his office to combat antisemitism. The message, according to several attendees, was uniform. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, put it this everyone agreed that the current course can't go on. The way he vilifies Israel and so constantly is really causing harm. Even rabbis who are themselves highly critical of Israel's government, told the mayor his tone, the frequency of his criticism and his calls to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are alie the very community he says he wants to protect. Rabbi John Lenor of Prospect Heights Shul in Brooklyn, who describes himself as a proud Zionist, was also in the meeting on Monday. He said the tone was respectful, Mamdani listened and responded with care, and City hall called it an open, positive and constructive conversation. Lenor told the Jerusalem Post he left cautiously hopeful, but said he'll judge the administration by their actions and by the they deliver, starting with whether synagogues and Jewish schools actually get more of the police presence rabbis asked for. The word resilience is often thrown around to describe the Israeli spirit. Our next story may just capture its essence most clearly. On Monday evening, a crowd gathered at kibbutz near Oz, just a mile from the Gaza border. This kibbutz had around 400 members. On October 7, 2023, a quarter of them were murdered or taken hostage. That day, 64 never returned. But on Monday, for the first time, it felt like the kibbutz came back to life. 3,000 people gathered on the huge green lawn in the center of the kibbutz for a concert, most of them sitting on picnic blankets, some on plastic chair. The invitation for the concert featured a photo that had been broadcast all over the world. It showed the face of kidnap kibbutz member Sagi Dachel Khen, with the words Bring them back home written in red above it. Sagi stepped onto the stage surrounded by some of the most famous musicians in Israel. And for the first time publicly, he described what happened to him on the morning of October 7th. It was also the first time he shared his story in front of his young daughters, who were sitting right there in the audience. His eldest is just nine years old. He described what he heard the moment after Hamas terrorists shot him outside his home and breached his family safe room. He switched between Hebrew and English so that his young girls wouldn't fully understand the horrors.
- [07:24]
Sagi Dachel Khen
And then some shit happened. Gunshots, terrorists screaming, explosions.
- [07:34]
Deborah Pardes
After being wounded and dragged from the kibbutz into Gaza, he mostly tried to convince himself that his family hadn't been killed. He held onto that hope for the next 498 days, which he spent captive in Hamas tunnels.
- [07:50]
Sagi Dachel Khen
Just. Just the day before my release, I found out that my wife and daughters are alive and that my wife had given birth to our third daughter.
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Deborah Pardes
That's Agui speaking at an event in Florida six months ago. Since returning, he has made a point to thank everyone who's helped secure his release and to support the families and the hostages that were still left behind.
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Sagi Dachel Khen
This. This song is a song I sang myself many times underground, on the very
- [08:21]
Deborah Pardes
grass of the kibbutz where the atrocities took place. He chose to sing the songs that saved him. These are songs he wrote and sang himself. Sagi's music is filled with a deep longing for simplicity, for routine, for family closeness and for freedom. But it also touches on the devastating pain of waking up from a sweet dream into the harsh reality underground in Gaza. Right after the show, just yesterday morning, the album was released. It's called Minus One, and it features nine tracks, including one dedicated to each of his three daughters and another to his wife, Millie. Itai Mountner directed Sagi's concert on Monday. We asked him if he saw the evening as a victory.
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Itai Mountner
I think it's more like in the Greek tragedies. The final part of the tragedy is always catharsis. It's always this ending that once you went through the pain and the suffering and the hurt and the evil and all the dark sides of life, then maybe you might come outside on the other side with more sympathy to the world, with more understanding, with this inner feeling that brings you calm.
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Deborah Pardes
A link to Sagi's new album is in the show notes. I'm Deborah Pardes and this is ARK News Daily See you tomorrow.
- [10:32]
Dan Sonor
Hi, it's Dan Sonor. Israel is heading into one of its most consequential elections, and this time, the whole world is watching closely. Hot takes and daily noise are pretty much guaranteed to populate your media diet. But as with any election, there's a deeper story about identity, religion, democracy, and what kind of country Israelis want to live in. That's why ARC Media launched Israel Votes, a special initiative across Call me Back for heaven's sake. And ARK News Daily. You'll hear from the leading candidates shaping the race, along with analysis and reporting from two of Israel's leading political analysts, ARC Media contributors Nadavael and Amit Segal join us for Israel Votes, your front row seat to the election that could define Israel's Future. Go to arkmedia.org votes to watch and listen. See you there.