Up First from NPR - Attacks in Israel, Regional Reaction, Ukraine Aid

Episode Date: October 7, 2023

Israel's prime minister says the country "at war" after attacks by air and land by Gaza militants. Regional governments are reacting cautiously. And the House Speaker vacancy is complicating additional aid for Ukraine.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Israel's prime minister says the country is at war. That after a series of attacks and calls from Hamas for support throughout the region. It's unknown yet how many people are injured or dead. I'm Scott Simon. I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is Up First from NPR News. The time has come to draw the line for the enemy to understand their time is up and they can't keep going without consequences. That's a Hamas leader as broadcast by Al Jazeera. We'll have the latest from Israel and reaction from elsewhere in the region.

And more aid to Ukraine is held up as House Republicans struggle to find a new speaker. How's that affecting the Ukrainian resistance? So please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. Now Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. First to Israel and the violence filling the air there. There have been barrages of missiles from Gaza towards central and southern Israel and Israeli strikes in response.

Militants have also been spotted on paragliders, as well as infiltrating through the Mediterranean and driving trucks on land. Daniel Estrin joins us now from Tel Aviv. Daniel, thank you for being here. I'm told you're moving to a bomb shelter now. Yeah, I may be able to speak to you from a reinforced room here if we do hear air raid sirens. But for now, things are quiet here in Tel Aviv. Well, tell us what it's like in Israel and throughout.

Oh, I mean, for hours there have just been shocking scenes that have shocked Israelis and Palestinians who I've spoken with. And this is still unfolding. And it started this morning early when heavily armed Palestinian militants in Gaza flew across the border on paragliders. They swam through the Mediterranean Sea. They drove over land with pickup trucks through Israel's fortified border fence. And they infiltrated several Israeli military camps and at least five Israeli communities near Gaza where there are gun battles now with Israeli forces. That's including the town of Sderot, which we're

hearing from Israeli public broadcasting. There are at least 10 bodies now covered on the ground. NPR spoke with a social worker in that town, Daron Shabti. He was speaking from his family's reinforced shelter room. He was there with his wife and his baby. They said they ran out of formula for the baby. They turned off all the lights in the house. Here's what he said. That's the situation. There are terrorists outside.

Here's the fighting. Everyone's in a while. The instructions are to stay at home, not to go outside,, not opening the windows, etc. And so at the very same time, you have this other kind of attack, which is thousands of rockets fired from Gaza toward southern and central Israel, toward Jerusalem, toward Tel Aviv. And here's what I recorded this morning in Tel Aviv. So Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said, quote, we are at war. Israel has launched strikes on Gaza.

But the things that we're seeing from Hamas, videos that NPR has not independently verified, but it appeared to show soldiers killed, Israeli soldiers taken hostage. That's what Hamas is claiming. It's a severe kind of attack that is really striking for people here. And any thinking, Daniel, as to why the strike has been launched now and how is it that Israel was caught by surprise? It is a major question. How could Israel be caught unawares this way? I mean, it's happening on a major Jewish holiday today,

and I'm hearing a lot of comparisons here to what happened 50 years ago and a day ago on another Jewish holy day, Yom Kippur. The Yom Kippur War broke out 50 years ago, also a surprise attack on Israel. So we're hearing a lot of comparisons to that. And we're also hearing from a top Hamas militant commander who says these attacks were in response to Israeli, quote, desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. This is a major contentious religious site, holy to Muslims, also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount. And this week we've seen a lot of Jewish religious

ultra-nationalists visit that site. So this is not coming out of a vacuum. We've seen recent weeks of violent clashes along the Gaza border, and also violence in the West Bank. And here's Daniel Astrin in Tel Aviv. Thanks so much, Daniel. You're welcome, Scott. Egypt and Turkey are urging restraint this weekend as violence rages in Israel and Gaza. The conflicts, which have been a surprise and are unprecedented in their scale, have put the entire region on high alert. NPR's Aya Batraoui is in Dubai and joins us now. Aya, what can you tell us about how governments in the region are responding?

Basically, cautiously. We haven't seen immediate statements from heavyweights like the United Arab Emirates, which has close ties now with Israel, but we have seen Saudi Arabia quickly issue a statement just now saying they're closely following these developments, they're calling it unprecedented, they're calling for an immediate halted escalation and the protection of civilians and saying that, you know, look, the Saudi Arabia is reminding everyone that they have been given repeated warnings of the dangers that the situation is explosive. Egypt, which borders Gaza and has had a longstanding role as a mediator in these conflicts, says its foreign minister has already been working the phones to bring an end to the escalation, but that might be in vain given the gravity of the situation and the current Israeli government that would be expected to respond pretty fast and hard to this. And we've also seen

no response immediately from Iran, but the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group congratulated the Palestinians for their, quote, heroic factions there for this operation. And the Turkish president, Tayyip Erdogan, called for restraint from all parties. So yeah, there's been a cautious approach so far, I think, in a lot of the statements. Eya, how do you imagine the stunning images from this morning and Israel's response are going to be received in the region? I mean, this is major news. I mean, all the Arabic satellite channels are carrying these just insane, stunning images out of Israel. A lot of these are social media videos. We don't know how many of these are real or have been verified. But, you know, every of the holiest sites for Muslims and for Jews. But we also saw in Ramadan, you know, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, worshippers inside being beaten. And so it's been a very sensitive year. It's been a very unsettling time. And we've

seen raids in the West Bank and close to 250 Palestinians killed this year by Israeli forces. So emotions on the street have been high, and any conflict could just make that even more. What does another war mean for Israel's new allies in the region, like the UAE, and for that matter, the Biden administration's efforts to put together some kind of deal that would see Saudi Arabia establish ties with Israel? Well, we talked about popular sentiment, but politically, among the political leadership in the region, particularly the Gulf and Egypt, Hamas is not popular. The UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, they see Hamas as an Islamist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood group, and they see it as a faction, an entity that is backed by Iran. So I think statements will be cautious. But the reality is Saudi Arabia has a much bigger agenda with normalizing ties with Israel that goes far beyond anything that could just be another

cycle. Unfortunately, these wars do happen every two to three years, and it's become almost inevitable. And I think even the Saudi statement said, this is a result of the continued occupation, and they're calling for a credible priest process that can lead to a two-state solution. So I don't think this will derail the talks, but it certainly complicates an already very difficult negotiation. And Perzea Batraoui in Dubai, thanks so much. Thank you, Scott. And now another conflict, the one in Ukraine. U.S. money and weapons amounting to tens of billions of dollars have flowed there since last year.

That assistance is running out fast and turmoil among House Republicans means an uncertain future for President Biden's request for more. NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myrie has been looking into how this could affect the war and he's here now. Thank you for joining us, Greg. Hey, good to be here, Ayesha. So Greg, let's start with the money. How much money has the U.S. spent on Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion began last year? It's now more than $75 billion. More than half of this is military assistance. The rest has gone for humanitarian aid and to fund the Ukrainian government so it can do things like pay government salaries.

Now, this is far more money than the U.S. has given to any other country over this period. By comparison, it's roughly 10 times what the U.S. has provided to Israel, the second leading recipient of U.S. assistance. But another way to look at it is how critical this has been for Ukraine's war effort and how much damage Ukraine has inflicted on the Russian military. Here's Jason Crow, a Democratic congressman from Colorado. We have spent about 5 percent of our annual defense budget, and with that money, the Ukrainians have destroyed over 60 percent of the Russian military. Now, if that's not a good bargain for the American taxpayer, then I don't know what is. Also, he notes, there's not a single U.S. soldier who's actually fighting

in Ukraine. As of today, can the Biden administration still send assistance to Ukraine? Yes, it can, but it's a rapidly dwindling figure. It's about $5 billion left that's been authorized but hasn't been spent. Now, John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, was pressed on how much longer the U.S. could keep sending aid. There's about six to eight more weeks of decent weather here, of good fighting weather, and we want to make sure that the Ukrainians can succeed. But absent additional funding by Congress, eventually you run into a hard stop there. So what is President Biden asking for? He wants another $24 billion, and a little

over half of this would be for military aid. That's designed to last until the end of the year. And realistically, it shouldn't be a problem. With some recent votes in Congress, it showed that about 70% of House members and close to 80 senators still support aid to Ukraine. Yet the squabbling among House Republicans has prevented any action, and it's not clear how long it will take to get this resolved. Now, Congressman Crowe is a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's wary of another open-ended conflict overseas, even if it doesn't involve U.S. troops, but he thinks the battle in Ukraine is too important for the U.S. to, but he thinks the battle in Ukraine is too important for the U.S. to stand on the sidelines. Well, I can tell you, Greg, I'm war-weary.

You know, the last 20 years could not be classified as a success by most measures. And yet I'm a huge supporter of Ukraine. What about European support for Ukraine? Like, is it doing enough? Could it do more if USAID stops? Well, you know, Ayesha, European countries collectively have provided more overall assistance, military, economic, humanitarian, than the U.S., actually. This includes countries like Poland, which has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees. But it's important to remember this has been a genuine multinational effort with the U.S. playing the lead role. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin convenes more than 50 countries on a near

monthly basis to coordinate all this assistance for Ukraine. One country may provide tanks, another ammunition, a third may say that it has some spare fighter jets. But if U.S. assistance is interrupted, it could become harder to keep all these countries working in concert. So how are Ukraine and Russia viewing these developments? You know, I've spent a lot of time in Ukraine in the last year, and the big Ukrainian fear you hear time and again is that Western aid will dry up. The Ukrainians are always saying, we're not asking the West to come and fight. We're just asking for weapons so we can fight the Russians. And when it comes to Russia, there's a widespread

view that Russian leader Vladimir Putin believes he can outlast Ukraine in a war of attrition. He thinks the West will tire of aiding Ukraine and Ukraine will get worn down and events will eventually turn in Russia's favor. Now, we haven't seen that yet, but the current turmoil in the U.S. Congress shows how just such a scenario could play out. That's NPR's Greg Myrie. Thank you, Greg. Sure thing, Ayesha. And that's Up First for Saturday, October 7th, 2023. I'm Scott Simon. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. Tomorrow on the Sunday Story, 15-Minute Cities.

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