Global News Podcast - Netanyahu defiant after killing of Hamas leader

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Israel says it's delivered crushing blows to its enemies; Iran vows revenge. Also: the contested Venezuelan election as seen by international observers, and Donald Trump questions Kamala Harris's racial identity.

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 Andrew Peach and in the early hours of Thursday 1st August, these are our main stories.

A defiant Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has delivered crushing blows to all its enemies. Iran vows to avenge the killing of the Hamas political leader and will get reaction from the father of an Israeli hostage. Also in this podcast, the contested Venezuelan election as seen by international observers and... She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. And now she wants to be known as black. Donald Trump questions Kamala Harris's racial identity at an event for black journalists.

The Israeli government says it's on extremely high alert following the killing of a senior Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, and a commander of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Beirut. Speaking on television in his first public statement since the strikes, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn't mention Mr. Haniyeh, but said Israel would settle its score with anyone who harmed it. Anyone who slaughters our children, anyone who murders our citizens, anyone who hits our country, his blood be on his own head. Citizens of Israel, challenging days lie ahead. Since the strike in Beirut, there are threats sounding from all directions. We are prepared for any scenario, and we will stand united and determined against any threat. Israel will exact a heavy price for any aggression against us from any arena. Iran has promised harsh punishment for the killing of Mr. Haniyeh, who is visiting the Iranian capital for the inauguration of the new president.

Across the West Bank, demonstrators march through the streets, waving the green banners of Hamas, chanting slogans of defiance. The moderate Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti, who doesn't support Hamas, was among them. Israel has just committed a terrible criminal political act by assassinating a political leader. They've assassinated the person they were negotiating with about a ceasefire. So this sends a very clear message

to Palestinians. Israel doesn't want peace. Israel doesn't want ceasefire. All Israel understands is only the language of force. Our Middle East correspondent in Jerusalem, Barbara Pletusher, is following developments. I asked her first about Mr Netanyahu's TV address. He used his statement to basically say to the citizens of Israel, challenging days lie ahead and that Israel would respond forcefully to any attack on it. He said since the strike in Beirut against that Hezbollah commander, threats had been coming from all directions, but that Israel would deliver a crushing blow to militants aligned with Iran that it had done over the past few days and that it would continue to do so. So a very defiant tone, both in the clip you heard there

but also in terms of what he said were threats coming from the region. He did, however, not say anything about the strike on Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The Israelis have not commented on that and he himself didn't either. Yes, I was intrigued by that. He was somewhat coy about it. He sort of wants to claim the win without actually claiming the win in detail specifically. Well, he talked about strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah in general. He was referring to several strikes against Hamas leaders. One was killed in Beirut in January. Israelis believe they may have killed the military leader of Hamas, the leader of Hamas's military wing,

although that hasn't been confirmed. They say they killed his deputy. So he could have been speaking more broadly about the strikes against Hamas. But certainly, shortly after the war began, he did tell reporters that he had ordered Israel's foreign intelligence service to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are. I don't think there's I think there's very little doubt that it wasn't Israel, but they don't tend to claim allegations of assassination attempts against them, especially when they happen in Iran. OK. And unlike its military leaders, the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, lived his life out in the open. People knew where he was. So it's probably not the first opportunity Israel has had to kill this person. Why now? Well, it's a good question. Some analysts believe that it wasn't related to the strike on the Hezbollah commander. In other words, they weren't trying to increase the pressure deliberately on several fronts.

It's that it was more likely opportunistic. Mr. Haniyeh did move between Qatar and Turkey a lot. I think it would have been more problematic for the Israelis to strike him in either of those two countries in terms of their relations with the governments of those countries. But they have struck targets in Iran before. So that makes it easier. Now, he was, for them, I mean, now he was in Iran a couple of times over the past year, including in May. So why now?

It seems that they were able to gather very precise intelligence about him and where he was, perhaps, this is speculation, but perhaps because he was attending an event that was scheduled, the inauguration of the new president, because they did have quite precise intelligence. There were other Hamas leaders or officials in the same building as he was, as well as the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and it was only he and his bodyguard that were killed. So it seems as if that might have been the reason. But certainly many people in the region believe that this was a deliberate attempt to sabotage ceasefire negotiations because it seems to so directly impact the ceasefire talks. Barbara Pletosha with me from Jerusalem.

So how may Iran respond to all of this? A question I put to Kazran Aji from BBC Persian. When things like this happen, space opens for the hardliners in Iran. Okay, we have a relatively moderate president at the moment who's just started his work. And he has been saying all the nice things about, you know, wanting to reestablish relations with the outside world, put Iran on a new footing with the outside world and the international community. He wants to talk and have dialogue, lift sanctions against Iran, all that stuff. But when this kind of thing happens, hardliners take over.

And also, don't forget that the regional policies in Iran are out of the hands of the president, and is led mostly by Iran's supreme leader through the Revolutionary Guard. Up until now, we cast our minds back to October the 7th, there have been a number of provocations and reasons why Iran may have chosen to escalate this conflict. And they've chosen not to. Would it be different now? I don't think from my reading is that neither Iran nor all these proxies, nor Hezbollah or anybody else really wants to see a full scale war. But war is a possibility, given the fact that Iran is threatening to give a strong response to Israel. So I'm expecting some kind of a big thing from Iran,

probably sooner rather than later. Now, as well as the prospect of a further regional escalation of the conflict in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh's death casts a shadow over negotiations to secure a ceasefire and free Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas. One of them is 23-year-old Hirsch Pollin, who was abducted while he was at the Supernova Music Festival. In April, Hamas released a short video of Hirsch with his lower left arm missing, apparently blown off during the attack. James Menendez spoke to his father, John Pollin, and asked for his reaction to the news of Ismail Haniyeh's death. Obviously the timing is curious, right? I am a father of a hostage.

We are in the midst of delicate, sensitive negotiations and it's really hard for me to understand as a father, not a geopolitician, not a diplomat, what might be the implications on the situation here. And what are your thoughts about that? He was Hamas's negotiator. Doesn't this set those negotiations to release the hostages back? So, you know, one thing I've learned in 299 days is how little I guess I know about geopolitics and global diplomacy. I just find it so hard to dissect what could happen. What is the real strategy? What's really going on?

So absolutely, I look at it on the surface and say, he's their lead or one of their lead negotiators. How could it not set things back? On the other hand, I just don't know. But part of me is really hopeful that it's a step back in order for all of us to take three steps forward. The region is tense right now. And what we all need, the whole region, is a sense of de-escalation and calm. And somewhere, somehow, as an optimist, I'm hopeful. And yet at this moment, I mean, many people are saying that the risks of a much bigger conflagration are as high as they've ever been. And in that context, one wonders how the negotiations to try to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and try to get the hostages home can happen. It's such a hard balance that we've witnessed and that we've been subjected to for 299 days,

which is to say, I absolutely understand when anybody in the world has their innocent civilians attacked, that region or that country has a right to respond. But your question is correct. To what end? At what points do we say we've responded enough? You've responded enough. We've all responded enough. Instead of continuing to respond and further endangering people, more people, more innocents,

more people suffering in the region, we're all going to say we've gotten enough responses out of our systems. Now, for the good of the people, we're going to stop. I hope we're there. And it is, of course, an agonizing wait for you and the other families. Do you have any more information about how Hersh is since that video appeared back in April? I do not. And you just used the right word. It is an agonizing wait for the hostage families. We were strengthened to see a video on day 201, a video that no parent would ever

want to see of their loved one, his arm blown off. He's looking gaunt and pale and has some bruising on his head. And as parents, we see things that give us a lot of cause for concern. But it was for the first time in 201 days, an opportunity to hear his voice and to see him. And that was incredibly strengthening for us. Since that time, 98 days ago, we know nothing new. Rachel, my wife, and I are, by nature, optimistic people. Our optimism is tested every moment of every day, but we maintain it and we continue to

hope and pray every day that today is the day that we see calm in the region and we see Hirsch walk back across the border into our arms with the other hostages and we can all move on from this terrible chapter. John Pollan with James Menendez. Donald Trump, the Republican Party's nominee for the US presidential election, was in Chicago on Wednesday addressing a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists. There was widespread criticism of the invitation and many black journalists chose not to go. As Nomia Iqbal reports, Donald Trump was in combative mood. This event, meant to be an

hour long, immediately went off the rails when Donald Trump took issue with the opening question. He was asked by one of three journalists why black voters should trust him in light of comments that he has made, which many have considered racist. He said the question was disgraceful and called the journalist very rude. I have been the best president for the black population since Abraham Lincoln. That's my answer. Better than President Johnson who signed the Voting Rights Act. For you to start off a question and answer period, especially when you're 35 minutes late, because you couldn't get your equipment to work in such a hostile manner, I think it's a disgrace.

Donald Trump also said Vice President Harris was probably a DEI hire, insinuating she only got her position due to the colour of her skin. He went on to say she was always promoting her Indian heritage and only turned black a few years ago. She was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went, she became a black person. Just to be clear, sir, do you believe that she is a black person? I think somebody should look into that. Kamala Harris has always said she is biracial with an Indian mother and black father. Throughout the interview, Mr Trump's responses drew multiple gasps and shouts from the crowd.

He won just 12% of black voters in his election loss to Joe Biden in 2020, but his numbers did improve, especially with black men. New polls suggest Kamala Harris has edged him out and effectively eliminated his lead in key battleground states. Our North America correspondent, Nomia Iqbal, reporting. And still to come. The children will be given a peanut powder in a daily dose until they reach a top dose. And they'll continue that top maintenance dose for a two year period.

A world first in Australia to help babies allergic to peanuts. 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, Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. Nicolas Maduro finds himself increasingly isolated with his continued insistence that he was re-elected President of Venezuela on Sunday. The opposition say they have proof the election was stolen

and that their candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, was the winner. Mr Maduro's victory is also disputed by many governments in the region, including Argentina and Costa Rica. The Organization of American States says the result was manipulated, while the European Union says it won't recognise the result until all data has been released. Only a few international observers were actually allowed into Venezuela to monitor the election.

One of them was Jonathan Stone Street from the Carter Centre, founded by the former US President Jimmy Carter. What we saw in Venezuela, not only in the aftermath of Election Day, but in the pre-election period, there were serious breaches of international standards. On Election Day itself, we, from our observations, had the impression that actually things were going pretty well during voting. There were some incidents, but from what we saw,

there was massive turnout and people were peaceful and voting calmly. But the process deteriorated seriously on election night when the results were presented without any of the data from polling stations that would allow observers or political parties to check the results that they had seen in the polling station. So it's just a fundamental job of the Election Commission to publish results from the election that would be able to be verified so that people could see who won the election. To me, in my experience as an election observer, that's something extraordinary. Colombia's former president, Ernesto Sampa, was also invited to observe the election. Julian Marshall asked him what he saw on the day. The elections went ahead normally. All the polling stations worked properly.

We could meet all the spokespersons of the opposition and the government. After the closing of the polling stations, which took place between 6 and 7 o'clock at night, the system was supposed to automatically begin to show the results and the polling stations were supposed to report to the central office in Caracas in order to get a total of the votes. According to the accusations later made by the government, it was during this process when there was a hacking

that prevented it from functioning in an appropriate way, as it has always functioned. So the government says the system got hacked, but the Organization of American States has said that there was a manipulation of the vote. Would you go along with that? The Organization of American States has no credibility in Venezuela. In fact, their observer mission was not accepted, and people identify the OAS in Venezuela as an opposition ally.

However, what happened is that around midnight, the electoral authorities in Venezuela said that the system was back up, and that is when they released the numbers that showed President Maduro as the winner and the opposition in second place. Your current president, Gustavo Petro, has called for a transparent vote count. Would you support that? Absolutely. But it is important that people know that the Venezuelan electoral system works very safely.

And I have known this since I was Secretary General at UNASUR. The system has a double control. On the one hand, an electronic vote, and on the other hand, a manual vote. It is not the tallies kept by each party that can give the definitive result to the election, but a recount of the electronic votes. And not only President Petro, but also President Lula of Brazil, is asking for it, as well as the United Nations and us, the international observers, are requesting it.

How do you persuade Mr Maduro, though, to undergo that exercise? At the moment, he is digging in his heels and has accused the opposition of trying to mount a coup because they have challenged the result. President Maduro knows that there are other very important issues for Venezuela that depend on the acceptance of the results. For example, lifting the sanctions, the possibility for migrants to return to Venezuela, or if it is finally clear that he was elected, that he will have the possibility to be president for six years. I believe that these are very powerful factors and that he must take into account in order to open a space for

negotiation with the opposition in such a way that the elections are validated. But this problem won't be sorted through force, neither through demonstrations or arguments in the media. This problem has to be solved by Venezuelans. Opposition leaders have to sit down with the government. I could witness this in 2016, when the Venezuelan government lost the majority in the assembly. And I believe that

if there is a calmer and less polarised environment, then it is possible to think in an agreement of validating the results of the election and creating a new national. Colombia's former president, Ernesto Sampa. Young activists in Nigeria have told BBC News they plan to go ahead with a 10-day protest despite days of pleas from the government to stand down. They say they're rallying against economic hardship, but government agencies have warned of violence. The price of food and goods in the country has soared to record levels.

Esteve Jolaoso reports from Lagos. Impassioned activists are distributing flyers across towns in Lagos. They're trying to rally support for a protest they are convinced will change their fate. One of them is 36-year-old Banwo Olagoku, an organiser with the Take It Back movement. We are protesting because we are movement. We are protesting because we are hungry. We are protesting because the inflation rate has made us to not be able to afford the simple things of life, food, water, clothes, medicals. The group is one of a few that

wants the government to tackle the cost of living crisis. Nigeria's inflation has passed 34%, its highest in almost three decades. We are just protesting and demanding for reversal of the things that are making things expensive. The proposed protests have commanded the government's attention, with the president holding emergency meetings, while the military have warned of an intervention to prevent any violence. A caution the group's national coordinator, 31-year-old Jumon Sanyolu, has dismissed as a smokescreen. The protesters have nothing to lose. You know, a man who is down cannot be afraid of falling.

We are down already, so we have lost our fear. Nigeria's struggling economy is linked to the removal of a subsidy on fuel and the de-attaching of the value of the local currency from the US dollar. The government said the reforms were necessary to relieve public spending and shore up the country's economy. A stark example of the desperation people are feeling is a crush in February in which seven people died. Dozens had clambered a government facility in Lagos

to buy discounted bags of rice that had been seized by officials. But what was labelled a gesture of goodwill quickly became a catastrophe. Comfort Adebanjo, who died, was a teacher and mother who also took care of her five siblings and elderly mother and father, Shegung Adebanjo, who is a reverend. It's a great shock to me, my daughter, that is taking care, what we are going to eat, what we are going to eat. So I don't even know how to cope with life again.

Many are still scarred by the country's last mass demonstration against police brutality in 2020, in which dozens of protesters were killed and schools arrested. But organisers say history will not deter them. I'm not a prophet, as I like to say, but one thing I can assure you is that Nigerians are resolute and we will protest. Sumidjala Oso in Lagos. The BBC has condemned the behaviour of one of its best-known presenters as abhorrent

after he pleaded guilty to charges linked to having indecent images of children. Hugh Edwards left the BBC in April after he'd been suspended in relation to different allegations. I found out more from our culture reporter Charlotte Gallagher. He has admitted three counts of making indecent images of children. Some of those images are Category A, and Category A in the United Kingdom is the most severe. Some of those images as well, police say they estimate the ages of the child involved to be between seven and nine years old, so young children. As you said, Hugh Edwards really was the face of BBC News. If you're listening to this and you don't know who Hugh is, imagine the most famous news presenter that you

know, that will be him. So he announced the death of Queen Elizabeth, led the coverage of the coronation. He was on TV all the time. Most people in the UK know who Hugh Edwards is. And today when he arrived at court, there was this scrum, police, photographers flanking him as he went inside the court in sunglasses. And then this moment inside court when he pled guilty to three really serious offences. It has shocked so many people, not only within the BBC, but across the country. And in the last couple of hours, we've heard a bit more from the police about where these images came from. Yes. So the police have said that the man who shared these indecent images of children with Hugh Edwards was a convicted paedophile, a 25-year-old called Alex Williams. He has already pled guilty to possessing and distributing category A images of children. And he's been given a suspended jail sentence. He was given that in March. And they say that the police began this investigation into Edwards when they seized a phone that was unrelated to him, but they found that he'd been talking and had had images on his phone. So

new information from the Metropolitan Police today. And also we've heard from the BBC, like you've said, the bosses of the BBC who've said they're incredibly shocked. And in the UK, there's some controversy about the fact that until relatively recently, Hugh Edwards was still being paid by the BBC using public money, large amounts of money, because he still worked for them up until a point when he resigned. Yes. So he resigned in April. That was his choice. So he was allowed to stand down essentially from his position. And he said he was standing down

on medical grounds. It's emerged that the BBC knew last November that he'd been arrested for an incredibly serious offence, but he hadn't been charged. Now, the BBC is saying if he had been charged, he would have been sacked. But because he wasn't charged, he was allowed to continue with the BBC. He wasn't on air. It's important to say he wasn't broadcasting on television or radio. But between that time in November when he was arrested and when he resigned in April, he was still receiving his full salary, an incredibly high salary. It dwarfs the salaries of most people working here. And he was also allowed to decide when he left. So there are the questions the BBC are going to have to answer.

Why was he still being paid this huge salary? And why was he allowed to decide when he left? Our culture reporter, Charlotte Gallagher. Australia has the highest rates of food allergies in the world. There's no cure and no routinely available treatment. Now it's launching a world-first initiative to offer treatment to babies with a peanut allergy so they can build immunity to this potentially life-threatening condition.

Professor Kirsten Perrett is the director of the National Allergy Centre of Excellence in Australia, which is going to evaluate the programme. This new programme, called the ADAPT Oral Immunotherapy Program aims to change the way the most common food allergy among Australian school children is treated. That's peanut allergy. From strictly avoiding peanut in the diets

to safely building a tolerance to the allergen. So the children will be given a peanut powder in a daily dose and that daily dose will start at extremely small amounts and they will be supervised initially by the treating hospital with their first dose and then the families will be giving a daily dose to that child once a day for another month and then they'll come back to the hospital to have another supervised dose which is slightly higher to what they have had previously. So it will be a sequential updosing of the program until they reach a top dose and they'll continue that top, what we call, maintenance dose for a two-year period.

We're really hoping that most children will develop at least some what we call desensitisation. They'll be able to tolerate a higher amount of peanut allergen at the end of the treatment to what they were able to tolerate at higher amount of peanut allergen at the end of the treatment to what they were able to tolerate at the beginning. And that means we're providing at least some bite safety from those accidental reactions, accidental and cross-contamination that might occur. And that provides a level of safety. However, for some children, we are hoping that there will be that remission achieved. And that means that after a period of not eating peanut at all, they're able to tolerate what's known as a full serve of peanut

butter. And that would be a really game-changing outcome for these children. Now, researchers have used powerful x-rays to reveal the internal anatomy of a tiny prehistoric creature in astonishing detail. The fossil, which is the size of a poppy seed, is an ancient ancestor of modern insects. The images have been published in the journal Nature, as our science correspondent Victoria Gill explains. This minuscule fossil was essentially picked out of a pile of 520 million year old grit. The scientists found it inside deposits of ancient rock in northern China that are known to contain microscopic fossils and to release them they

dissolved the rocks in acid and searched the remnants. When they studied this discovery through the microscope they saw that it was almost perfectly preserved. It's the larval or immature and developing form of an arthropod, the ancient ancestor of modern insects, spiders and crabs. It held more internal secrets that were revealed using powerful x-rays. The creature's microscopic anatomy, including parts of its digestive tract, nervous system and its brain cavity can be seen in these scans. Dr Martin Smith from the University of Durham said this was a glimpse of a critical point in the evolution of complex life known as the Cambrian Explosion. This fossil about 520 million years old dates to just after the Cambrian Explosion. So if we go back another 30 million years or so, there's really no complex animal life at all. And so we've got in really a very short space of time, this sort of evolutionary

bang from simplicity to complexity. By understanding these fossils and what they're telling us, we can start to ask, what is it that meant evolution went AWIRE at this particular point in time? The researchers say the incredible preservation could have been caused by high concentrations of phosphorus in the ocean where this lava briefly lived and died. That material, they say, might have flooded the tissues of this poppy seed-sized larva, essentially crystallising its tiny body for half a billion years. Our science correspondent, Victoria Gill. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later,

but if you'd like to comment on this edition, drop us an email, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or on social media on X, we are at globalnewspod. This edition was produced by Judy Frankel and mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thanks for listening. And until next time, goodbye. Thank you. 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