← Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
Dan on the attack on Temple Israel in Michigan (INSIDE Call me Back sneak peek)
00:17:44
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- [00:04]
A
You are listening to an art media podcast. Hi, it's Dan. This is a sneak peek from the members only edition of our show, Inside Call Me Back, where we pull back the curtain and have the conversations we typically have after the cameras stop rolling. I hope you enjoyed this segment. And if you want to get the full episode and support our mission at ARC Media, please become an Inside Call Me Back member by following the link in the description or by going to ark media.org that's arkmedia.org and to all our insiders, thank you. It's your support that keeps the lights on at ARC Media.
- [00:52]
B
Welcome to the inside edition of the CallMeBack podcast where we pull back the curtain and have the conversations that we typically have after the cameras stop rolling. Thank you for subscribing to the show and supporting the CallMeBack podcast and everything we do here at ARK Media. And also welcome to all of those who recently joined us. I'm Ilan Benatar, producer of Call Me Back podcast. And today in the hot seat, addressing your questions and personal dilemmas is my partner in crime, ARC Media's Dan. Senor Dan, welcome back.
- [01:23]
A
Thanks, Elon. This is the second recording we're doing for Inside Call Me Back. Right.
- [01:28]
B
Do you want to explain?
- [01:29]
A
Well, we were recording yesterday and most of the questions we were responding to were about Iran. And there were some very important and interesting and incisive questions, actually, that we got from our insiders. And then while we were recording this, news flashed across our screens. And we decided this is really what we have to talk about and that our subscribers will have a lot of questions about this. And we alerted our insiders that if they had questions related to this, they should send them. And we would try again to record something that we would release after Shabbat. And here we are late Friday afternoon just before Shabbat comes in, and we got a ton of questions, which is quite understandable. And so we're. It looks like what your plan is is to pick from some of those questions and we'll have a lot of conversation and analysis about Iran and the war on the regular feed and on the Inside Comeback feed in the days ahead. But this one, that seems like it's going to, for a very good reason, be focused on what happened in Michigan on Thursday.
- [02:32]
B
Okay, then. So first I'll do to you what you do to our guests. Typically in the first question. Can you just bring us up to speed? What do we know about this attack? As of now, late afternoon on Friday,
- [02:45]
A
obviously news is developing. Minute, hour, to hour, in some cases minute to minute in terms of what we know. But I'll just provide the basics for those who may have not been following it very closely. On Thursday afternoon, there was a terrorist attack against a large synagogue temple in suburban Detroit in Michigan, in Oakland County, Michigan, Temple Emanuel, which is a large congregation, perhaps the largest congregation in Oakland County, Michigan, Reform Synagogue, and a terrorist who has now since been identified as Ayman Mohammed Ghazali, who is a resident of the metro Detroit area. Dearborn, Michigan, I think with Dearborn is often in the news. And he basically tried, tried to drive a car, it sounds like, loaded with explosives into the temple. He physically drove the vehicle into the, like smashed through the doors and into the temple and I guess tried to make it down the hall and ultimately got out of the vehicle with the gun. And there was a security official, security guard with the temple who, thank God, was armed and well trained, which we'll get into. And he was able to shoot this terrorist. And. And that's where it ended. As far as we know what we've learned since then. Two things that are important. I think this individual had some family, some relatives in Lebanon who, it is being reported, had ties to Hezbollah, perhaps very active ties to Hezbollah, some who are, I think, trying to, I don't want to say rationalize. Rationalize may be too strong a word, but are trying to make sense of what happened. Say that he was radicalized by the war over the last two and a
- [04:28]
B
half years and his family members were killed. Right.
- [04:31]
A
In Lebanon. Yeah. But it's not just their family members were killed. They were family members with real, very direct, concrete ties to Hezbollah. That's what we know about him so far. The most upsetting part of this entire story, I guess, I mean, there's so many aspects to it that are upsetting, is that at the temple there's a school. There were 140 children there. Yep. Or young children there when this happened. And I would say it's a miracle that the car didn't get farther into the building. The car didn't actually explode. But to think that he probably knew, one assumes that he knew that there were children there. And, but for, and I get, I don't want to say miracle, because it wasn't a miracle, but for a well trained, well armed security guard at the school, God knows what would have happened next. And so that's what we know about what happened. And I should say one other thing. You may hear me in this conversation make some references related to the incident that imply a level of familiarity with this place and this community. I'm certainly not an expert, but I should disclose that I spent a number of years working in Michigan politics. And over the course of those years, and then in the decades after, I've maintained very close ties to the Jewish community in that exact area in the Oakland county, southeast Michigan, suburban Detroit area. I know the synagogue. And so a lot of what happened yesterday, once we stopped the recording, was me hearing from or reaching out to many friends of mine in the community who are either very involved with that congregation or just very involved with the Jewish community. And so I will say, you know, I've lived there, know the community. As our listeners know, I spent a lot of my formative years growing up in Toronto, where, oh, by the way, there were two shootings in the last seven to 10 days at synagogues in Toronto. And. And it's not only that we're living through this normalization of violence against Jews that we can just see almost every single day, but it just so happens that these incidents, the synagogue in Michigan and the synagogues in Toronto, I'm talking to a lot of people who are in my life, in my world, in my community, in my network, who are directly impacted. And so these things are always upsetting. This is like doubly, triply, quadruply upsetting just based on these conversations I've been having with friends.
- [06:45]
B
So you've taken 24 hours to kind of collect your thoughts. Where are you at?
- [06:49]
A
I guess I have a few thoughts. I'm trying to understand if I had to explain to someone who doesn't see what's right in front of them beyond just saying it's the oldest hatred and anti Semitism rears its head. And law enforcement and the FBI and different NGOs say there's an alarming rise in antisemitism, which is true, there is an alarming rise in antisemitism. But that only tells a very surface part of the story. What we are seeing right now is something we, as American Jews, and I would say Jews in the Diaspora, because it applies to Canada and Australia and the UK And I mean, really, you talk about Bondi beach, you talk about the synagogue attack last fall during the hagim in Manchester in the UK or you talk about, as I mentioned, what's happening in Toronto, or we can just. I mean, it's actually happening everywhere. This is something we've never seen. This is not just an alarming rise in anti Semitism. I saw someone on X, Yashar Ali, who's Not Jewish post that this is not an alarming rise in anti Semitism and this is a pandemic of Jew hatred. Alarming rise in antisemitism. I think he may have made this point. Almost sounds like it's a statistical exercise. Oh, wow, we're seeing an uptick. We should be alarmed by that. Yes, of course. But that's almost like a clinical description of what's happening. There is this pandemic, as he puts it, of Jew hatred, and it's being spreading like a pandemic because it's being normalized and because it's being rationalized and because leaders are not stepping in and basically willing to risk their political careers to shut it down. So that is what is a proper description of what's happening. Then we get to the so why is it happening again? As I said, we could say it's the oldest hatred, which it is. But if I wanted to think about the different inputs, one input obviously is these wars over the last two and a half years. And the images are very upsetting to a lot of people. So if you are someone on the edge, if you are someone that is already radical and unhinged, it is conceivable that these kinds of images could radicalize you further. When I say further, radicalize you to the point that you do something really destructive and dangerous and homicidal. Although that explanation or that input doesn't entirely make sense to me because there are images of violence and have been images of violence that we see from all over the world, and it just doesn't have this effect. Right. Over 30,000, we think Iranian citizens, innocents, were slaughtered in Iran earlier this year. We were seeing images of what was going on. We didn't see any kind of activation of violence against other ethnic groups over here in response by some ethnic groups against other ethnic groups. During this, I was thinking about the peak of the Syrian civil war, where there was bloodshed on a scale that is, I mean, was staggering. And we didn't see any kind of response during the peak of the civil war in Sudan. I mean, there was endless, appropriately a lot of coverage about the human catastrophe there. Or look at the days after October 7th. Actually, the days after October 7th, we were inundated with images of the worst kind of brutality against innocence and barbarism that one could possibly imagine. And there was no violent acts activated here as a result. So that's why saying, well, people are upset and they're radicalized and they've been seeing these image and it just further radicalizes them it's not a sufficient explanation. So then you go to the next input, which is what is distinctive about this pandemic of Jew hatred, which is the frustration with images people say they're seeing, you know, that are upsetting them in the Middle east is being transitioned into violent acts against Jews here. And that is being normalized, as I said, that is being legitimized. And there's just language being used in the media. There's language being used by politicians. You and I talk a lot. We talk a lot about a podcast about the. I've been very concerned about what Mamdani is doing, which is trying to draw this distinction between anti Semitism and anti Zionism and that he thinks as mayor of New York, with the largest Jewish community of any city in the world outside of Israel, that he thinks he can fight antisemitism and keep Jews safe while trafficking in the absolute worst and most dangerous dog whistles that one could possibly traffic in that encourages violence against Jews. I mean, just in a post a few days ago, he posted about referring to the ongoing genocide and this constant ongoing genocide and calling Israel a Nazi state. And is it easy for those who are upset and agree with Mamdani, by the way, but agree with Mamdani about those things and agree with other leaders who use that language on the left and the right, is it easy for them to take action against what's being described as the Nazi state, as the apartheid state, as a genocidal state? No. So what's the next thing you can do, the easier thing you can do, the quintessentially softer target? You can pursue Jews at a synagogue in suburban Detroit because those Jews are supporters of Israel. Those Jews have a connection to Israel. So therefore, those Jews at Temple Israel have ties to Nazism and to genocide and to apartheid. So I can confront the apartheid, the genocide and the Nazism by driving a car into Temple Emmanuel and risking and trying to kill it looks appears 140 children in a much easier and achievable way than I can, by taking action against the state of Israel. And that notion that Jewish communities are now going to be held responsible for the policies. Jewish communities over here are going to be held responsible for the policies of the state of Israel. And people are going to take matters into their own hands to exert some kind of pain and punishment against Jews over here. Once you go down that path, it is never ending. Everything can be rationalized against in terms of the pandemic of. Of Jew hatred. It's already happening. That is like A factor of the climate. Like, that's where the climate is a lot. The Jew hatred is just now of the conversation. And you and I talked offline yesterday, like, how do you shut down the climate? It's not easy in a world in which people have total freedom to say whatever the hell they want on social media. And it's just that the whole media ecosystem has become so much more decentralized and there's so many pathways now to communicate messages and disseminate messages. So it becomes much harder. However, I think leaders, particularly political leaders and have a responsibility to do their best to shut it down. Will they be able to shut it down entirely? No, but they're doing the opposite. Actually, they're doing the opposite than trying to shut it down. Their silence, as I said, and they're playing with these dog whistles is encouraging this violence. It is creating a more permissible environment for people to rationalize this violence. And I, I have never said this before on our podcast, Alon, but I. During his campaign for mayor, I know a number of rabbis who have told me this, a number of them who met with him as a group. And this is when he was trying to build channels into the Jewish community and build relationships and try to improve relations in the Jewish community. And they said to him, look, we're not going to agree on everything, obviously, we're certainly not going to agree on Israel. But if you want to help bring down the spread of anti Semitism and the violence that flows in our city, the language you use is undermining that. You're playing a dangerous game. By talking about genocide, you are playing a dangerous game. You don't appreciate. Or maybe you do. I don't. But they said to him, you don't appreciate what, what bad actors in our city and in other cities hear when they hear you use that language. And he still does it. And they've said to him, these are dog whistles. So that, to me is a very fixable input, is what our leaders do and what sense of responsibilities our leaders feel they have. And the third is security. And I guess a number of the questions have to do with security at Jewish institutions, which we can get into. But I will say today, according to Eric Fingerhut at the Jewish Federations of North America, based on a study he released just recently, but as of today, about 3/4 of a billion dollars with a B, 3/4, about $770 million is being spent in the United States on security for Jewish institutions. It's a staggering, staggeringly high number. I'm sure that's shocking to you that that much. I mean I bet many people didn't realize that that's how much is being spent. And that's a combination of funding from the community. It's mostly funding from the community. Also grants from federal and local law enforcement. But the point is approximately a quarter of a billion dollars is being spent on security for Jewish institutions. And it's not enough. And we can get into that, but it's not enough because it's the only thing we can rely on. We can't rely on political leaders to be responsible. We can't rely on radicals in our own society being more discerning about the images they see and having some context and perspective before they decide to kill some Jews. The one thing we can control is are we deploying sufficient security at our institutions? That is why really that is why 140 kids who were at Temple Emanuel are alive right now was because of a well trained security guard who had gotten training from the FBI from the Detroit office in how to deal with an active shooter situation just recently. From what I understand, the training was just recent. And this I know is a focus of the institutional Jewish community. And if we're going to have flourishing Jewish life, it's got to be an even bigger focus and a higher priority.
- [16:29]
B
Since dropping this announcement last night, our community of insiders is really poured in with some questions. So Ann from the Upper west side of New York is asking. A non Jewish friend immediately linked the Michigan and the Old Dominion attacks to the war with Iran. I was surprised and I reminded her of skyrocketing anti Semitism even prior to 10, 7 and of course during the current war with Iran. In what ways do you predict this war linked anti Semitism narrative could evolve on each political side?
- [17:04]
A
That's it for our sneak peek today. If you want to catch the full episode, please subscribe to Inside. Call me back by following the link in the description or by going to ark media.org that's ark media.org your support is what allows us to do what we do here at ARC Media. I hope to see you there. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Wiener. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.