Global News Podcast - Netanyahu defends Gaza war as protesters rally outside US Congress

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

The Israeli prime minister's speech to a joint session of Congress received standing ovations from mostly Republicans but it was boycotted by several Democrats. Also: the British equestrian, Charlotte Dujardin, has withdrawn from the Olympics after a video emerged of her whipping her horse, and why Komodo dragons are such dangerous predators.

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 Nigel Adderley and in the early hours of Thursday the 25th of July, these are our main stories. Benjamin Netanyahu was told at a joint session of Congress

that Israel will retain security control of Gaza for the immediate future, but the territory should have a civilian Palestinian administration. The Israeli Prime Minister's speech was boycotted by many Democrats, while thousands of demonstrators protested outside Congress. At least 25 people have died and dozens are missing after a boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of Mauritania. Also in this podcast. The whip can be a tool to extend the information you want to give to the horse but it has to be in a very mild way. But if it's used as punishment or in a violent way, stressing the horse, it's absolutely unacceptable. A video emerges of the British equestrian Charlotte Judardin whipping her horse.

She has withdrawn from the Olympics, calling it an error of judgment. Our enemies are your enemies. That was the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's message to US lawmakers in his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. It was a controversial visit to Washington as the war in Gaza continues after nine months of fighting. After praising Israel's alliance with America, Mr. Netanyahu said that once Hamas was defeated, the Palestinian territory must be demilitarized and de-radicalized. Israel does not seek to resettle Gaza, but for the foreseeable future, we must retain overriding security control there to prevent

the resurgence of terror, to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel. Thousands of demonstrators protested outside the Capitol building, demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, as well as calling for Mr Netanyahu's arrest. Some of them cled with riot police. Inside the Capitol, Mr. Netanyahu's speech received standing ovations, mostly from the Republican side of the chamber. Several Democrats boycotted his address. Others made their presence quite clear. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American member of Congress, was seen

holding a placard in the air. On one side it read, guilty of genocide, war criminal, was written on the other. So what does this all mean for US-Israel relations? I spoke to the BBC's international editor, Jeremy Bowen. Netanyahu was trying from the outset to say that Israel is a vital ally of America, that in fact it's fighting America's wars for it, it's protecting America. So I think what he wanted to do was to try to say to all sides of politics in the US, you need to support not just my country, but you need to support me. There was a letter this week from senior members of Israeli intelligence, former members of Israeli intelligence, to members of Congress, saying just how much of a threat Netanyahu is to Israel. Will

that have any impact on what he said today and the reaction to it? Well, I mean, it was an extraordinary letter. This was a, you know, it was an extraordinary letter. This was, you know, it was a star-studded list. It included the former head of Mossad, the spy agency. There was a former army chief of staff, a former deputy army chief of staff, several ambassadors. There was a Nobel Prize winner. And they said in this letter to congressional leaders that Netanyahu is, quote, an existential threat to the state of Israel, that essentially he wants to drag Israel and the U.S. into a perpetual war against Hamas, against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and ultimately perhaps against Iran, because they very much go with the view that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political reasons, not least, as they pointed out,

to avoid a reckoning of how it was he built up Hamas. Of course, he didn't go into this in his speech. He wanted to divide and rule the Palestinians. And as they point out in that letter, so he wouldn't ever have to make a political settlement with the Palestinians. He did the best he could to divide the two sides of it, Hamas in Gaza, Fatah in the West Bank. So to do that, he built up Hamas. He allowed the Qataris to bring in packing cases full of cash into Gaza, essentially to try and keep Gaza quiet. And of course, subsequently, I mean, who knows how they spent that money? Where does this speech and where does what's happened this week leave him on the global stage, do you feel? Well, he's Israel's longest serving prime minister. People have heard a lot of this stuff before. Of course, the timing is everything. And the timing comes in an American election campaign.

And he didn't try to intervene in that. He paid tribute to Biden and to Trump, I felt, I felt a bit more for Trump than for Biden. What he did do, I think, was to double down on all the messages that he's come out with over, well, nine months of war, which is ignore everything you hear about starvation in Gaza. And whatever happens in four months time, there will be a new US president. How could that have an impact on what's going to happen? Well, when it's Trump, when Trump was in power, he was a great supporter of Netanyahu and actually rather angry when Netanyahu welcomed Biden when Biden won the election, which, of course, Trump wrongly said was stolen. If it's Kamala Harris, now it's going to be a bit different, though, while I think that the the sort of the kernel of the America's alliance with Israel is not going to change.

She does come from a more progressive place than Biden did. She called early on for a ceasefire, for example, in Gaza. So that will be a little bit harder for him to navigate. But, you know, Netanyahu is a master at playing for time and he's a master at telling people, at least people on his side, what they want to hear. Jeremy Bowen. As we heard there, Benjamin Netanyahu faced empty seats in the chamber as well as loud protests outside.

One of those who stayed away is Delia Ramirez, a Democratic congresswoman for Illinois. She's one of nine progressive members of the House of Representatives, known as the Squad. Just why did she boycott the speech? 30 members of Congress didn't attend. I would say probably closer to 50. A good chunk of us just left alternative programming here. There were Jewish, Christian, Muslim members who've been here for 25, 30 years, like Congressman Leader Clyburn and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky in a room with an Israeli and a Palestinian, both who lost family since October 7th, calling for a pathway to peace. Bibi Netanyahu went to our joint session to continue to spew the same language he has

continued to use, and hypocrisy. We've been saying yes to him for nine months. Yes to more money. Yes to transfer of arms. Yes to bombs. And yet yet the hostages are not home. We are closer to a regional war and almost 40,000 Palestinians have died. A war criminal shouldn't be in our joint session. Frankly, I think he should be in prison. Mr. Netanyahu said that anti-Israeli protesters were aligning themselves with Hamas and what they did on October the 7th. He also described them as Iran's useful idiots. Look, I would never, ever support folks that are talking about supporting Hamas or supporting war or support the killing.

I think that it's really easy to put people in a blanket of they're one side or the other side they're pro hamas or they're anti-israel i think that what you've seen throughout and what i have seen all day are people that are calling for peace people that are calling for diplomacy but look if you call for peace in this place if you call for diplomacy if you call to choose life over death you're called anti-semitic. But I just sat with a group filled of Jewish leaders who are calling for peace and who said very loud and clear today, look, there is no safety and security for the Israeli people if we don't have safety and security for the Palestinian people. Delia Ramirez speaking to Julian Marshall.

As we record this podcast, dozens of people are missing after a boat capsized off the coast of Mauritania. At least 25 people have died, around 100 were rescued. According to the International Organization for Migration, there were around 300 passengers on board. It's been reported that a group of migrants thought to be from the West African countries of Senegal and Gambia were trying to reach Europe after setting off seven days ago. I heard more from our Africa regional editor Richard Kegoy. This is the second such incident to take place this month off the coast of Mauritania so you would be having a lot of African migrants from different parts of the continent mostly Mauritania. So you would be having a lot of African migrants from different

parts of the continent, mostly from West Africa and North Africa, who are keen or trying to make their way to Europe. So these are economic migrants, people who are looking for opportunities to better their lives. And so the West African Atlantic route, which normally goes through the Canary Islands, seems to have become a very popular route. And in the process, people are travelling in some of these makeshift boats and some of them really are not in very good standards. You know, smugglers are involved in the business and so they cram people and so they overload. And in the course of time, lots of them have, you know, ended up tragically.

The European Union has provided Mauritania with more than $200 million in assistance to try and help combat irregular migration, but seemingly at the moment it's a losing battle. very keen to use their territory to target Spanish territory in terms of transit. And so it's difficult to police, especially the cost there because of capacity issues and resources. It's sort of like a losing battle because you've been seeing a surge in numbers of people trying to make their way to Europe through the canaries. So as a result of this, do we see people traffickers and similar people coming into the area and really flooding the area at the same time? Actually, that's a reflective of the situation because it's a whole syndicate of people who are involved in the business. And it's not just the people traffickers themselves. It's not just the smugglers themselves. It's an entire ring. And there have been questions really, could officials or perhaps people within Mauritanian

territory would be looking the other way because they seem to have been benefiting from the business. And that's really been a major point of concern, just looking at the trends in the last couple of months. Richard Cagoy, two incredibly rare fossils found on the Isle of Skye off the western Scottish coast are rewriting our understanding of the earliest mammals to walk the earth. Called crustacean, they are the remains of shrew-like mammals which date back to the time of the dinosaurs. And scientists have discovered that they had a very different life history from their modern relatives.

Dr Elsa Panciaroli is a paleontologist at the National Museum Scotland and the lead researcher. So Crusatodon sits really early in the tree of mammals and it would have looked superficially very much like a little mouse or a shrew and it would have had fur on the outside and probably whiskers as well. But internally, in terms of its bones and its physiology, it would have been a little bit different because this is before true mammals. So it's a much earlier form. More from our science reporter, Helen Briggs.

166 million years ago, this tiny, furry, shrew-like mammal was scampering under the feet of dinosaurs in a very different world. And Scotland's Isle of Skye was very different then. It was subtropical, pine trees, warm water lagoons. And then two of these little creatures ended up dying and trapped in rock. 166 million years later, scientists are looking at them under high-tech scanners. And if we can understand them, then we can understand all the pathway to the mammals that rule the planet today and how different they are. Because as the researcher points out, on the outside, they look like little furry shoes that are running around today. But on the inside, they're quite different.

I struggle to pronounce it. Crusatodon, I think, is a better way for me to say it at the moment. Just tell us a bit more about what they look like and that chain towards the dinosaurs and towards us. They were about the size of shrews and mammals today, but what was very different about them was that they grew much more slowly and they lived longer. Today's little mammals like shrews will live for a year, they have their baby teeth only for a couple of weeks and then they're weaned, whereas these ones were living to at least seven. And the baby kept its teeth until about two.

How were these fossils found on the Isle of Skye? The Isle of Skye is really very well known for its Jurassic fossils. So scientists go there every year. They find things like dinosaur prints in the rock, and these little fossils were buried. Even the scientists themselves found them very, very hard to detect. And they just thought, well, this is just a little bit of rock. But then because we have these modern techniques, these modern scanning techniques, we can just pour through rock with these high tech x-ray scanners and actually see how these creatures

were built and these were exceptionally well preserved so this particular type of little mammal from all that millions of years ago we only have about a handful of them and two of them in the isle of sky exceptionally well preserved so it just gives this incredible window into the past does that mean that continuous searches on the Isle of Skye might throw up more answers as to where we all came from to begin with and that Jurassic era? Yes absolutely so it's only really by getting that fossil evidence that you can really study the past and then that together with things like genetic data, can give you a really good picture of mammal evolution and how mammals came to rule the world. Helen Briggs talking to James Reynolds.

Still to come... Komodo dragons, the world's largest predatory lizard, has iron-coated teeth and they are absolutely razor sharp. Why Komodo dragons are such dangerous predators. 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. The Olympics are underway in Paris, although the opening ceremony isn't until Friday. Meanwhile, a scandal which broke on Wednesday has rocked the equestrian or horse riding world. The British athlete Charlotte Dujardin was strongly tipped to win a gold in the dressage,

having already won three Olympic golds at previous Games. But her dream is over, after a video emerged which showed her whipping a horse. Mr Dujardin has withdrawn from the Games and called the incident an error of judgement. She has also been provisionally suspended by the sports governing body. A lawyer for the whistleblower who released the video said his client acted in an attempt to save dressage.

Our sports correspondent, Nestor McGregor, has been looking at the footage. It's a minute-long video which has shaken equestrian sport to its very core. In it, under guidance from Charlotte Dujardin, a young rider trots around the stable. The three-time Olympic gold medalist repeatedly strikes the animal with a long schooling whip, often used by trainers to get a horse to raise its back legs higher. As this is happening, giggling can be heard, although it's unclear from whom. Across numerous equestrian disciplines, using a whip is common practice, although in this case it's clear to some Charlotte Desjardins perhaps went too far.

The 39-year-old released a statement yesterday before the video was made public, saying she was ashamed and her actions had been out of character. Goran Ekerström is veterinary director at the International Federation for Equestrian Sports. That's equestrians world governing body. The whip can be a tool to extend the information you want to give to the horse, but it has to be in a very mild way. It has to take into consideration the learning process of the horse. But if it's used as punishment or in a violent way, stressing the horse, it's absolutely unacceptable. We don't know the identity of the woman who recorded the footage. Stefan van Sing, the Dutch lawyer representing her, says it was recorded two and a half years ago.

He said his client had been afraid to come forward and explained why now. She told me this morning, yeah, this had to need to be done because I want to save Versailles as well. And I want top riders stop bullying and abusing horses. Miss de Jardin has been banned from competing while the sports governing body carries out an investigation. Two of her sponsors have cut ties with her. UK Sport has also suspended her from using its facilities or receiving publicly funded money. If she had won a medal in Paris,

she would have become Team GB's most decorated female Olympian. Nesta McGregor. For the first time, a modern Olympics opening ceremony won't be held in a stadium. And a number of events will also have Parisian landmarks as their backdrop too, from show jumping in front of the Palace of Versailles to judo by the Eiffel Tower. But have the recent dramatic political events, a European election victory for the far right, President Macron's shock dissolution of the National Assembly,

and now a hung parliament with no government, spoilt the party for the French? John Lawrenson went to Paris to find out. I see in the morning paper that the Olympic flames coming through Paris figure out a time and place to see it, in front of Père Lachaise Cemetery, seeing as you ask, and emerge from the metro of the same name into a happy crowd lining a street that's already closed to traffic.

Good timing. First come the police, getting a few ironical but good-humoured cheers. A girl holds up her hand so they can high-five her as they walk by. It is, as this lady standing next to me attests, a happy affair despite the political drama and uncertainty in France at the moment. I think if you look around you, everyone is quite happy to see the Olympic flame coming through. I think this is a really great way to get people together for a common cause. That's going to be a really nice way to start the summer. A wonderful summer and if you remember the London Olympics everyone was complaining about

what was going on in London and they're complaining about works and it went really well. There he goes. Sorry, I almost made you miss it there. But as luck would have it, the torchbearer dressed in white stops a few meters on to pass the flame on to the next torchbearer dressed in white. So we get a good look through the forest of smartphones held aloft for the photo. As the crowd disperses, I get talking to this gentleman. He says that with his unprovoked dissolution, President Macron has dampened the mood. He could have dissolved Parliament after the Olympics.

That would have allowed the French to enjoy this event with a measure of serenity. Now it's difficult with no government and a lot of doubt about the political future of France. The following day is the one Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo chooses to finally swim in the Seine. To any sceptics out there that the river that runs through Paris is ready for Olympic athletes to dive into. Shortly after which, I go up to Seine-Saint-Denis, the area north-east of Paris where most of the athletics is happening, to meet David Roizen. His job is to think about sport for a centre-left think tank called the Jean Jaurès Foundation. He believes the Olympics were part of Macron's dissolution calculation. For the last two months, where the torch was,

there was a huge celebration. And it was starting to have good press. Ah, it could be a nice event, finally. And then happened the dissolution. With the dissolution, the Olympics disappeared. It broke the wave. Finally, there was a starting wave in France about the Olympics. It broke it.

But to hazard another metaphor, the French political machine is a broken down car. And given that it's not going to go anywhere soon, perhaps people will be tempted to leave it by the side of the road, wander into a village, find a cafe with a television and settle down in front of the 100 metres butterfly or something. After all, it's not every year you host the Olympics. John Lawrenson in Paris.

The UN has warned that a target to eradicate world hunger by 2030 could be impossible to achieve. The annual Food Security Report says that almost 10% of the world's population suffers from malnutrition. In Africa, the figures are twice as high. The report shows that the world has been set back 15 years, with levels of hunger comparable to those in 2008. Here's Maximo Torero, the chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Sadly, this year, the numbers have not changed from the previous years, which were already years where we have seen already the increase because of COVID-19. So what we are reporting is that we have between 713 million and 757 million people which are chronic and unnourished people facing

hunger. But the other issue which is really important is the disparities. For example, the region which is doing the worst is the African region, where we have one in five people facing hunger. Our Geneva correspondent Imogen Fowkes has the latest on the report. Levels of hunger around the world are not decreasing despite the abundance of food in many parts of our planet. So what we're looking at is one in 11 people on the planet are going hungry, much worse in Africa, one in five. And the causes are very complex.

We have conflict, we have climate change, food inflation. But what it means is that this ambitious target that the UN set, this goal of eradicating hunger by 2030, is very, very unlikely, probably impossible to be reached. And you mentioned there the issue the UN are facing. And it does seem that even though the pandemic has now passed in many parts of the world, other problems seem to come at a great pace. Well, they certainly do. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted the global food supply chains, there were warnings about hunger. We were talking, and we still are, about successive droughts in parts of Africa. Now, these are almost certainly climate change driven. And what it means is that the kind of food production that communities there used to rely on, they can't anymore. And then, of course, we have had similar warnings about the conflict in Gaza where levels of malnutrition have shot up faster than aid agencies have ever seen in a conflict. And virtually every country in the world claims to have a cost of living crisis.

Does this make the UN's job even more difficult? Because even countries which are seen to have the money say they can't possibly release it for issues like this. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. You've hit the nail on the head. The wealthiest countries on the planet are turning inwards. We see that in the United States. We've seen that in Western Europe,

where the concerns are their own cost of living. And the idea is we don't have the money to spare for problems that seem far away. But what the UN will tell you is if you can't address these problems, those problems will only get bigger. They will lead to more instability, to more people fleeing home, so that at the end of the day, these are problems we do have to solve together. We can't ignore them. Imogen, folks. Now, what's in a name?

A public square in Moscow, which was intended to be a symbol of friendship between Russia and the West after decades of enmity during the Cold War, has been renamed. The flags of Western countries, which once flew above Europe Square, are now gone. And, as our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg explains, so has its name. I'm standing on Europe Square in Moscow. Well, what was until today Europe Square. The city's mayor has signed an order renaming the place Eurasia Square.

One little change that says a lot about the direction in which Russia is moving, away from the West. 20 years ago, this square was built as a symbol of unity on the European continent. But the reality is that Russia's war in Ukraine and Western sanctions have put enormous strain on relations between Moscow and Europe. The Russian authorities talk constantly now of the need to tilt east to China And Western sanctions have put enormous strain on relations between Moscow and Europe. The Russian authorities talk constantly now of the need to tilt east, to China, North Korea, Asia as a whole.

But I wonder, what do people here on the square make of the name change? The first person I talk to is Maria. It doesn't affect on me. I'm from Siberia, so I'm Asian, in fact. I guess I'm already not European. Olga doesn't mind. Europe, she says, isn't our friend anymore. Europe has different standards now, Pasha says.

They think differently there. We're splitting away. But Yevgenia says she's sad. The change of name, she says, is a sign of conflict between countries. But you know, after the 1917 Russian Revolution, so many streets and squares in Russia were renamed to feature the word communism. But it didn't help Russia build communism. You can remove the word Europe, but it doesn't mean that Russia won't one day, once again, look west. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. They can weigh up to 150 kilos and are more than two metres long. They're living dragons, and although they don't breathe fire, it's now been discovered that their teeth are coated in iron. Komodo dragons, which are

native to Indonesia, already had a fearsome reputation for their venomous bite. Aaron LeBlanc, a lecturer in dental biosciences at King's College London, led the latest study into the kimono. We've discovered that Komodo dragons, the world's largest predatory lizard, has iron-coated teeth. It has these razor blade-like teeth with these serrations on the fronts and back. And when you look at them closely under a microscope, it looks like someone's painted the cutting edges and tooth tips orange. And what that is, is a really fine coating of iron. And how much of a surprise was it to discover this? It was a huge surprise. I've

spent a long time looking at teeth of both living and fossil reptiles. And to be honest, I wasn't looking for anything like this. It was actually an accidental discovery. We were interested in how Komodo dragons use their serrated teeth to help them cut and tear through prey. And so when we started looking more closely at the teeth under the microscope, I started to realise I was seeing these strange stains, it looked like, on the teeth. But once I started looking at more museum specimens, and colleagues started sharing photos of Komodo dragon teeth they had seen in museums, we realised that this was a feature consistent across Komodo dragons, and it's something that's built into their teeth. And now you know what you're looking for, do you think it's possible we may find that

other species may have iron teeth or iron-coated teeth? Absolutely. So that's actually something we've just started to do in this study. So we saw that it was very obvious in Komodo dragons. We looked in other relatives of the Komodo dragon within the monitor lizard family, and we did actually find orange cutting edges on the teeth of some other species. And we even then extended that search to some living crocodiles and alligators. And there, what was interesting is they do also have iron concentrated along the cutting edges of some of their teeth, but it's not as consistent. And oftentimes, it's really hard to see under normal light. And so it's possible that it's a widespread

feature among reptiles, but it seems to be the most obvious and the most striking in animals like the Komodo dragon. And if you weren't scared by a Komodo dragon already, you will be now. Absolutely. So I've accidentally brushed my fingers against Komodo dragon teeth before, and they are absolutely razor sharp. And I think this research is now telling us why that's the case. Aaron LeBlanc from King's College, London. 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 in it, 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 Holly Palmer and the producer was Alison Davis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nigel Adderley. Until next time, goodbye. Thank you.