Global News Podcast - Israel marks first anniversary of Hamas attacks

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Memorial services are held to mark a year since Hamas attacks when about 1,200 people were killed and many others were taken hostage. Japan cabinet photo mocked on social media and why students aren't reading books.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and at 13 Hours GMT on Monday the 7th of October, these are our main stories.

One year on from the Hamas attacks on Israel, world leaders join Israelis in commemorating those killed. Rockets have been fired into Israel from both Gaza and Lebanon as the Israeli military continues to carry out attacks against Hamas and Hezbollah. The Japanese government admits the cabinet photo that was widely mocked online was digitally altered. Also in this podcast, why Westerners in their 50s and 60s are more likely to have serious health problems than their parents. Increases in obesity rates across generations and growing social inequalities in health within generations are likely to explain at least part of this generational health drift. Israelis have been marking the first anniversary of the Hamas

attacks on October the 7th. Even as the devastating war in Gaza it ignited rages on and is spiraling into a wider conflict that could destabilise the entire Middle East. Ceremonies began at 6.29 local time, the moment when Hamas fighters began the attack that left some 1,200 people dead and saw 250 taken to Gaza as hostages. At the site of the Nova Music Festival, where more than 300 people died on what should have been a day of joy, President Isaac Herzog presided over the memorial ceremony, which began with the last track that was played at the festival before the attackers struck. Relatives held pictures of those who'd been at the festival,

demanding that the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, do more to ensure the return of the hostages. One of those who was taken into Gaza from the festival was Or Levi. His brother, Michael, says one year on, there's no end in sight to the family's trauma. Mentioning a date means that something ended and for us nothing has ended. We are still in this fight, we are still fighting for all the release, we're still begging whoever can help to free the hostages including all. Of the Israeli communities targeted by Hamas,

Kibbutz Beri suffered the biggest loss of any single village. More than 100 people were killed there. It emerged that it had taken Israeli forces seven hours to arrive there to fight off the attackers from Gaza. Our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette, described the mood of the kibbutz one year on from the Hamas atrocities. You can still feel the pain, the grief here. It is still raw and it is chilling to walk through these communities and try to imagine what

they were going through at this time a year ago during the horrific onslaught by Hamas fighters, you mentioned the Nova Music Festival, just a short drive from the kibbutz of Beri, where I am now, and the fields of Re'em, which were the scene of this music celebration turning into a slaughter at dawn. It's now a forest of Israeli flags and flowers and the smiling photographs of the young Israelis and foreigners, some of the thousands who were there in those very, very dark early hours. And that is where the commemorations began this morning. That one was presided over by the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog. Where I'm in Barrie, I can see just at the corner of this street, a street of charred houses with volleyball nets turned upside down

and a ghost community. People are finding the strength to come back and they'll have a commemoration here too. It was once a vibrant community, a kibbutz, which one of the few kibbutzes which still holds on to the original communal values of kibbutz. And many of them here, like many of the kibbutzes close to the Gaza border, were populated by left-wing activists who had believed that peace was possible. So some are coming back today to honour the dead. But until all of the hostages are accounted for, and there's still said to be

about 100 across the border in Gaza, this October 7th remains an open wound here and across the rest of Israel. Lise Doucette. Well, in the 12 months since the Hamas attacks, Palestinians in Gaza have paid a horrific price. According to the Hamas-run health ministry, close to 42,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed. Most of the population has been displaced and nearly 60% of all the buildings in the territory have been destroyed or damaged. The humanitarian situation remains dire, with widespread hunger and a collapsing healthcare system. This Palestinian woman, Nariman Suleiman, said she yearned to return to normal life.

We want to return to life before October the 7th. We used to wake up and make our breakfast. Since October the 7th, I haven't made a breakfast like normal people. Everything in our life is done quickly. I don't know how long this situation will last. Will Israel leave us after October the 7th? I don't know. God willing, the situation will ease. Our Gaza correspondent, Rushdi Abu-Aloof,

who is now reporting from outside the territory, told me he never imagined a year ago that the war in Gaza would still be raging today. I've been covering this area for about 25 years and I've seen many attacks, but nothing like what Hamas did at that day. And we were expecting Israel to retaliate back, but never expect 42,000 people to be killed. About 10,000 people are missing and over 55 to 60 percent of the Gaza buildings, including schools, universities, hospitals and infrastructure, completely destroyed. And over two thirds of the population are displaced from their original homes. And even if they are allowed back, they won't find their homes standing anymore. So it's been a year of sadness for the people in Gaza, a year of displacement, a year of pain, a year of death, a year of terror for most of the people outside.

But for those who managed to escape the war outside, I've been to many countries, to Qatar, Egypt, I've seen hundreds of them. The answer, they always answer when you ask them about anything that, yes, we survived the war, but we are not okay. No, there's a huge sense of loss and guilt for those who've managed to escape. But we are hearing today that Hamas are still firing rockets. The whole goal of Israel is to eradicate Hamas, but Hamas are showing today on this anniversary that they still have the ability to fire rockets from the territory aimed at Tel Aviv. So the situation still remains dire. Are the Palestinians still supportive of Hamas or are they blaming Hamas for this destruction that's been visited on them?

Well, I think the Hamas popularity has declined in a significant way and you can notice this by just following the Facebook posts from people inside Gaza. Some of my friends and my relatives and the people who I know in Gaza, I talk in regular places, they equally blame Hamas for what is happening and what has been happening in the last year in Gaza. But we should understand that Hamas is a fundamental religious organization, and the people who believe in Hamas, who support Hamas, they will continue to support it. And no matter what Israel has done to Hamas militarily, I think they have done a great damage that will prevent Hamas from launching attacks similar to the 7th of October. I've been talking to many security officials, former security officials in Gaza,

and they believe that Hamas militarily was really hitting hard and they are not able to do what they have done back a year ago. But politically, they still have great supporters in Gaza and people, they do support Hamas. And until now, today, I have seen people posting some images of Hamas militants killing the Israelis back in 7th of October, and they still praise what Hamas has done. Rushdie Abu-Waluf, well, as well as the rockets being fired into Israel from Gaza, they're also being fired from Lebanon, as the Israeli military continues to carry out attacks against Hamas and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The Lebanese authorities say one Israeli strike has killed 10 firefighters. Meanwhile, the Israeli military is investigating how five rockets fired by Hezbollah managed to penetrate its Iron Dome defence system and hit the port city of Haifa on Sunday night, injuring several people. Tal Rosen, who is a member of the Israeli Emergency Services, lives nearby. I was at my home, which is like 500 metres from here. I heard a boom and I heard on the radio that there is a site here in this junction. I went straight away. In the beginning, we didn't find any injuries and then I showed them this building. There were shreds of glasses in this building. I went inside and I found four people injured between a minor to a moderate. Then I just went out and called the emergency forces, the correspondents, to take them and they take them to hospital. Matthew Hollingworth is the country director for the

World Food Programme in Lebanon. He's currently in Beirut. He told the BBC about the situation civilians face there. You see people sleeping outside on the streets, people taking shelter in schools, academies, other government institutions. We have public health concerns, waterborne diseases, communicable diseases, and we're all desperately trying to provide some kind of respite to a population that is so incredibly scared of what's coming next and the escalation becoming an all-out war. We got this update from our correspondent in Beirut, Hugo Beshega. Overnight, more Israeli airstrikes, around a dozen airstrikes hitting Dahir, an area of Beirut where Hezbollah has a very strong presence.

And we've seen footage of one of the sites attacked. There were secondary explosions suggesting that weapons and ammunition were being stored there. And these attacks continue. And I think we're seeing no signs, no indication from the Israeli military that they are de-escalating this campaign against Hezbollah. And actually, this morning, the Israeli military announced that a new division has been deployed to Lebanon. So potentially thousands of additional Israeli troops being sent to Lebanon as this ground invasion of the country continues. And yet at the same time, Hezbollah shows no sign of giving up on its cross-border attacks. And the Israelis have been concerned by the fact that some of those missiles that were fired

by Hezbollah managed to get through its Iron Dome defence system and landed in Haifa. Exactly. And this is Israel's third largest city and it's unusual for rockets to manage to penetrate what is a very sophisticated air defence system that has been developed by the Israelis. And we've seen that weeks of airstrikes and targeted killings have really degraded, weakened Hezbollah, but the group still has

some ability to continue to fire those rockets, continue to launch those cross-border attacks. And what is interesting is that this morning, in a statement to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel, Hezbollah remained defiant. They said, we are confident in the ability of our resistance to repel the Israeli aggression. Hugo Beshega in Lebanon. With his thoughts on the situation in Gaza and Israel one year on from the Hamas attacks, here's our international editor, Jeremy Bowen. He begins his report from a kibbutz in southern Israel.

The survivors of the attack on kibbutz Kfar Aza have not come back to live here. The ruins have not been touched. Kfar Aza, right on the border, was one of the first targets of Hamas. They killed 62 people here and took 19 into Gaza as hostages. That buzz is from an Israeli drone heading for Gaza later we heard airstrikes. Bereaved families and a grieving nation were promised total victory over Hamas by their prime minister. A year on, Hamas are still fighting. The ground around one house has been excavated.

It was the home of Nirel Zinni and his fiancée, Niv Raviv, both killed by Hamas. Nirel'sini and his fiancée, Nivra Viv, both killed by Hamas. Nirel's father spent weeks looking for his son's head. He didn't find it. A neighbour said there was a nightmare on every corner. We are still inside the trauma. We are not in post-trauma like people said. We are still here. We're still in the war.

My victory, I will be here with my son and daughter, with my grandchild, and living peacefully. Four Israelis, Kfar Aza and all the other places that Hamas attacked on 7th October, have become repositories of very deep and still raw national trauma. And the horror that happened here has, for the vast majority of Israelis, absolutely justified everything that Israel has done since then.

Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu promised a mighty vengeance. His defence minister said they were fighting human animals in Gaza and would act accordingly. Israel has damaged or destroyed nearly 60% of all Gaza's buildings, according to satellite analysis. Almost 42,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed. 10,000 are missing, thought to be under the rubble. The estimate is that 40% of casualties are children. Israel insists it follows the laws of war, spares civilians, and it rejects and condemns the accusation of genocide

made by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. More than two million Gazans, the UN says, are trapped in a humanitarian catastrophe without food, water and medical care. As families are displaced repeatedly on Israel's orders, improvised camps spring up. The Israelis say they're protecting civilians. The UN says nowhere is safe.

Israel does not allow journalists into Gaza, so trusted Palestinian colleagues filmed Insaf Hassan Ali and her family in Al-Mawassi, a supposedly safe area hit by at least 18 Israeli airstrikes. Insaf and her family have had to move 15 times. We were walking on Saladin Street when a car was hit and we saw it burning. On the left, there were people killed. On the right, there were people killed. Even the donkeys were thrown around in the bombing and we said, that's it, we're done. The next rocket will be for us. On the West Bank, the other side of the Palestinian territories,

violence and killing have increased sharply. This is Jenin, where many Israeli raids have not deterred or destroyed local armed Palestinian militias. The cemetery is filling up with their dead. The war in Gaza has radicalized both sides. The West Bank is already part of the pileup of serious conflict in the Middle East. There could be a bigger explosion here if Israel and Iran continue to accelerate into all-out war. A ceasefire deal in Gaza might just cool the crisis and create a space for diplomacy. Perhaps the war can end in Gaza too. Or perhaps it's too late for that. That report by Jeremy Bowen.

Still to come on this podcast. When I began in Cambridge, you could say to students, this week it's Dickens, please read Great Expectations, David Copperfield and Bleak House. Now, instead of three novels in a week, many students will struggle to get through one novel in three weeks. Why more and more literature students are struggling to read books. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story,

plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. As we record this podcast, a mission into space that's being described as a crime scene investigation is due to be launched shortly by the European Space Agency. The HERA probe is tasked with checking damage done to an asteroid called Dimorphos two years after a NASA spacecraft in a scene that could have been out of a movie, deliberately crashed into it to see if it could be successfully knocked off course. Professor Sarah Russell is the head of the Planetary Materials Group of the National

History Museum here in London and spoke to Michelle Hussain about the mission. It was basically a suicide mission. So the probe didn't do very much except take loads of pictures and then crashed into Didymorphos, Dimorphos, the little one. But if we know that it did change its orbit, it did knock it off course, then what more needs to be established? Well, we don't know exactly what happened. So Dimorphos is actually a very small asteroid. It's only 150 metres across and we can't easily image that from Earth.

So that's why we need to have this mission to go and look in detail. Firstly, at how it's moving now and how its orbit around its parent asteroid. So it's a moon of a bigger asteroid. Is the important conclusion whether or not ramming it in that way could have, you know, did it smash it into pieces? And if so, could that be dangerous in its own right? Well, that's one of the things exactly that we want to find out. It could be that Dimorphos isn't there at all.

It's been completely destroyed. We think that's probably unlikely. It's probably just been deflected slightly, which is what we'd expect. But it depends a lot on the strength of the asteroid. And so we have to understand how the momentum shift from this spacecraft to the little asteroid actually affected it.

What's the ideal result to come back with, that it was completely destroyed, even though I know you say it's unlikely, but in this kind of scenario, is that the safest thing? No so I think if it's if something is is split into lots of different pieces then that is a risk in itself that then you have all of these many baby asteroids to worry about rather than one big one so the best scenario is that we can deflect it in a very way that we understand very well that will ensure that it sails past the earth safely. Professor Sarah Russell, as we record this podcast, it's Vladimir Putin's 72nd birthday.

And if he's not too busy dealing with a fallout from his invasion of Ukraine, he may be celebrating it. But one person who certainly is celebrating is the autocratic leader of neighbouring Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko sent fulsome birthday greetings to Mr Putin and our Europe regional editor Paul Moss has been trying to work out if there's a message underneath. Everyone likes a birthday greeting and there's a long tradition of national leaders offering obsequious congratulations to their international allies. But even by these standards Alexander Lukashenko's salutation to Vladimir Putin is remarkably flattering. The Belarusian leader talks about Mr Putin's

personal responsibility for the fate of the motherland. His country appreciates, he says, your consistently firm position and principled attitude. There hasn't always been this kind of warm relationship between Belarus and Russia. On the one hand, Belarus is now the only former Soviet bloc country west of Russia which hasn't joined NATO, except for Ukraine, which would very much like to. And there's also basic self-interest at play here. Around half of Belarus's exports go to Russia. So for that reason alone, it was worth Mr Lukashenko remembering Vladimir Putin's special day. His birthday message includes gratitude for the building of socio-economic potential. Not the sort of thing people normally write on a greetings card,

but perhaps a good idea in this case. However, like many neighbours, the governments in Minsk and Moscow have had their fallouts. They've argued about unpaid gas bills. And more seriously, there have sometimes been fears that Russia wants to swallow up Belarus, just as it's attempting to conquer Ukraine. The birthday greetings praise Vladimir Putin for strengthening statehood and sovereignty, which might sound more like a wish than gratitude. One consistent aspect of this relationship is the suggestion that on a personal level, Mr Putin and Mr Lukashenko don't get on. It's been suggested the Russian leader thinks the

Belarusian one is a bit of a buffoon. Perhaps Mr Lukashenko hopes to rectify this by praising Mr Putin's deep understanding of Russia's historical mission. Of course, if you really want to butter someone up, you'd probably want to buy them a lavish birthday present as well. It hasn't been reported whether Mr Lukashenko gave Mr Putin one this year, but then what the man in Moscow would consider a suitable gift is something even the most expert Kremlin watcher might struggle to work out. Paul Moss. A study of people in their 50s and 60s in Western countries has found that they're more likely to experience serious health problems than their parents did. Researchers examined data for more than 100,000 people in the United States and Europe, and according to their findings,

this can't simply be explained by people living longer. David Lewis reports. They're considered the luckiest age group to have ever lived, not having to go to war, jobs for life, solid pensions and richer than all previous generations. But perhaps all is not so great for baby boomers. That's those born between 1946 and 1964. This new study, which analysed data over a 14-year period ending in 2018, found that obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases

all seem to be affecting those born in the 1950s and 60s more than older peers born before or during World War II. The study was a joint one between Oxford University and University College London. It found rates of illnesses actually increased across successive generations of the 20th century. So how did we get here? Well, the report's lead author, Laura Germaino from UCL, told us a little bit more. I think it's important to emphasise that this trend is the result of changing social and environmental context experienced by these different generations across their whole lifetimes.

So, for instance, increases in obesity rates across generations and growing social inequalities in health within generations are likely to explain at least part of this generational health drift. This trend seems to be continuing in younger post-war cohorts. For instance, Generation X are more likely to be obese, to have diabetes and to be in poor mental health than baby boomers in their 40s. So it looks like health concerns will continue for future generations. The reviews show that those born after the baby boom were more likely to

develop cancers, lung disease, heart problems and high cholesterol as things stand. So how do the academics find all this out? Well, the health data of more than 100,000 people from England, Europe and the United States was analysed. Experts looked out for key indicators such as body mass index, high blood pressure as well as their grip strength. That's considered a good measure of muscle ability and ageing. Interestingly, rates of chronic diseases rose across successive generations

in all regions studied. So despite medical advances over the decades and greater public awareness of the cause of illnesses, those above 50 or so remain at a greater risk of chronic illness and disability than previous generations before them. David Lewis, now to Japan, where an official photo of the new cabinet has been ridiculed by social media users because of the unkempt appearance of some of the politicians in it. One commentator said it was utterly embarrassing, but the same photo posted by the government showed the politicians looking much tidier. Officials have now admitted to editing the original image, as our Asia-Pacific editor, Mickey Bristow, reports.

The differences between photographs taken by the Japanese media and the one issued by the Prime Minister's office are not large or immediately obvious. In the undotted photos, there's a small triangle of white shirt visible under the formal jackets of the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister. In the government's handout, those patches have been tidied up in what an official said were minor edits. On social media, some commentators focused on what they thought was the sloppiness of the dress in the original pictures. A close examination of the assembled group might also lead to questions about gender equality in Japan. Only two of the cabinet

ministers photographed are women. But perhaps the biggest concern relates to fake information, particularly for this Japanese government, which has pledged to restore public trust in politics. In a world where rapidly evolving artificial intelligence has blurred the line between truth and lies, honesty and reliability now seem more important than ever, even if it's just about clothes. Mickey Bristow, it seems that in this age of the internet and video games, some students are finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on reading and are arriving at university to do literature courses without having read very many of the classics. The Atlantic magazine reports that many professors have noticed this trend.

Jonathan Bate is Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities at Arizona State University and Professor of English at Oxford. He's been telling Justin Webb about his experiences as a teacher. I've been teaching in British and American universities for 40 years. And when I began in Cambridge, you could say to students, this week it's Dickens, please read Great Expectations, David Copperfield and Bleak House. Now, instead of three novels in a week, many students will struggle to get through one novel in three weeks. Why? Well, the currently fashionable answer is that it's to do with the attrition of attention span

due to smartphones, six-minute YouTube videos and instant TikTok dopamine hits. And I guess that is part of the story in the last few years. Of course, it really does all begin in schools, doesn't it? You only have to look at the thinning of the GCSE and A-level syllabuses and the tendency to prescribe works because they're shorter. I think of it as the John Steinbeck of mice and men effect, you know, they'd never prescribed the grapes of wrath anymore, but of mice and men is nice and short. I think there's one other factor, though, which is a kind of unintended consequence of the push in both elite British and American universities towards diversity and access. You know, the very desirable idea of getting in more students from disadvantaged backgrounds, because those students come from disadvantaged schools where the teacher's main task is crowd control.

And so the demands in terms of reading long books just are not there. It was interesting that one professor quoted in this article in The Atlantic speaks of an attainment gap between public and privately educated students. And I would have to say when I was teaching at Oxford, that habit of concentrated lengthy reading, which private schools in both the UK and the US still concentrate on. That said, I mean, I find it very interesting out here in the States, there is this phenomenon in a lot of charter schools. Charter schools are a bit like academy schools. They're state-funded, but free to set their own syllabus. And there's a big revival within these schools of so-called classical education. So my teenager has just graduated out of a high school called Great Hearts. And there they read the Iliad, the Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, Shakespeare, Crime and Punishment.

They even read Nietzsche and Hegel. My son came back from school one day saying, we had bagels in class. And I said, why? And he said, the teacher said, you're going to have Hegel bagels because you've been reading Hegel and he's really difficult. So I'll reward you with bagels. Well, I couldn't understand Hegel when I was a graduate student. I'm amazed that 17-year-old American kids are reading Hegel. So there is some hope. And for those who aren't doing those things, the longer term impact is what? I think the longer term impact is both very troubling for the future of a literary culture. If you haven't got readers, what are writers going to do? The intensive,

thoughtful, quiet reading of great books is good for mental health. It's very, very good for developing skills of concentration and critical thinking. And if that falls away, that is problematic for businesses, for society, for individuals. And for the sake of balance, I think there are a lot of people who would say, who've been to state schools, that actually they read many of the classics while they were there. That was Professor Jonathan Bate. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod.

This edition was mixed by Craig Kingham. The producer was Vanessa Heaney. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jeanette Jalil. Until next time, goodbye. Thank you. other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.