Global News Podcast - Biden hopes Israeli strikes on Iran end retaliation

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

President Biden says he hopes Israeli air strikes on Iran mark the end of hostilities. Also: the Vatican wants a stronger role for women, and linking an old skeleton to an ancient Norse tale.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Moss. And in the early hours of Sunday, the 27th of October, these are our main stories. Calls again for restraint in the Middle East, with President Biden saying he hopes Israel's airstrikes on Iran mark the end of retaliation. As we record this podcast, preliminary results from elections in Georgia put the governing party in the lead amidst allegations of violence and voter intimidation. And in Sudan, the paramilitary rapid support forces are accused of killing more than 100 people during an attack on a village. Also in this podcast... They sent to the director of the hospital to evacuate patients.

Some could not walk long distances because of internal injuries. What happened when Israeli troops stormed a Gaza hospital? President Biden has said he hopes that Israel's attack on Iran will mark the end of hostilities. And there have been similar calls from just about everyone else. The United Nations called for restraint. Britain, France and Germany said there should be no further escalation. Even Saudi Arabia, which explicitly condemned Israel's airstrikes, Saudi Arabia also said escalation was something it rejected.

But what are the chances given that the past year, since the events of October 7th, have seen more and more fighting on more and more fronts? These Israelis on the streets of Tel Aviv perhaps expressed a common attitude, support for what their government had done, but combined with a certain resignation. I'm not scared of anything anymore. I lost being scared in the last year since 7 October. I think we didn't have a choice. We were attacked by Iran to begin with twice. Hey, this is

our country. We're not going to run away anymore. I think us attacking there is very important to show that Israel is not here for you to attack us. We should fight back. We now know a little more about the result of Israel's airstrikes. Iran says four of its soldiers were killed, but insists there was little damage to the military installations Israel was apparently aiming at. It acknowledged that a radar station had been hit, but said nothing about the missile factories and missile facilities which Israel says it successfully targeted. There's been, of course, a collective sigh of relief in many quarters

that Israel did not go after Iran's nuclear facilities. Nor, apparently, did it attempt to assassinate key figures in the Iranian leadership, as some had suggested might happen, all of which might well have provoked a very serious escalation. Instead, Iran's government does seem keen now to move on. A television newsreader on Saturday outlined the latest official statement. The statement, while emphasizing Iran's legitimate right to respond in due time, stressed the necessity of establishing a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon

to prevent the massacre of defenseless and oppressed people. In other words, let's go back to thinking about Gaza and the Palestinians. According to our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams, Iran may have decided that, to put it bluntly, after Israel's latest airstrike, it's taken enough punishment for now. There does seem to be a desire in Iran not to make too big of a public deal of this, perhaps to reduce the inevitable calls for retaliation. And Israel, of course, it's worth remembering the attack took place in the middle of the Sabbath, so Israeli politicians are only in the last couple of hours starting to kind of release statements about what happened.

We have a rough idea of what was hit, Iranian drone and missile manufacture facilities and launch sites. In a way it was kind of an extension, a bigger, much bigger version of what the Israelis did in Iran back in the middle of April when they hit the air defenses around the Natanz nuclear site. So this was a pretty emphatic message to Iran demonstrating the absolutely dreadful weakness of Iran's air defense systems. The Israelis were able to keep attacking Iran for three hours without apparently suffering any comeback at all. So that's a humiliation for Iran without a shadow of a doubt and a warning that, of course, Israel could do more.

You make it sound like Iran doesn't really have many options when it comes to a harsher response. I think its options are very limited. Bear in mind what has been done and what last night's raid represented, which was serious enough in itself. Then look at Iran's wider regional defence strategy, the so-called Axis of Resistance, that it has used as a mechanism, a tool to exert pressure on Israel for decades. Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Shiite militias in Iraq.

Big chunks of that axis have been smashed to smithereens. So Iran suddenly finds itself rather bereft of the tools that it once had. And that means it may have to think again about how to keep Israel at arm's length and whether, indeed, keeping Israel at arm's length is possible anymore. Because let's not forget, for the first time ever, Israel hit Iran and announced that it was doing it. This is a war that is now right out in the open.

And I think the Iranians are going to have to think long and hard about how or even if they choose to retaliate because anything they can do, they know the Israelis backed up by the Americans and others can do much worse. Paul Adams. Iran of course has always attacked Israel, it says, out of solidarity with the Palestinians. Indeed, the latest round of fighting was sparked by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th last year. And while the knock-on effects of that attack continue, the situation in Gaza itself gets ever bleaker. The main Palestinian news agency has reported 30 civilians being killed in the Beit Laha

area amidst claims that Israeli troops stormed the local Kamal Adwan hospital. The BBC and other foreign media organizations are prevented by Israel from entering Gaza to report independently. But on Saturday our special correspondent Fergal Keen sent this report from Jerusalem about what happened at the hospital. This is the story of a doctor This is the story of a doctor who became a grieving father. Hossam Abu Saifah worked to save the lives of others, but today mourned his son. Ibrahim was killed in the hospital grounds, shot by the Israeli army, his father says.

Since the renewed offensive on Jabalia, the doctor has made repeated appeals for help. We are talking about collective punishment for the health system in the Gaza Strip. Consequently, we urge the world to intervene and impose their humanity over the Israeli army. The army raided yesterday. Dr Abbas Saifah with his staff waiting. Then the people forced out. Fear holds them. The maid to line up.

Men separated from the women. We moved patients to the reception area. Then they sent to Dr. Hussam, the director of the hospital, to evacuate patients who could walk. Among those with catheters and those with central lines, some could not walk long distances because of internal injuries. However, they insisted on them exiting on foot. The damaged hospital compound this afternoon. The Israelis say they were seeking terrorists and their infrastructure. Wrecked ambulances.

Three soldiers were killed in Jabalia yesterday. Hamas published images of a stricken Israeli tank. Dr. Abu Safiyah mourned his son. And he was comforted, but the small group of men still left around the hospital. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. That report from Fergal Keane. Have the people of Georgia turned their backs on Western Europe and chosen instead to huddle just a little closer to Russia?

That might sound over the top, but the election which took place in the influential caucus's nation had been described as crucial by people from all parts of the political spectrum. On one side was the ruling Georgia Dream Party, often described as close to Moscow's thinking. Opposing them was a rather motley collection of disparate groups. What these groups had in common was that they wanted to bring Georgia closer into the Western fold, with membership of the European Union the eventual goal. Now, as we record this podcast, initial exit polls put the Georgia Dream Party in the lead and by a clear margin. But according to Rehan Demetri, our

correspondent in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, this came amidst allegations of widespread intimidation and fraud. They were reporting hundreds of cases of irregularities including violence against observers from the opposition parties, violence against journalists, also cases of voter secrecy not being respected and a number of other incidents and of course on social media there were videos showing here in Tbilisi, mobs, youth groups, supporters of governing Georgian Dream, fighting with opposition supporters. But later in the day, the Georgian Dream issued a statement and they have accused the opposition

in being the cause of violence. Given what you've said, do you think both sides will accept the result, whatever it is? Because as you say, the results so far are just provisional. Well, for sure, for Georgian Dream, it's a good news because they're in the lead according to preliminary results. But the opposition, it feels like they're kind of scrambling their heads together and trying to think what to do next. Whatever comes out on Sunday from the OSCE observers, from a number of other

international observers, that will play a significant role in what happens next. This contest has been portrayed as having seismic consequences for not just Georgia, but for the whole region, for the future of Europe. When you talked to voters today who were out casting their vote, did they see it in that same way? We spoke to different voters. Early in the morning on Saturday, it was mainly, I would say, pensioners, kind of older voters, and they were largely supporters of the Georgian Dream. And they were saying that they voted for peace and stability, for

sovereignty, because these are the messages that Georgian Dream campaigned with. They framed this election as a choice between war and peace, claiming that the opposition will drag Georgia into Ukraine's war. And later in the day we went to several polling stations. People were queuing and a lot of them were young people. They were talking about how vitally important this election is for their country's future because they do not believe the Georgian Dream government. They believe that Georgian Dream policies, including the foreign influence law or anti-LGBT law,

that are not bringing this country any closer to Europe. Rehan Demetri in Tbilisi. It may receive less attention than the fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East, but the ongoing civil war in Sudan is no less brutal, not to say intractable. The latest alleged atrocity has seen the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, accused of killing at least 124 people during a raid on a village in El Ghazir estate. The US envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, gave his reaction to Paul Henley.

The reports are absolutely horrific and sadly we see this every couple of weeks where we see atrocities and particularly by the Rapid Support Forces. We see people continuing to suffer from both famine and cholera but we have seen several very acute attacks targeting civilians just here in the last couple of days. The RSF say they are targeting villages that are housing militia. Do you believe those claims? The RSF really does not have credibility at all on any of its claims about protecting civilians. We've seen not only collective punishment against civilians and entire communities.

We've seen within this war ethnic cleansing, particularly the Darfur area of the Mas'alit, and use of both starvation and sexual slavery as a weapon of war. It's true though, isn't it, that there have been atrocities committed by both sides in this war, by the official army as well? That's correct. And we have sanctioned just in the last week, individuals involved in procuring weapons from nefarious sources to fuel some of the atrocities on the army side, including efforts to deny food and medicine to large parts of the population of the Sudanese people, where over 20

million people face acute hunger. So we have seen atrocities on both sides. But in this case, we are hearing reports of acute attacks and murdering of civilians by the RSF, which has been a pattern. And we need to understand that all of those that are part of the RSF network need to be held accountable for these abuses. And we need to make sure to get to the bottom of the facts in this case. We're a long way from that, though, aren't we? The United Nations says this is one of the greatest humanitarian crises on earth, if not the greatest at the moment. It's overshadowed by conflicts elsewhere.

What is the US position on Sudan? Well, the United States has really been leading under the Biden administration, but it's been a lonely place to be and drawing attention to the Sudan. I've rarely, if ever, seen a crisis of this proportion get so little attention from the international community and from our partners. We've certainly been leading the way on sanctioning some of these horrific generals doing these atrocities.

We have given more than the rest of the world combined in terms of humanitarian aid and medicine, some of which is getting through, thanks to diplomatic efforts, but way too many parts of the country continue to have no access at all to basic food and medicine. So the United Nations, the African Union, and others really do need to show much bolder leadership in this space to stand with the people of Sudan. 50 million people, many of whom have had to flee across borders into neighboring countries under truly horrific

circumstances, and the world has flee across borders into neighbouring countries under truly horrific circumstances. And the world has really been asleep on this crisis and we need people to wake up very quickly. One of the issues is that this is very much a conflict behind closed doors as it were. You yourself as US Special Envoy for Sudan haven't even been able to go to the country. We're hoping to be there here in the next couple of weeks, but it is a situation that I would argue is happening in plain sight. It's true that it's very difficult to get media crews on the ground, so we don't have some of the coverage we would normally have.

But there's no secret about what's happening. It is true that this is a complicated war with a lot of history, but on some level, it's just a question of choice. This was not a famine that was created by a tsunami or a disease or hitting crops or a drought. It was a choice by the RSF to destroy crops and harvest and warehouses, and now a decision by the army and the government authorities in Port Sudan to put up every barrier possible to food and medicine getting to the most vulnerable people. The US envoy to Sudan Tom Poriello talking to Paul Henley. Still to come as power cuts hit Cuba, people are forced to find new ways to cook and heat their

homes. My husband went from neighbourhood to neighbourhood but couldn't find charcoal anywhere, she explains. We had to pick up firewood wherever we found it, on the street. A gift from God. That's how Pope Francis described a key Vatican statement about the role of women in the Catholic Church. It was produced after a special meeting of bishops, but followed several years of examining this very sensitive issue. His conclusion, roughly speaking, is that no, women still should not be ordained as priests nor as deacons, but they can play a more influential role in the church as lay members and as our religion editor

Alene McBall told me from Rome there's been as much focus on the way the church went about reaching these conclusions as the conclusions themselves. They have spent three years trying to get the views of pretty much every church-going Catholic around the world that's what they tried to do. So there were tens of thousands of listening sessions around the world. And actually it was on all the issues that rank and file Catholics cared about. This came up, the one you were just mentioning came up very high on the agenda, which was the role of women in the church. It's all fed back into this. A synod meeting that started a year ago, a month of very

intense meetings, and it's come up with lots of recommendations, over 51 pages, but when it comes to women it's basically said we need to explore what's already available to women, but that does not mean as yet a recommendation that they should be allowed to enter the clergy. It did acknowledge women are the majority of churchgoers in the Catholic Church. It did acknowledge they continue to encounter obstacles which was to the detriment of the Church as a whole. A lot of people had been hoping, progressive certainly, that this could be some kind of route to discuss further whether they could enter the clergy women, but it is not that.

There were those progressives, as you say, disappointed, but I gather also some who didn't want women to have any more influential role within the Church. I mean, it sounds like he hasn't exactly managed to keep everyone happy. The Pope possibly made enemies on all sides. Yes, well, well I mean there were the traditionalists who said why have this process at all? It is clerics, it is cardinals, it is the Pope himself, it is theologians who should be directing the future of the Church. Why on earth is Pope Francis one's to ask Catholics

grassroots? And so traditionalists were opposed to the whole process. Then you had progressives who had hopes for all of this, but have been disappointed by the results. So we've already had some reaction from, for example, the Women's Ordination Conference, who've been fighting for women to be part of the Catholic Church clergy for a very long time, who said this is insufficient. It's a disappointing response to a multi-year process meant to respond to the needs of the church today. So you're right, there have been problems on both sides, but there are those who are supportive of the process of asking grassroots

Catholics at the very least. Alim Bukbul. In Cuba, the government has told all non-essential state workers to stay at home and ordered schools and universities to remain shut. That's because the country is still recovering from a nationwide blackout which left around 10 million Cubans without power for several days. Adding to the problems on the communist-run island, Hurricane Oscar left a trail of destruction as it hit the north eastern coast, leaving several dead and hundreds homeless. As the BBC's Will Grant reports from Havana, for some communities the energy crisis is far from over.

As Cuba approached 72 hours without power, Yucely Perez turned to the only resource left available, firewood. No canisters of liquefied gas had been delivered to her Havana neighbourhood for weeks. So when the island's entire electrical grid also went down, Useli was forced to take desperate measures. My husband went from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, but couldn't find charcoal anywhere, she explains. We had to pick up firewood wherever we found it, on the street. Thankfully it was dry and

we've been able to cook, she nods at the yucca, frying slowly in a pot of lukewarm oil, because we've gone for two days without eating a thing. It was at night that the full extent of the blackout became clear. Havana's streets plunged into near total darkness as residents sat on the doorsteps in the stifling heat, their faces lit up by their mobile phones, for as long as the batteries lasted. Some, like restaurant worker Victor, were growing openly dismissive of the Cuban authorities. The ones that have all the answers are those who run the country and they have to explain themselves to the Cuban people because they're building so many hotels, right? Everyone knows that building a hotel doesn't cost a couple of bucks.

It costs 300 or 400 million dollars. So then, why is their energy infrastructure collapsing? Because they're not investing in it. Or if they are investing in it, then it's not working to the benefit of the people. And this is just one of so many other issues. At the height of the crisis, the country's Energy and Mines Minister, Vicente de la O,

took to the airwaves to insist the country's creaking energy infrastructure was the direct result of what he called the brutal US economic embargo on Cuba. Still normal service would be resumed soon, he said. Almost no sooner than he uttered those words than there was another total collapse of the grid. While the nights did eventually come back on in much of Havana, for many places in Cuba,

normal service still means going for most of the day without power. Marbella Sagillera is getting used to living without electricity. What residents in the capital endured for a few days is daily life in her village of Aguacate. As she boils coffee on a makeshift charcoal stove, the young mother of three says her community is in dire need of state assistance. We've had no power for six days, she says. It came on for a couple of hours last night before it went out again.

So we have no choice but to cook like this, just to provide something warm for the children," she adds. That report by Will Grant. Leaders of the Commonwealth have ended their summit in Samoa with a call for meaningful talks on the legacy of transatlantic slavery. The final communique says the time has come for a truthful conversation. The block brings Britain together with many of its former colonies. And it defied the UK by raising the issue at the gathering, after Britain ruled out paying reparations. Professor KND Andrews teaches Black Studies

at Birmingham City University here in the UK. He's a campaigner for reparations to former slave nations. Just how then should reparations be calculated? The estimates from the Caribbean, this is just for Caribbean from Britain, is between three and 14 trillion. The reason that number is so different is because you can just count unpaid labour, so 300 years of unpaid labour,

compound that and work out what that is. But there's also the trauma, which is why you get that variety between three and 14 trillion. The vastness of that sum makes it unlikely, surely, that such a precedent would be set and presumably other European countries would feel the pressure to follow suit. Well, this is why you won't get an apology. Well, there won't be a formal apology because once you apologise, that suggests corpability. Once Britain then says, look, we have to pay

this debt, then India can come in and say, well, the Indian debt could be, that could be 44 trillion. Africa would also claim reparations. So yes, the numbers are big, they should be big. But you're right, that does also mean that's why it's probably unlikely we ever get any serious payments. Is everyone in a post-colonial country like Britain really made significantly richer by this history of slavery? Someone at the bottom of the social heap, someone who barely earns enough to pay taxes, might think it's ridiculous to take money off them and give to some country in the Caribbean.

Well, yeah, I mean, the question I would simply ask is why there are so many people, millions of people, that migrate from the Caribbean to Britain. I'm not seeing poor people from the UK migrate the other way. And why is that? Because the actual conditions of life in places like Jamaica, where my family's from, for the poor, are so vastly different and disparate to the people at the bottom here. Not to mention places like Nigeria and Africa, where the life expectancy is 54. That's the whole migrant crisis that we have of people coming into the UK, predominantly from foreign parts of the British Empire, is because the standards of living are so vastly different. That's what the empire has created. This wealth and poverty from slavery and colonialism has not

gone anywhere. That is the world we live in today. All of us, including me, I benefit from living in the UK. And so you can't deal with global inequality without dealing with that basic fundamental reality which shapes life and death today. How far from mainstream politics at the moment is your view that trillions in reparations should be paid? Well, I think it's not really very... it's never going to be a mainstream view that the British are paying trillions in reparations. But that doesn't mean it's not the correct view.

And in fact, as I said, I'll tell you right now, I am very, very, very, very unlikely that serious reparatory justice will be paid or even could be paid. But that's not really the point of reparations. The point is to show what that reality is, to show just how unequal the world is and really to remind us that the world is shaped today, life and death is shaped today by white supremacy. Professor Cain D. Andrews talking to Paul Henley. The UK Foreign Office declined our request for an interview, but quoted the Prime Minister Keir Starmer when asked about reparations. The slave trade and slave practice was abhorrent. We've had a very

positive two days in Samoa talking about our shared challenges with the themes of resilience and climate. Now it's an 800-old mystery, one that mixes truth with myth, anchodex a king, a castle and a very unfortunate victim. Who was the man whose remains were found at the bottom of a well in modern-day Norway? Was he the real-life subject of an Old Norse legend? More from Isabella Jewell. It's one of the main sources of Norwegian history for the late 12th century. The Sverissaga is an Old Norse text that recounts the exploits of King Svera Sigurdsson,

one of the most important rulers of Norway. The 182-verse saga, which is thought to have been written under the king's supervision, has been pored over by historians for centuries. It tells of the battles Sveire led to win and retain his rule. One gruesome line in the text describes how a rival clan attacked Sveiresborg Castle, which was built by the king near the city of Trondheim. It says they took a dead man's body and threw it in a well inside the rampart before filling it with stones. It wasn't until 1938 that archaeologists drained a medieval well in the ruins of the castle and, beneath the rubble, they found a skeleton. Fast forward 85 years and a team

of scientists may have finally confirmed the remains as those of the unfortunate Wellman. Using carbon dating and modern DNA technology, they examined a tooth from the body and found the date range he was alive was consistent with the raid on the castle in 1197. And the research also revealed new information about the well man's background. He was between 30 and 40 years old, blue-eyed and fair-skinned, with ancestry tracing to southern Norway. Isabella Jewel. And that's all from us for now, but before we go, here's my colleague Nick Miles with

a request. Hello, I am hosting a special edition of the Global News podcast ahead of the UN's climate change conference, which starts next month. We want you to send in your questions for our experts to answer. Anything climate related and what the world is doing to try to address the problem. We've already had lots of questions in, some from Brazil about how much pressure companies are under to meet their emissions targets and several of you want to know three simple things we can do to reduce our own carbon footprint. Just send us a voice note with your question to globalpodcasts at bbc.co.uk. Thanks very much. Nick Miles there. This edition was mixed by Chris Kazaris and the producer was Alison

Davies. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Paul Moss. Until next time, goodbye.