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You are listening to an art media podcast.
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It's Wednesday, june 17th. This episode was recorded at 6pm new york time on Tuesday. I'm deborah pardes and this is arc news daily. When the U. S. Iran memorandum of understanding was announced on Sunday night, Israel wasn't at the table. In fact, Israel was sidelined throughout the negotiating process. The deal was signed digitally by Trump, Vice President Vance and Iran's parliament speaker. And the terms from what's been made public have set off a wave of alarm in Israel. The agreement opens a 60 day window for negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, but it leaves Iran's ballistic missile stockpile untouched. It doesn't address Iran's support for terror proxies and the regime in Tehran. Iran is still standing. Netanyahu's opposition has been vocal. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the MOU the product of a government incapable of achieving a decisive victory. He said Netanyahu had led Israel into wars of stagnation and attrition and that the countdown to replacing the regime in Iran would begin as soon as the government in Israel is replaced. Gotti Eisenkot also weighed in. He's the former military chief of staff now emerging as a serious riot to Netanyahu ahead of October's elections. He said Netanyahu should have admitted he made empty declarations and that the country deserved honesty from a leader who had put it through the toughest years of its history. Netanyahu held a press conference Monday night to respond. He avoided criticizing the MoU. In fact, he admitted he still doesn't know what's in it. But he did still claim victory. He listed Israel's military accomplishments. He said Israel launched the largest attack operation in its history. It targeted nuclear scientists and eliminated leaders of the terror regime. He said, this is what we did. We saved the state of Israel from annihilation. But beyond division within Israel itself, the drama points to a real strain in its relationship with the US and that's showing up in particular in the debate over Lebanon. Iran and the US now appear largely aligned on that, saying the deal covers Lebanon. On state TV yesterday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arabchi said, quote, without the withdrawal of Israeli forces, the war has not fully ended. A senior US official told i24 News that the withdrawal is not a formal condition of the MoU, but said the ceasefire applies to Lebanon. And at the G7 summit in France yesterday, Trump criticized criticized Netanyahu over the fighting with Hezbollah.
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Israel's fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed and you don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody.
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He even said Israel should consider letting Syria deal with Hezbollah instead. But this is one point that Israel is not conceding. Defense Minister Israel Kat said Monday that Israeli forces will remain in southern Lebanon indefinitely and that Israel would strike Iran with full force if it's attacked in response to operations there. In the meantime, the fighting has slowed but has not stopped. The IDF confirmed it intercepted rockets Hezbollah fired at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah said it repelled an Israeli force advancing near Nebatiya, and Israeli drone strikes in southern Lebanon continued. The actual text of the deal still hasn't been made public. It's expected to be released after a formal signing ceremony this Friday. That's when we'll find out what it actually says about Leb and whether the gap between each side can be bridged at all. While all eyes are on the Iran deal, Israel's far right Finance Minister Bazilel Al Smotrich was in Hebron yesterday making yet another announcement about his expansion efforts in the West Bank. At the dedication of a new settlement, he said that Israel had annulled the Hebron accords. That's an agreement signed in 1997 that split the city between Israeli and Palestinian control. Hebron is one of the most complicated cities in the West Bank. There is a small enclave of a few hundred Jewish Israelis surrounded by roughly 200,000 Palestinians. It's also home to the Cave of the Patriarchs, a holy site for both Jews and Muslims and a frequent flashpoint for violence. Under the 1997 deal, Israel kept security control over the Jewish sector, known as H2, but civil control over planning, zoning and construction went to the Palestinian Authority. Smotrich's announcement yesterday made it sound like the whole agreement was canceled, but Israel's own Foreign Ministry denied it, though it did acknowledge some changes were made. On Monday night, an Israeli planning body transferred the civil powers to Israeli control, meaning no more Palestinian approval is needed for building permits and construction in the Jewish enclave. This has become a pattern for Smotrich and part of a deliberate strategy to slowly take control over the West Bank. When Netanyahu's government was formed, Smotrich was given a second post inside the Defense Ministry, which controls parts of the West Bank. That gave Smotrich authority over planning, construction and land in the area. In a recording verified by the Wall street journal in 2024, Smotrich told settlers his goal was to tighten Israeli control and close off a Palestinian state. He said that keeping the west bank under the Defense Ministry would help av the perception of full annexation and make it easier to accept by the international community. Over time, those changes have had a big impact. In the last few years, the government has recognized dozens of new settlements and the number of outposts has doubled. Netanyahu has long been wary of full annexation to avoid hurting Israel's relationship with the Gulf. His own Likud party declined to back an annexation bill last October. The Trump administration has also drawn a line. It backs the settlements and doesn't consider them illegal. But Trump has said he would not allow Israel to formally annex the West Bank. Still, the expansion efforts haven't raised much of a fuss in Israel, particularly after October 7th. Since then, less than a third of Jewish Israelis are supportive of a two state solution. Amir Thibon has won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Thibon is an Israeli journalist who writes for Haaretz. He won for his book the Gates of A Story of Betrayal, Survival and Hope in Israel's Borderlands. The book details how Thibon, along with his wife and two young daughters, were rescued on October 7th by Thibon's own father, a retired IDF major general. On that morning, Thibon and his family woke to the sounds of mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Na', Aloz, a progressive Israeli community less than a mile from Gaza City. They made their way to their safe rooms, trying to keep their girls from crying. Tabon texted his father, saying he was worried the girls would lose patience and Hamas would hear them. Tabon shared the story at a live call me back event in 2024, just before the one year anniversary of October 7th.
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My father tries to call people he knows in the military, the chief of staff, the head of the Southern Command to alert them that there are terrorists inside. Kibbutz Nakhalo is a very unusual situation, and my parents know that something very bad is happening. And that feeling gets stronger because when my father tries to call these people in the army, nobody's picking up the phone.
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The Gates of Gaza has become one of the most honored accounts of October 7th. It previously won the National Jewish Book Award and Britain's Wingate Prize. There's also a documentary about the rescue called the Road Between Us, and a feature film in the works from the creators of the Israeli show Fouda. The Sammy Rohr Prize was launched in 2006 to recognize and support emerging writers who explore the Jewish experience. Winners receive $100,000, giving them an opportunity to take time off and continue developing their craft. The prize was started by Rohr's children in his honor. He built a real estate empire and donated millions to create Jewish community centers and support the Chabad Lubovitch movement as a child. He escaped from Berlin with his family shortly after Kristallnacht in 1938. He died in 2012 at the age of 86. In his obituary in the New York Times, Carolyn Starman Hessel, director of the Jewish Book Council, said the impact of the award has been amazing, helping to ensure that Jewish literature would thrive for generations. I'm Deborah Pardes and this is Ark News Daily. See you tomorrow.
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Hi, I'm Dan Senor, host of the Call Me Back podcast. These past few years have asked a lot of the Jewish world world we've been wrestling with pain, disagreement and dilemmas. The war in Gaza, the war with Iran, the pressure on Jewish communities in diaspora societies, and the upcoming Israeli elections, which may bring many of these tensions to a head. These are not simple stories, and in a moment filled with bad information and overly simplistic answers, it can be hard to know who to trust. At Call Me Back, we know that trust has to be earned, and we know your time is valuable, so when you spend it with us, we take that seriously. We don't claim to have all the answers, but we do try to ask better questions with honesty and humility. Maybe that is where hope begins. Not in pretending this moment is simple, but in believing at a minimum, we must face it together. You can find Call Me Back on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. See you there.