Sneak Peek: Dan on guardrails protecting Jews from Mamdani, and more...

**Dan Senor** (0:00)
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**Ilan Benatar** (0:53)
You are listening to an Ark Media Podcast.
Welcome to Inside Call me Back, our members-only edition where we open the door and let you shape the conversation. Thank you for subscribing to the show and supporting the Call me Back podcast and everything we do here at Ark. I want to encourage you to submit your questions at arkmedia.org, and please keep them short. It will increase the chances of them being asked on the show. My name is Ilan Benatar, the producer of Call me Back, and today in the hot seat, addressing your questions and personal dilemmas is my partner in crime, Ark Media's very own Dan Senor. Hey, Dan, how are you doing?

**Dan Senor** (1:35)
All right. It's been interesting. I'm sure you're experiencing this too, hearing the feedback from our episode with Neil Ferguson about the death of history. What was interesting, and you and I have been talking about this for years, we talked about with Jonah Goldberg, the whole horseshoe theory about the extremes merging on a set of issues. The way he framed the challenge, I think even people who aren't shocked by this concept that he was presenting, I just think he presented it in such stark and vivid terms that I'm just struck by the reaction it's gotten.
I'm hearing from people that are just completely rattled by what he laid out.

**Ilan Benatar** (2:14)
Well, the Jews have always been the proverbial canaries in the coal mine of history, right? Right.

**Dan Senor** (2:19)
But it's just interesting. Here's Neil, who's a non-Jewish Scottish historian, who as a student of great power history and a student of military history, he has always been deep, deep, deep on the Holocaust, on the Shoah, on how it happened and what the lessons are. So in that sense, because that's been a big part of his life's work, the degree to which we're in this moment now becoming desensitized to that historical event is even jarring to someone like him, who's not a member of our community.

**Ilan Benatar** (2:46)
Yeah. Well, with that, let's jump into some of the questions we got from our community.

**Dan Senor** (2:51)
Lighter stuff.

**Ilan Benatar** (2:52)
Yeah, lighter stuff.
Okay. Cameron from New York City. Hi Dan, I'm a lifelong New York City Democrat who is frightened over the primary election results. I'm struggling to identify where I fit in this party. Can you unpack what Jewish New Yorkers should be doing to fight this?

**Dan Senor** (3:10)
Cameron, thank you for this question. The question you're asking or a version of it is basically what I hear more than almost any other question these days from my fellow New Yorkers, when I'm just speaking to people, people in my Jewish community in New York, when I speak at events, and the answer is right now, I don't have a good answer. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention what we're dealing with right now, and I'm sure this is on your mind, is this stunt that Mamdani has architected and implemented, which is this threat to threat, and then walking down from the threat, but still making a searing statement, the threat to arrest the Prime Minister of Israel for war crimes when he comes to New York City for the UN General Assembly.
I'm watching a lot of the reaction to what Mamdani has done, and I do have two immediate reactions. The first reaction is none of this should surprise us.
He was very clear in the campaign that this was an issue he was going to pursue. I never believed he was actually going to pursue it. I never believed he was actually going to instruct the NYPD to arrest a visiting leader of a foreign country when they're in New York City for the UNGA. I never believed he was going to do that. It was a stunt, and I'm sure he knew what I knew and what most of our listeners know, which is that he has no jurisdiction, he has no authority to do that. He knew that, but I still think it allowed him to accomplish other objectives of his, which is the continued demonization of Israel, the continued demonization of Israeli Jews.