Global News Podcast - Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of the permanent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

The Israeli authorities have caused massive and deliberate forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, in what amounts to a war crime, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and at 14HR's GMT on Thursday the 14th of November these are our main stories. Human Rights Watch says Israel's forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza amounts to a war crime. In the Philippines, thousands abandon their homes ahead of super typhoon Usagi. Plus, a groundbreaking global study shows more than 800 million people worldwide have diabetes. Also in this podcast… Some proposing the introduction of childlessness tax.

Some say it would be good to have people move from cities to villages because then they are bound to have more children. Russia struggles to encourage people to procreate as the birth rate shrinks to its lowest in 25 years. Human Rights Watch has accused the Israeli authorities of being responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The report comes as Israel pushes on with its military campaign in northern Gaza. The New York-based rights group says this has created a new wave of

forced displacement for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Nadia Hardman is a researcher at Human Rights Watch. Senior officials in the Israeli government and the War Cabinet have repeatedly declared their intent to forcibly displace the population. From the early days of the war cabinet have repeatedly declared their intent to forcibly displace the population, from the early days of the war to over a year later, with government ministers saying that the territory of Gaza will decrease. In the areas where the military has razed, extended and cleared land for buffer zones and security corridors, human rights which fines these actions of the Israeli authorities amount to ethnic cleansing.

For more on the report, I spoke to our Middle East analyst, Sebastian Asha. What this new report by Human Rights Watch is focusing on are the evacuation orders that the Israeli army has issued time and time again to people in Gaza. That's led to the vast majority of the population, 1.9 million people being displaced, many of them displaced many times. And as you say, human rights describes it as a deliberate, a massive forced displacement. It says that it amounts to a crime against humanity because essentially the safeguards that should be in place in terms of where people can go, whether those places are safe or not, the supply of food and other basic resources isn't being provided by Israel.

So we've heard accusations that are similar to this before, but this is one of the strongest and it comes as Israel has been mounting for more than a month now a major, major operation in northern Gaza, which has been another displacement of people there. There's only reckoned to be a few thousand or so Gazans still in that area. And it's raised suspicion, it's raised suggestions that Israel may be looking to a permanent displacement of the population there to create a security buffer zone. And what about Israel's response to what Human Rights Watch has been saying?

I mean Israel hasn't responded to this specific report as yet and perhaps it won't. But time and time again what Israel has said is that these evacuation orders are essentially humanitarian in intent that they are meant to ensure minimum loss of life to the populations by having them move, and that it's also for imperative military reasons. Now those are the two reasons in the law, the international law, the Geneva Convention, that allows such displacements, saying that they must be only in exceptional circumstances for imperative military reasons and for the population's security. As I say what Human Rights Watch is saying is that those conditions aren't being met by the Israeli military in Gaza. Now the US

Secretary of State, Antony Blinken has said, I think on Wednesday, that Israel has achieved its war aims in Gaza and the war should end. I mean, are we any closer to a ceasefire, do you think? Is that going to have an effect, what he had to say? I don't think what he has to say will have any effect at the moment. I mean, he's at the end of the Biden administration. President Trump is about to come in. He has a pretty different attitude, I think, towards what is happening. I think until President Trump takes over, we're unlikely to see any major move towards a full ceasefire in Gaza. Lebanon might be a different story, but I think the message really that's

coming from Trump and that Israel, the Israeli government, seems to be hearing, whether it's entirely accurate or not, is that Trump is saying, do what you have to do now, do it as hard as you need to, but get it finished as soon as possible so that when I take over, I will be able essentially to say that peace is returning to Gaza. So I mean, I think as far as Blinken and the Biden administration is concerned I don't think what they have to say now probably matters that much. Sebastian Asha. The Philippines has raised its highest storm alert and evacuated hundreds of thousands of people from their homes

as super typhoon Usagi barrels towards the north. It follows a series of tropical storms in the region this month which have damaged infrastructure and killed 159 people. I spoke to our Asia Pacific regional editor Celia Hatton. Now the difference between a typhoon and a super typhoon is the speed of the winds. Anything over 150 kilometres per hour is a super typhoon. This storm is expected to bring winds of 185 kilometers an hour. And the authorities say that's such strong wind that even buildings that are normally considered to be pretty safe,

low risk of damage, are expected to receive strong damage in this storm. And that's really worrying them because they're already predicting widespread flooding, devastating landslides. And that's already on top of the storms that the Philippines has already sustained just in the past month. So how well prepared are the Philippines for this? Well, they're prepared to predict that it's going to be devastating, but they're being honest in saying that they're really running low on emergency resources. They've already had four major storms in the past month. 28,000 people are

still in shelter from those storms. And you just have to think, the land is already saturated with water, with dealing with widespread flooding from the storms they've just had. So it can't take much more. That's why they can predict that there's going to be major flooding from this one. And emergency resources are running low. They're asking for $33 million in emergency aid from the UN. And they say they just don't know if they can cope with the super typhoon that's about to hit them really, really hard. You mentioned the super typhoon. You said there's been a series of tropical storms. Is this usual to see so many in the space of a week?

No. So this is the first time ever on record that four tropical storms, all centered in the South China Sea and North Pacific Ocean, have been seen at one time in November. So the authorities are saying this is really scary and unprecedented. They think it's related to climate change in that the storms are hitting within a smaller span of time, they're forming closer to coastlines and they're intensifying much faster. So the storm that's just making land in the Philippines now, this super typhoon, it wasn't a super typhoon 24 hours ago. That's how quickly it picked up speed and intensified and that really

hasn't given the authorities much time to prepare. Celia Hatton, Donald Trump is announcing nominees for his new cabinet with the Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz on track to become US Attorney General, a position that would allow him to decide to drop the federal criminal cases Mr Trump currently faces. Mr Gaetz has also been facing his own investigation. The House of Representatives has been looking into allegations of sexual misconduct, drug use and illegal use of campaign funds, accusations he denies. It comes as the President-elect's grip on power is confirmed with the Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress, the body consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives, which passes laws in the United States. Our correspondent Jessica Parker is in Palm Beach in Florida and told us more.

Matt Gaetz is a really polarising figure and has made enemies, including within his own party. He's outspoken a massive Trump loyalist but has also, and you were alluding to it there, faced allegations the America's top prosecutor. However, of course, that role should usually require Senate approval. It would be interesting to see if he could get that. Having said that, Donald Trump has talked about bypassing that process. Certainly the appointment that has led to the most jaws being dropped so far is that of Mr Gates, who could potentially take up this very powerful position, but is also, along with a couple of other picks by Donald Trump, is being criticised as unqualified for such an important role. But as we've been discussing for days now, it looks like the President-elect is really prioritising loyalty in terms of the people he's picking for his top team.

Jessica Parker in Florida. And if you'd like to hear more about Donald Trump's cabinet picks, the Global Story podcast has taken a look at his inner circle and what it says about his priorities for the next four years. Find the Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts. India's capital Delhi has overtaken the Pakistani city of Lahore as currently the most polluted city on earth. According to the Swiss group IQ Air, Delhi's air pollution index reached 418 on Thursday which is defined as severe. A good rating is between 0 and 50. The Indian city has

to deal with smog every winter as cold air traps dust, emissions and smoke from illegal fires. Our India correspondent Arunadeh Mukherjee is in Delhi and gave his reaction to the title. It certainly isn't the kind of tag that India would like to show off to the world as it tries to project an image of a developing country which really is trying to make a name for itself on a global stage. When you step outside of the houses of our homes there's a burning sensation in your eyes, your eyes start watering very fast, your throat starts itching, there's a hoarseness, there's also a shortness of

breath because you're trying to breathe in as little as possible. I know that sounds difficult but psychologically you start trying to take shorter breaths which leaves you breathless most of the time. Now of course there are some people who have the option of staying indoors by keeping their doors and windows shut, keeping those very expensive air purifiers on 24 by 7. But then there are many other people who can't afford purifiers whose jobs are outdoors. The traffic just gives you a sense of how many people need to be out and about. And that is the reality for a majority of the residents here in the national capital

region as they brave this kind of hazardous weather. There is a big concern, especially for the elderly as well as children. Every evening around this time you see a lot of children coming out to play. But that site has completely disappeared over the past few days because parents just don't want to send their children. Imagine small children going out to play in this kind of air. It's certainly a huge cause for concern. And the problem is, this is an annual affair. But experts say the government still hasn't been able to fix it.

And most of the solutions are quick fix and reactive rather than preemptive. Well, despite India taking the top spot, air pollution remains a serious problem in Pakistan. Our correspondent, Caroline Davis, is in Islamabad, where the pollution levels are classed as unhealthy on the Air Quality Index.

It's still incredibly smoggy and this is when we're hovering at around the 200 mark on the Air Quality Index, whereas the numbers that we've seen in the course of the last couple of weeks have been extraordinarily high here in Pakistan. It's been about 2,000 has been hit in one of the cities in Multan and that was over the course of the weekend. This is not a competition that either country particularly wants to be at the top of this particular chart. We've seen these figures fluctuate over the course of the last two weeks. Lahore has on occasions been over a thousand, I checked earlier today and at one point it was sitting

over 1,500 so these figures and these cities that are sitting at the very top they're all part of the same problem in the same region. And in fact, there have been images that NASA have shown where you can see the smog and see how thick it is from space. That gives you an idea of how potent this smog is. One of the major issues, I've been speaking to some climate scientists as well

about what has been going on and why this smog is still sitting here over Pakistan for over two weeks now over some of these major cities. They've said that this is a large amount to do with the fact that there hasn't been any rain, there hasn't been much wind, it hasn't moved the smog on. So instead it's just accumulated, it's built up, it's spread across so it's not just in Lahore, it's across a large amount of Punjab as well and even spread into nearby Kaibapur, Tunquah too.

Caroline Davis in Islamabad. Diabetes rates have been rising around the world but a new study based on global data from a hundred and forty million individuals says the number of people living with diabetes has actually doubled in the past 30 years with the rates exacerbated by unhealthy lifestyles and an aging population. Stephanie Prentice has this report. Diabetes, the chronic disease caused when the pancreas isn't producing the hormone insulin or not enough of it, takes a huge toll on the body, triggers other health conditions and can be fatal. Now, new analysis published in The Lancet says more than 800 million adults have the disease worldwide.

That's almost twice as many as previous estimates suggested. The study also found that while cases of the condition have exploded, treatment rates have stagnated. Almost half of people that have diabetes are living with it untreated. Experts suggest it's hitting low- and middle-income countries the hardest and younger demographics in those countries too. Lack of treatment can lead to amputations, heart disease, kidney damage or vision loss. Type 2, which accounts for most cases, can be caused by being overweight, eating unhealthily and not exercising enough. Its prevalence indicates what the study's

authors call widening global inequalities in the disease. Experts within India who contributed to the study are urging low-income countries to promote healthy diets and exercise with prevention as a focus. They also say increasing detection must be an urgent priority, particularly in countries with low treatment levels like Sub-Saharan African nations, Pakistan, China and India.

Stephanie Prentice. As Russia fights in Ukraine, it's battling a problem at home and in the home – a shrinking population. Birth rates have fallen to their lowest in 25 years and some estimates forecast that Russia's population will halve in size by the end of the century. Earlier this week, the lower house of parliament passed a law that would ban what it calls propaganda that promotes a child-free lifestyle. The upper house is expected to rubber stamp it in the coming days. Krassi Twigg from BBC Monitoring reports. The country's population is shrinking fast and its leaders are alarmed.

Russia's fertility rate is similar to European countries, but its death rate is much higher. And there's a number of recent factors that have accelerated the population decline, including the war in Ukraine. Francis Carr is one of BBC Monitoring's Russia experts. The upper estimate given by US intelligence is that 200,000 Russian men have been killed fighting in Ukraine. But there are also other consequences. Russian men are simply not at home to procreate.

In the autumn of 2022, when the Russian authorities declared their so-called partial mobilization there was a huge number of people leaving the country and one recent investigation found that around 650,000 people had still not gone back. Russia is now pretty much functioning as a war economy. Feeding the war machine and encouraging new life seem like contradictory objectives. The dilemma how to pursue both has spawned a myriad of proposals. Some of the measures have already been in place for several years. The most well-known one in Russia is the lump sum payment for new mothers. This was launched in 2007, originally for second children. But in 2020, this was also extended to the first child. But despite these financial incentives, Russian data suggests Russians are not in a hurry to have

more children. So the carat alone is not enough. Veronika Malinboim is another Russia watcher from our team at Bilisi. Various different officials are almost trying to compete in proposing the sort of more outlandish measures, some proposing the introduction of childlessness tax. Some propose banning micro-small to one-bedroom apartments. Some say it would be good to have people move from cities to villages because then they are bound to have more children. The role of women is central to this push for bigger families.

Access to abortion in Russia is in line with many western countries, but the situation is changing. Private clinics seem to have become a testing ground for limiting access to abortion, and there are further measures seen as another nail in the coffin of freedom of expression. There is also a ban on propaganda of abortions and incitement to abortions in several regions because it's such a vague definition anything could fall under it. The most worrying law that is currently in the working is the ban on the propaganda of a child-free lifestyle. If the demographic crisis continues, what would the consequences be? Francis Carr again.

Putin really likes to talk up the idea of a Russia that has been raised from its knees after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a country that is now standing up for itself on the international stage. And if Russia's current population trajectory continues, there's no chance that Russia will have the resources, the weight, the influence to bring this vision of the future to reality. That was Frances Scar ending that report by Crassie Twigg. Still to come in this podcast. Hello scammers. I'm your worst nightmare. So W is then a dot.

Three times W and then dot. Because while they're busy talking to me, they can't be scamming you. The AI chatbot called Daisy developed two trap scammers. The Spanish province of Málaga has been hit by its heaviest rain in 35 years as the country struggles with a second wave of flooding in less than three weeks. Thousands have been forced from their homes. Our correspondent in Madrid, Guy Hedgeco, spoke to Victoria Uancunda. In some quite dramatic scenes it did continue to rain heavily in the city of Malaga and in the surrounding province of Malaga overnight and into this morning.

There has been this red weather alert issued for that area of the country. The weather alert is due to be lifted, we're told, in the next couple of hours. So the hope is the worst of that weather will move on by then. But in the meantime, the flooding has caused a lot of disruption. For example, one hospital in the city of Malaga was flooded. There were staff there bailing water out of it. Roads and rail links were closed around the city of Malaga. You could see that streets were absolutely flooded. So a lot of disruption there. Fortunately, it seems as if there hasn't been any loss of life. So we haven't seen anything like

what we saw just over two weeks ago in eastern Spain. But still, it's a great shock for the people of Malaga. It is the heaviest rain or rains that they've had in 35 years. How are they coping? Well yes, I mean you don't associate that kind of weather with Malaga. This is the Costa del Sol which is known for its sunshine. I think people there have coped just because they've been given warning ahead of this weather event. They were told in advance by first of all by the National Meteorological Office that there was going to be torrential rain. That red alert was issued and as a result of that red

alert the local authorities issued their own alert warning people yesterday, before yesterday, that there was that people should stay inside, they should stay off the roads. In many cases once the weather started people were told that they should move up into higher floors of buildings to stay out of danger's way. So there were a lot of precautions that were taken ahead of this weather event and during it. Guy Hedgecoe. Many of us now refuse to answer telephone calls from an unknown number for fear that it could be a scam. With fraudsters using increasingly sophisticated methods, a British telecoms company thinks it has the solution. A specially built AI chatbot of

an elderly woman called Daisy. Hello scammers, I'm your worst nightmare. So W is then a dot. Three times W and then dot. It's nearly been an hour. Gosh how time flies. It's showing me a picture of my cat Fluffy. It's showing you the picture of your cat Fluffy. Because while they're busy talking to me they can't be scamming you and let's face it dear I've got all the time in the world. Well Daisy was developed to trap fraudsters into long and futile conversations and to stop them scamming real people. Our cyber correspondent Joe Tidy has been finding out more. Can you please come to the home page in your computer?

Oh, I'm so sorry dear. I'm doing my best. This is Daisy, the AI chatbot in action against a real fraudster. The AI is programmed to sound like a confused elderly lady, just the kind of victim these criminals are trying to target. The telecoms firm O2 has set up phone lines with Daisy on the other end, waiting for calls. The numbers have been posted on criminal forums where fraudsters share potential target details. Daisy's already taken a thousand calls and is working so well, it's managed to keep scam

callers on the line for as long as 40 minutes, until they realised it wasn't a real person. According to the regulator Ofcom, millions of scam calls have been made so far this year. The criminals rely on volume, trying lots of different numbers until someone falls for it and sends them money. Using chatbots like Daisy can slow them down and prevent them from accessing real victims. Joe Tidy. New research by scientists on a fossil of a small bird which is tens of millions of years old has revealed how the brains of the creatures developed. The bones which were found in São Paulo State in Brazil were scanned by researchers using digital techniques enabling

them to reconstruct the bird's brain. Daniel Field, Professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Cambridge and Senior Author of the report, spoke to Johnny Diamond about the research. This is a new species of fossil bird from about 80 million years ago named Nava Ornus. And what's really remarkable about Nava Ornus is that its skeleton and particularly its skull are more completely and three-dimensionally preserved than any other bird-like animal of that age, which allows us to learn quite a lot about the biology of this animal. And you found that what, that its brain is a kind of

bridge between the clever birds of today and the not-so-bright birds of the dinosaur era. Is that right? That's exactly right. So we're very lucky when it comes to the skulls of modern birds because if we look inside those skulls, the bones that form the skull provide us with a very accurate picture of the external geometry of the brain. And this is a technique that we can apply to fossils too to understand how the brains of birds evolved. But the problem is that most fossil birds tend to be preserved totally flattened and broken up, which means we can't really get a good picture of what those brains look like.

But with Nava Ornus, we had this unprecedented opportunity to do that, which shows this fascinating intermediate stage in the evolution of the bird brain between the very expanded brains of modern birds which support the complex behaviors that we know and love in the present day and the very archaic, far less intelligent sort of brains that we associate with non-avian dinosaurs. So you got a perfect skull instead of a sort of flat one and then how did you get from that to what its brain looked like? Well over the last 20 years in the field of paleontology our ability to use micro CT scanning, basically combining high powered X-rays with a, basically a turntable that

spins the fossil around while it's being scanned, allows us to generate these very high resolution three dimensional images of fossils that we can actually peer inside of. So this is the technique that allowed us to generate a really nice high resolution three dimensional model of the skull of Nettle Ornus and reconstruct in three dimensions what its brain would have looked like. Professor Daniel Field. And finally, Hollywood is traditionally pro the Democratic Party and big stars like George

Clooney and Robert De Niro backed Kamala Harris to win the US presidency. Now the industry is assessing what impact Donald Trump's return to the White House could have on mainstream and independent filmmaking. Tom Brook reports from New York. Welcome to the Critics' Choice Documentary Awards. The Critics' Choice Documentary Awards, one of the film world's first post-election gatherings. Hollywood long a powerful democratic stronghold gave the Kamala Harris campaign

numerous celebrity endorsements, but all to no avail. At this awards event, big name industry figures mingled with lesser known filmmakers. Some were fearful of what a new Trump administration might bring, among them filmmaker Zach Stewart Pontier. It's a scary time. I think a lot of people are feeling paranoid.

There is the view that in the wake of Donald Trump's victory, a form of resistant cinema may emerge. Many think independent documentary making has a newfound importance. Actor Jeremy Piven. I really believe that it's more important than ever and to be truth-sayers, you know, in the midst of all this junk and to cut through it. It's a very important way of getting the word out.

So I think documentaries are more important than ever. We're now at the beginning of awards season in the US. Traditionally these celebratory events have often been used by liberal umblerers as a platform to vent their displeasure to Republican policies and politicians. But what is going to happen now in the wake of the Democrats' defeat? Tim Teeman is senior editor at The Daily Beast. I think we've seen in the last few days how muted Hollywood has been in response to Trump's re-election after being extremely voluble against Trump in the run-up to the election.

So I think Hollywood is taking stock at the moment. And I think we'll see the shape and nature of what Hollywood feels about this re-election when Trump's own legislative program establishes itself after January. I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized are male and female, and they are assigned at birth. Others say the writing is already on the wall.

Donald Trump's opposition to transgender rights was a major part of his rhetoric in the closing days of the election campaign. Trans people not often represented on screen and their supporters are fearful of what might happen to the portrayal of their lives and their stories in movies in a new Trump era. Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Ben Proudfoot.

Yeah, I mean, in light of the election, I think it's more important now than ever for documentary filmmakers to use the power of filmmaking, to use our cameras, to use our platforms, to make sure that stories are told, especially those of the trans community. Raspun. In these polarized times, even Donald Trump's most ardent foes trans community. In these polarized times, even Donald Trump's most ardent foes concede at times he gets it right.

Trump once proclaimed that the 1941 Orson Welles classic, Citizen Kane, depicting a media tycoon who some say has traits in common with the president-elect, was his favorite film of all time. Many Hollywood cinephile liberals share that view. But having a fondness for the same old Hollywood classic isn't enough to bridge the huge gulf that now exists between the film industry creatives and the future Trump administration. Tom Brook reporting.

And that's it from us for now but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Vladimir Mizechka. The producer was Stephanie Tillotson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson.

Until next time, bye bye.