Global News Podcast - ICC issues arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Israeli politicians denounce ICC decision to issue arrest warrants against prime minister and former defence minister. Also: the UN chief urges negotiators at the climate summit to do more to reach a final deal.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Good, bad billionaire from the BBC World Service. The podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 Hours GMT on Thursday, the 21st of November.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ukraine says Russia has used an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time in war. And the US Justice Department says Google should be made to sell its Chrome browser. Also in this podcast… Every cop must make progress irrespective of the geopolitical dynamics. Rich countries must deliver on their commitments. As the UN climate summit in Azerbaijan nears its end, can world leaders reach a deal?

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Galant over the war in Gaza. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe that the two men bore responsibility for quote, the war crime of starvation and crimes against humanity. Mr Netanyahu's office said the court's action was anti-Semitic. The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for the Hamas military commander Mohammed Dave, who's thought to be dead. Our correspondent in The Hague, Anna Hologun, told me more about the warrants issued against the Israeli Prime Minister and the former Defence Minister. This is a hugely significant move and in practical terms it means that each one of the ICC's

124 members is now expected to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Galant if they are to step foot on their territories. It restricts their movement certainly. Beyond that, both of these individuals have denied any wrongdoing, have said they are acting in line with international law and have rejected the ICC's jurisdiction in the past. However, the ICC has gone through those arguments made by Israel. The pre-trial chamber has decided the court does have jurisdiction in this case and therefore we have these arrest warrants.

So as you say, they have found reasonable grounds to believe that both Benjamin Netanyahu and Jovga Land bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare. So they found reasonable grounds to believe that the lack of food, water, electricity, and fuel, specific medical supplies, et cetera, created conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population in Gaza,

which resulted in the death of civilians, including children, due to malnutrition and dehydration. Also, there is a second list of charges. The pretrial chamber found there are reasonable grounds to believe that these men bear criminal responsibility as civilians for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against civilians in Gaza despite having the measures available to them to prevent or repress the commission of these crimes.

Now we've seen other leaders who are accused of war crimes managing to go about their business without too many restrictions. Is there any chance that these arrest warrants will be executed? If you look at, for example, in recent times, President Putin, Vladimir Putin, Russia has an arrest warrant issued by the ICC. That has, to some degree, restricted his movements worldwide. When he travelled recently to Mongolia, Mongolia was referred to the Assembly of States Parties, which is the body which oversees the work of the ICC. So there are implications. And as many of the human rights

organisations are now saying in the last few minutes, it's now up to the international community to decide how to respond because the ICC is a court of last resort. It deals with international crimes but it doesn't have its own police force or army to go out there and enforce its arrest warrants which is why it's now up to the country's members of the court to respond. And a Hologun in The Hague. The EU foreign policy chief Joseph Burrell has said that the ICC warrants should be respected and implemented and Jordan's foreign minister said the same thing.

In Gaza itself, Israeli forces are continuing their offensive in the north, which they say is aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping. Overnight, multiple buildings in Beit Lahya and Gaza City were bombed. Hospitals in the area are struggling to cope. Aid agencies say they are barely able to reach the affected areas and many people are still believed to be buried underneath the rubble. I got an update from our correspondent in Jerusalem, Yoland Nel. These were deadly air strikes in the early hours of the morning and so darkness sort

of added to the sense of confusion. We're now hearing from the civil defence at least 22 people killed in a northern suburb of Gaza City And the reports from Bitlakhia are that about six houses were hit close to the Kamal Adwan hospital. And the reports coming from Hamas and from paramedics are that more than 60 bodies have been recovered from the rubble so far there, saying other people are trapped. And certainly there are some pretty grim videos which we can't independently verify.

One shows big and small corpses apparently wrapped up, lined on the side of the street. Many women and children are reported to be among the casualties and there are also videos that show clearly bodies stuck in the rubble. And from what we understand there were many displaced people from that area who had been staying near to the hospital. It was a residential area people say and I should mention also that while a lot of the focus is on the north of Gaza there have also been a number of deadly air strikes in central and the southern part of the Gaza Strip in the latest Israeli

strikes. Yola Nel in Jerusalem. The Israeli military has recently issued a statement saying overnight the IDF struck Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the area of Beit Laha where Hamas terrorists, including a number who participated in the October the 7th massacre, were operating. The Israelis say the area in question is an active combat zone and that they took numerous steps to mitigate the risk to civilians. Intercontinental ballistic missiles have a range of more than 5,000 kilometres and can carry nuclear warheads. They have never been used in any armed conflict until today, if reports from Ukraine are correct. Ukrainian authorities say Russia fired an

intercontinental ballistic missile without a nuclear weapon at the southeastern city of Dnieper. However, a US official told the BBC's partner network CBS it was not believed to be an ICBM as they're known. Ukraine says the city was also targeted by a hypersonic ballistic missile and seven cruise missiles, six of which were shot down. Ukrainian MP Maria Metzenseva gave her reaction to the reports. This recent one, this night, whether that was a ballistic intercontinental, whatever that was, Russia is breaching its obligations within the international law, constantly, massively targeting civilians and social infrastructure daily. I heard more from the World Service Europe editor editor Katerina Khinkhulova.

There was a very powerful attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro early this morning and that the Ukrainian military said that one of the missiles used in this attack was an intercontinental ballistic missile. These missiles are very powerful, they have long range. They have the ability to carry nuclear warheads. Although in this instance, the Ukrainian military stressed that there was no suspicion or suggestion that it was carrying a nuclear warhead. At the same time, the investigations into what kind of missile it was were continuing. But all this sort of discussion of what type of missile it was aside, it actually signifies

increase of tension and escalation in this conflict. In this instance, we have to wait for an expertise and in fact there have been calls within Ukraine for an international independent expertise into what type of weapon was used this morning in Dnipro. Katarina Henghuleva. It is a measure of Google's dominance in the internet search market that its name is used as a verb for checking out something online. In a landmark anti-competition ruling in the US in August, a judge found it had illegally

crushed its competition. Now the Department of Justice has come up with a series of proposals to end its monopoly, including selling off its Chrome browser and stopping it from doing deals to make its search engine the default. I spoke to our technology editor Zoe Kleinman. You only have to look at some of the statistics and you soon realise what a giant Google really is. 90% of all online searches globally are done through Google Search. 60% of people using web browsers, which is what you really need to use to get online, use the Chrome browser, which is owned by Google.

70% of people who own mobile phones have Android-powered phones that basically power every phone apart from Apple's iPhone, and that's also owned by Google. So because Google owns all of this stuff, it's collecting and triangulating more data about everyone that's using it. And it uses that data to target ads at them. And that, Oliver, is how Google makes all of its money. OK, so tell us about what the Department of Justice

is proposing to end its search monopoly and what difference it would make to users? This is really quite dramatic I think. It's proposing to take a big axe to Google's core business. It's saying it needs to lose the Chrome browser, it needs to lose the Android operating system for phones and tablets. It's not allowed to enter the browser market for five years or to buy up any firms that are already in the space. Another thing that Google does is pay billions of dollars to Apple and Samsung, who are the world leading phone brands, to be the default search engine on their devices. The Department of Justice is saying that that also has to stop. If it works in the way that

the government intends, the first thing you'll notice is that not everything you use will be owned or powered by Google anymore. You may find that that means that adverts are less likely to follow you around the net like they do now. But if you use other big tech services like, for example, any of Meta's platforms, Instagram or Facebook, then you're probably going to get that anyway. You may find that you have more brands, I suppose, within your online world. But it's worth saying, you know, there are and there always have been other browsers available. Some of them take a more privacy centric approach and they are proud of the fact that they collect

less data on their users, but they're comparatively very small. And if we're looking at something that's going to have to pick up 60%, if you like, of the internet traffic that people are using every day via the Chrome browser, that's an awful lot and they're going to have to scale up really fast. And the other question is, who's going to buy it? Because if this stuff goes up for sale, I can't imagine it's going to be cheap. And is that going to mean realistically that it's going to have to be another tech giant that buys it up? And then are we just creating the same problem somewhere else? So my money at the moment, I think, might be on Amazon. I could see Amazon being very interested in, certainly in the Chrome browser.

But then are we just giving Amazon the dominance that we're trying to take away from Google? Well, certainly Google doesn't like any of these ideas accusing the Department of Justice of a radical interventionist agenda. So will they go through? Well as you can imagine this has gone down like a lead balloon at Google. They're really not very happy about it. They're going to fight it. Next month on the 20th of December Google gets to put forward its own suggestions for how to deal with this. I think what we need to get our heads around is that this is not going to go away, even if Donald Trump decides that when he gets in this isn't a problem. This all started under his last regime. I don't think they've got an ally there.

I think that something dramatic is going to have to happen. The question is will it be Google's way or will it be the government's way? The BBC technology editor Zoe Kleinman. Meanwhile, the Australian parliament has begun debating what it calls world leading plans to prevent children under 16 using apps like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. The bill is expected to become law by the end of the year and social media companies will then

have to come up with ways of blocking youngsters from their platforms or face fines of up to 33 million US dollars. Our Sydney correspondent Katie Watson sent this report. blocking youngsters from their platforms or face fines of up to $33 million. Our Sydney correspondent Katie Watson sent this report. This is about protecting young people, not punishing or isolating them. Australia's communications minister Michelle Rowland made the government's position very clear. For too many children, she said, social media is harmful.

This bill seeks to set a new normative value in society, that accessing social media is harmful. This bill seeks to set a new normative value in society, that accessing social media is not the defining feature of growing up in Australia. I commend the bill to the House. Politicians are now debating the legislation in Canberra, but it's a discussion being had well beyond the corridors of power. It would be helpful for not using your phone all the time,

but it's not really good for communities. Some people need to have communities online. Honestly, I think it's a good thing. I think that kids generally just have a bit too much access to the internet, and there's a lot of really terrible influences online. I make NowPosh for boys. NowPosh online. I make nail polish for boys. Nail polish, it's not very accepting for guys.

Some people get bullied, will get targeted. But not everyone is so upbeat. Lucas Lane is known as Glossy Boys Online, sharing tips for boys who like wearing nail polish. He started at just 12 and has grown a community as well as a business. He and his mum Brianna, who helps him, think the ban is badly thought out. First I just didn't think it was a threat because you know, it's just angry old people

like, ah, ban social media. But now this is becoming a threat. And I didn't feel consulted. My mum, did you feel consulted? Absolutely not. This is affecting me, not the people making this law. If you have a blanket ban, what you're doing is you're taking choices away from young people. I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts. It was back in September that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese first mooted the idea of a

social media ban. The proposal captured attention. Governments across the world are all grappling with the same issues of how best to protect children online. Dr Catherine Page-Jeffrey from the University of Sydney says it's the wrong approach. We need to bring in young people and of course we need to acknowledge the rights, the perspectives, the agency of young people. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child points out that young people are entitled to participation and that all these things apply to the digital world as well.

And everyone seems to be forgetting that. Many people want to know how it will work. The government said the companies will be legally required to protect Australians from harm. They've now got a big chunk of time to come up with ways of doing that. Age verification is one suggestion. Daniel Angus is the professor of digital communication at the Queensland University of Technology. So there are two kinds of age verification that might be put into play. One is age verification proper, which is the handing over of personal details like passports, driver's license,

and other forms of ID. That's problematic. In some ways, we're asking all of Australia to hand over those details if they want to be online, not just children. The other technology being talked about is age assurance. And that's the use of facial recognition or other kinds of AI.

That is riddled with error. It still carries racial bias, gender bias, age bias and is not a solution to this issue. Hi, I'm Taylor and I'd like to tell you a story about the time I accidentally shared way too much online. Australia's touting it as a world first ban. Who will be next? But perhaps more importantly,

how will the platform step up to the new restrictions? Be careful what you share on the internet, because once it's out there, it's out there. That report from Australia by Katie Watson. Still to come on the Global News podcast. Someone smashing an egg on his head and he turned around and he punched the guy and laid him out. We had a long debate about it and finally at the press conference

when I was asked about it I just said, well, John is John. We look back at the legacy of Britain's former deputy prime minister, John Prescott. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. There's something on this boat. A tan of cocaine. There was a lot of adrenaline. I couldn't believe what was happening. And the Man Brazilian Police believed to be at its centre. Fox.

Fox. Fox got the shots. From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, Season 5, Finding Mr Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. On Wednesday, the Ugandan opposition politician, Kisa Bessie-Jje, appeared in a Ugandan military court charged with crimes against national security. He had disappeared four days earlier in Kenya and his wife says he was abducted.

Mr Bessieje has often clashed with the government of Uweire Meseveni and been arrested on many occasions, but this is the first time he's been taken from another country. His lawyer, Arias Lukwago, says his client denies all the charges and that his detention is illegal. Mr Luqwago is also a key opposition figure and mayor of Kampala. He spoke to Catherine Biaru Hanga from Nairobi. From the time he was kidnapped in Nairobi up to this particular moment, he has not been able to access doctors and medication. And that is worrying to us because you cannot trust those authorities in Uganda to be in charge of his health. And we are really pushing for the respect for his right to access private

doctors. With the lawyers, we had a brief interaction yesterday in court. Previously it was not possible because we were not even told that he had been abducted, that he was, we had no idea where he had been detained. So we just learned of it very late when he was about to be produced before court. We were just given about five minutes to interact with him in court and that is all. You mention abduction, that is a serious allegation. Just to explain to listeners, the chain of events is that Dr. Bessej was in neighbouring Kenya for a book launch. He then disappeared. No one could find him and then he turns up in Uganda. What do you believe happened in that time? From the brief interview we conducted with him, you know, it is something which was done

by authorities from Uganda in collusion with the state of Kenya, which is really perturbing to us because if Kenya, a sovereign state, could allow security operatives to cross over, come and conduct abduction. I can't call it arrest because the security operatives in Uganda have no powers of arrest of somebody who is outside their jurisdiction. And Kenya has not come out to say they are the ones who affected the arrest. And it's the reason we are pushing the government of Kenya to come clean on this, to tell exactly what happened. And we are really disturbed. We're perplexed that to date, they have not issued a statement

up to this particular moment. They ought to have done that on Sunday when the abduction happened. And the way he was whisked away and driven back to Uganda, actually, I can't tell whether he was driven or flown back to Uganda. It's something which we are not sure about. But the way it was conducted, of course, it violated the immigration laws as of now. He's not even in possession of his passport. He's not in possession of any of the travel documents.

Will you be meeting with Kenyan officials? What kind of assurances would you want to hear from them? Well, I have made arrangements to meet our counterparts, our lawyers, to get to interact with them and see how we can pursue legal processes from this side of Kenya. It is becoming systematic that being here is for Ugandan politicians subscribing to opposition political platforms, it's not safe. Eriah Slukwago talking to Catherine Bayaru-Hanga.

The COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan is due to end tomorrow. But as is often the case in these kind of meetings, there is currently deadlock over a final deal. The summit is supposed to agree a new target to replace the 100 billion dollars a year that rich nations pledged to help poorer countries fight global warming. Britain and Brazil have been asked to try to come up with a compromise that the nearly 200 countries there can sign up to. Our climate editor Justin Rolat is at the meeting in Baku. What even is a trillion? A million seconds is 11 and a half days, a billion seconds is 31 years, a trillion seconds is 31,000 years, a trillion dollars is a lot of money. So how on earth can you raise that kind of cash? Now traditionally you'd pass around the hat, ask developed countries, rich countries,

to cough up a bit more. But they only pay developing countries about 40 billion dollars a year in climate finance at the moment. Every cop must make progress irrespective of the geopolitical dynamics. Mia Motley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, is leading a reform process. Rich countries must deliver on their commitments. She's argued with success that the international development banks, the IMF, the World Bank and others could and should be delivering more money.

These are institutions that were founded post World War II where all the governments of the world pooled their money. Joe Thwaites is a climate finance expert with a US environmental group. With that money and with the backing of all the world's governments including some with brilliant credit ratings, they can go to private capital markets and borrow money very, very cheaply. The idea is they could borrow more and therefore lend more out at cheap rates. You can triple the size of the multilateral development banks.

So you could grow them to about 390 billion dollars a year. Now, when making progress, that cash could be used to unlock even more money. Say a team of eminent economists tasked by the UN with exploring the climate finance issue. It's a multiplier effect, yes. So you put one dollar you'll get 20 dollars out if you have a guarantee. Vera Songwe from Cameroon is one of those economists. She says we shouldn't forget that there's potentially a lot of profit in clean energy in the developing world. One important reason private investors are wary is interest rates are often far higher there, but a bit of money up front...

It guarantees the investment, it tells the investor there is not going to be any change of policy, change of price or change of the environment. Less risk. But if that happens, I am going to pay you for it happening, any money that you've lost. So it takes the risk away. And the interest rate falls. And the interest rate falls and capital flows in.

Songwe and her colleagues say this could generate as much as $500 billion a year of private investment in the years after 2030. And there are other even more innovative ideas bouncing around this conference. Levees on aviation, on shipping, on billionaires. They may be long shots, but each one could raise tens of billions a year. So while a trillion really is a very large amount of money, the prospect of raising it may not be as alarming as it sounds. as alarming as it sounds. Justin Rolat at COP29 in Azerbaijan. John Prescott, a cruise ship waiter who became Britain's longest serving deputy prime minister,

has died at the age of 86. His family said he spent his life trying to improve the lives of others, fighting for social justice and protecting the environment. Former US Vice President Al Gore, who worked with him on the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, called John Prescott an unwavering champion of climate action and says he will miss him as a dear friend. The former British Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair says he is devastated. He recalled one of the most famous incidents involving his deputy.

Someone smashed an egg on his head and he turned out and he turned round and he punched the guy and laid him out. We had a long debate about it and finally at the press conference when I was asked about it I just said well John is John and I said was that supposed to be an answer and I said yeah that's an answer. There were no rules that he really abided by. Our political correspondent, Rob Watson, told me more about John Prescott. I met him when I was a very young political reporter,

and he was running to be deputy leader of the Labour Party. And he was, as everyone has said, incredibly robust, incredibly outspoken, pretty fierce when he needed to be. But I think if you're sort of going to reflect on John Prescott, I think his biggest legacy, his greatest legacy, is the effect he had on the relationship between Britain's famous or infamous class system, Oliver, and politics. And what I mean by that is when he was born in 1938,

Britain, which is notoriously divided into working middle and upper classes, it was absolutely run its politics by upper class white men. And indeed he served one when he was a waiter on a ship, he served a prime minister, he was immensely upper class. And then spin forward to the 1990s and this very working class man had become deputy prime minister showing that you could break through those class barriers. And many politicians today cite him as an example.

Yeah, from a waiter on a cruise ship to a man who was known as Two Jags Prescott, how did he make that change? I think he made that change because he was immensely determined and because of the Labour Party. I mean the Labour Party is a party that promoted people from working class backgrounds through the trade union movement. And I guess another part of his legacy apart from climate change and class is how he made the new Labour government of Tony Blair from 1997 to 2010 possible. How did he make it possible? Well, Tony Blair was very middle classclass, he was very posh. John Prescott was that working-class foil, that guy who made it still possible for working-class people to support labour, even when it was led by a posh boy. Rob Watson on John Prescott, who's died at the age of 86.

It's viewed by collectors as an acclaimed piece of art. To others, it's simply a banana stuck to the wall with duct tape. But the work, called Comedian, has just sold at auction in New York for more than six million dollars, around four times the original estimate. And it's not the first time the exhibit has been sold and subsequently eaten. Chantal Hartle has the story. These are words I never thought I'd say. Five million dollars for a banana. Don't let it slip away. The Italian artist behind this conceptual piece, Maurizio Catalan, once referred to it as a metaphor for life. A single yellow banana attached to a white wall with tape destined to decay.

The exhibit first made headlines in 2019 after its debut at an art fair in Florida. It attracted such large crowds that it had to be taken down for public safety. Its latest owner is the Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, who outbid six rivals at the Sotheby's auction. What he's actually purchased is a certificate of authenticity that allows him to tape a banana to a wall and call it comedian. Mr. Sun described it as a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes and the cryptocurrency community and said he would eat the banana soon.

So why pay millions of dollars for artwork that only lasts a few days and can be so easily replicated? Here's art critic Verity Babs. I think that it's down to ego. The art world needs to sell things for vast sums in order to keep up its reputation. I can completely understand why there might be a sense of, what does it mean when it stands on its own? But very little art does stand on its own.

It's all about context, it's all about provenance. And I think that, you know, it's fine for us to allow art to be a bit of a laugh. This is just the latest example in the debate about what constitutes art in the contemporary world. In 2021, an Italian artist sold an invisible sculpture for more than $18,000 and provided the buyer with a certificate of authenticity. Chantelle Hartle. And that's all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Alana Bowles and produced by Richard Hamilton, our editor's

Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. what was happening. And the Man Brazilian Police believed to be at its centre. Fox. Fox. Fox got the shots. From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, Season 5, Finding Mr Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.