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- [00:04]
Podcast Host
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [00:13]
Deborah Pardes
It's Wednesday, june 24th. This episode was recorded at 6:00pm new york time on Tuesday. I'm deborah pardes and this is arc news daily. New York held its Democratic congressional primaries yesterday. The result are still coming in as of this recording, but the races themselves are a window into how big Israel has become in the Democratic Party. The highest profile contest was in New York's 10th congressional district, which covers lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. It's one of the most Jewish districts in the country. The candidates are Brad Lander and Dan Goldman. Both are Jews and progressive on most domestic issues, but with regard to Israel, they fall on different ends of the widening within the Democratic Party. Lander is the former New York comptroller who endorsed Mamdani. He's accused Israel of genocide and he said he would vote to end U.S. military aid. He's also accused his opponent of being beholden to aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and that's drawn support from a segment of the Democratic base. A poll in May had lander up 34 points, which is notable in a district that has historically been a stronghold for centrist, pro Israel Democrats. Goldman has tried to neutralize Lander's attacks. He's a former federal prosecutor who led the first impeachment of Donald Trump. He opposes banning aid to Israel and is backed by both AIPAC and J Street. He called the criticism of AIPAC a dog whistle doing real damage to the Jewish community. At the same time, he said he's returned donations he's received from them and has tried to shift focus away from Israel to more kitchen table issues. Mamdani has given his support to Lander, along with two other progressive candidates who are all critical of Israel. At a rally last week in Brooklyn, Mamdani made his pitch explicit. He called for the Democratic Party to grow a backbone and called AIPAC monsters.
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Mamdani
They move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal to preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. We need not live in fear of monsters any longer.
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Deborah Pardes
When pressed about the comments later, Mamdani insisted he use the term monsters not just in reference to aipac, but to describe any group that was preserving the status quo, which he called immoral. This week also gave us a moment that illustrated just how charged the atmosphere has become. Goldman stopped into a Brooklyn coffee shop called Poetica, the owner of the cafe later posted about it on Facebook, saying he refunded the coffee and that they don't serve, quote, genocide enablers. The Justice Department later said it had opened an investigation into the cafe for potential civil rights violations. Even Lander said the coffee shop had crossed a line. Results are expected to come in through the night and into the morning after this recording. What they show will tell us how deep Mamdani's influence is and how far the Democratic Party has moved on Israel as the US and Iran continue to negotiate, Israel and Lebanon have been doing the same, trying to find a solution to the ongoing fighting with Hezbollah. They opened a fifth round of negotiations at the State Department in Washington on Tuesday. At almost the same time, there were new clashes in southern Lebanon. The IDF said it fired on Hezbollah operatives who posed an immediate threat. Lebanese Civil Defense confirmed two people were killed. Hezbollah called it a blatant violation of the ceasefire. It's the same pattern we've seen over the last few months of the war. Clashes on the ground While talks continue, the latest focus in those talks is on creating pilot areas where Israeli forces would partially withdraw and allow the Lebanese army to come in and try to actually disarm Hezbollah. Israel's ambassador to the us, Yahael Leiter, is representing Israel in the talks. At the opening of the session yesterday, he called the negotiations a train in danger of derailing. His concern is that Iran isn't just a bystander. Leiter argued that as long as Iran maintains its influen in Lebanon, Hezbollah has both the backing and the incentive to keep attacking. Despite the supposed ceasefire, he said Hezbollah feels stronger and bolder, not weaker. A team of researchers at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and Stanford have discovered a new type of cell that protects the body. They're calling it a ruptoblast and the way it works is unlike anything scientists have seen before. As the name suggests, ruptoblasts protect the body through rapid controlled self destruction. They literally explode to destroy the threatening cells around them. Researchers called it a huge inflammatory response, like there's a fire and an alarm goes off and the cells just blow up. The effect was tested in the lab on bacteria and even human cancer cells, and the ruptoblast successfully wiped all of them out. The research was led by Professor Benjamin Rosenthal at Ben Gurion University and his partner Bo Weng at Stanford. They discovered the Ruptoblast almost by accident and spent eight years researching it. Rosenthal told us the discovery could be a scientific game changer.
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Professor Benjamin Rosenthal
The idea here is that when you discover a new mechanism, you can discover new materials, new ways of destroying abnormal cells that you need to destroy in different conditions, from bacterias to cancer cells to other tiss you need to be able to use.
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Deborah Pardes
Of course, there are still many questions about these cells, how they work and the specific ways they could treat diseases. Rosenthal says that will be the next step in their research. But it's exciting news and a reminder that even as Israel navigates one of the most turbulent periods of its history, its scientists are still doing work that could change the future of medicine. And some of those scientists are also soldiers in the IDF Reserve. I'm Deborah Pardes, and this is ArkNews Daily. See you tomorrow.
- [07:13]
Daniel Hartman
Hi, I'm Daniel Hartman, president of the Sholem Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
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Yossi Klein Halevi
And I'm Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the Sholem Hartman Institute.
- [07:21]
Daniel Hartman
What's more important? To be feared by your enemies or morally true to yourself?
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Yossi Klein Halevi
Should Israel strive to be a nation among nations? Or should it accept the fact that it is now a fortress apart?
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Daniel Hartman
What do Israelis and Diaspora Jews owe each other? If you're Jewish or a friend and
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Yossi Klein Halevi
ally, these questions have been gnawing at you these past few years.
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Daniel Hartman
For some of you, like for us, these questions have been keeping you up at night. And for some, they've been simmering in the background with waiting for answers.
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Yossi Klein Halevi
But dilemmas don't always have clear answers. What they do deserve are honest and respectful debates.
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Daniel Hartman
And as it happens, Yossia and I love to challenge each other to get to the bottom of things.
- [08:03]
Yossi Klein Halevi
We look at current events through a lens that speaks to us most deeply, a Jewish lens.
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Daniel Hartman
So if today's Jewish dilemmas are on your mind, tune in to our conversation on For Heaven's Sake, a partnership between ARC Media and the Sholem Hartman Institute.
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Yossi Klein Halevi
You can find For Heaven's Sake on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [08:24]
Daniel Hartman
See you there.