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You are listening to an art media podcast.
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It's Thursday, may 21st. This episode was recorded at 7pm new york time on Wednesday. I'm deborah pardes and this is arknews daily. For most of this week, Israel looked like it had figured out how to handle the boatloads of activists trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Then yesterday, far right National Security Minister Itamar Ben GVIR showed up. By the end of the day, governments across Europe and North America had condemned Israel's treatment of the detainees. And Prime Minister Netanyahu had publicly disowned his own coalition partner. The flotilla involved more than 50 boats that had set sail from Turkey. This was actually the second attempt by the same group. Israel stopped the first wave near Crete last month. The activists regrouped and came back. The Foreign Ministry called the effort a publicity gimmick at the service of Hamas. Trump's Board of Peace also dismissed it as Love Boat activism. Still, Israel was ready. Commandos boarded the boats and detained more than 400 activists from 40 countries and brought them to the Ashdod port. Netanyahu went down to the Navy's command bunker to watch. He got on the radio with the fleet commander. He said, you are doing a great job neutralizing a malicious plan designed to break the isolation we have imposed on Hamas terrorists in Gaza. After Ben Gvir arrived, he posted a 35 second video of himself walking through the detention area, flanked by security. Dozens of activists are shown kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs. Then GVIR turns to the camera and says, they came here all full of pride, like big heroes. Look at them now. Then he urged Netanyahu to hand them over to the terrorist prisons. The post got millions of views within hours. It quickly turned into a public relations disaster. At least six European countries summoned their Israeli ambassadors. Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni, who is not someone who typically lines up against Israel, called the video intolerable and demanded an apology. The backlash inside Israel was immediate. Netanyahu said Israel had every right to stop the flotilla, but that Ben Gvir's conduct was inconsistent with the values and norms of the state of Israel. Foreign Minister Gideon Sar put out a statement that read, you knowingly caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display, and not for the first time. You have undone tremendous professional and successful efforts made by so many people, from IDF soldiers to Foreign Ministry staff and many others. You are not the face of Israel. In response, Ben Gvir accused the foreign minister of submitting to the supporters of terrorism. He said the days of Israel being a punching bag are over and that anyone who comes into our territory to support terrorism will be hit and we will not turn the other cheek. The dispute points to something bigger than the flotilla. Ben Gavir's argument is that Israel needs to show the world it's not only capable of defending itself, but that it's not afraid to be feared. But a growing number of voices inside the country are making the opposite case, that Israel's image is part of its national security, and it's not a problem you can punch your way out of. On this week's For Heaven's Sake podcast, Yossi Klein Halevi and Daniil Hartman discuss the difficulty of Israel's position. It is under assault by unfair attacks. It's being accused of war crimes and of genocide. And leaders like Ben GVIR risk giving those accusations more credibility.
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It starts from our prime minister and every minister down. There's not one of them who is capable of being a character witness for Israel on the basis of their character. And part of it is going to start by recognizing what doesn't work. Start by trying new things, by reclaiming a character to Israel and to the Jewish people, to finding our friends who are distancing from us and who aren't anti Semites and putting in place leaders who are worthy.
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A New York Times report on Tuesday revealed that in the early days of the Iran war, the United States and Israel quietly designated a surprising replacement for Supreme Leader Khamenei. The candidate they settled on was former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It's a remarkable choice. Ahmadinejad served as Iran's president from 2005 to 2013. He hosted a Holocaust denial conference in Tehran, and he made one of the most infamous speeches of the 21st century. He said Israel must be wiped off the map. He was quoting the supreme Leader, but the words became the public face of his presidency. And this is the man the US And Israel coordinated around to head the next phase of Iranian leadership. The logic was calculated. The war began with strikes that killed Supreme Leader Khamenei, and then, weeks later, Ali Larijani, the man often described as a Iran's de facto leader. The military was trying to execute what officials called the Venezuela model, decapitate the top leadership, then install a compliant figure from within the existing system who could hold the country together. According to the Times, after Ahmadinejad left office, he spent years reinventing himself. He stopped talking about wiping Israel off the map and leaned into the failures of the clerical establishment. He was even arrested in 2018 after being accused of inciting anti government protests. The thinking, according to U.S. officials, was that he could manage Iran's political and military situation. He was a regime critic who hadn't broken from the revolution itself. But the plan collapsed almost immediately. Israeli airstrikes on Iran's leadership at the beginning of the war included Ahmadinejad's home. According to the Times, that attack was a jailbreak. The strike killed his IRGC guards and Ahmadinejad was meant to be freed. But according to the people familiar with the operation, Ahmadinejad became disillusioned after the strike on his home and pulled back. Since then, the broader regime change effort has stalled. Weeks into the war, no mass uprising materialized. The Iranian public didn't take to the streets. The IRGC didn't lay down its arms. The White House has said that the US Achieved all its goals in the war and that negotiators are working on a deal to end Iran's nuclear capabilities. But the Ahmadinejad story tells a different version of events, one where the regime change plan was improvised, went sideways on day one, and left both sides trying to define what victory actually means. If you want to go deeper on this story, check out the latest episode of Call Me Back with Ronen Bergman, who was one of the reporters who broke the story. A link to the episode is in the show Notes. I'm Deborah Pardes and this is Ark News Daily. If you find this show helpful, please consider sharing it with your friends and family. We'll be off tomorrow through next Tuesday for the holidays. See you next week. It.