Up First from NPR - Israel And Hamas After Six Months

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

October 7, 2023, was a Saturday. This Saturday, we look back at the last six months of violence, beginning with the surprise attack by Hamas on communities in southern Israel and continuing as Israel keeps up its retaliation and Hamas continues to hold hostages.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hamas unleashed the violence of October 7th quickly. Shocking videos being shared on social media appear to show Palestinian militants shooting at passers-by in the streets of southern Israel. Bloodshed continues now. Six months later, I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News. Today on the podcast, from that October Saturday, the United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back. To today, where six months of fighting leaves Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world. Three NPR correspondents who've been covering the war are here. So please stay with us. We have 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. By the time Week in Edition came on the air Saturday morning, October 7th, NPR's Daniel Estrin was already reporting on a historic and shocking attack. Well, you know, this is something that's been unfolding for about 10 hours now and going, and it's just astonishing scenes. Both Israelis and Palestinians I've been speaking with have been shocked by what has been happening. The estimates at that moment of the deaths and the attack by Hamas on small communities in southern Israel put the numbers at as many as 70 Israelis and 200 Palestinians. Those awful statistics would rise.

And the conflict that began six months ago has now become the deadliest war in Israeli-Palestinian history, and it goes on. We're joined now by some of our correspondents who've been covering that war. Of course, Daniel Estrin is in Israel. Daniel, thank you for being with us. Thank you, Scott. And Jane Araf is in Beirut. Jane, thank you for being with us. Thank you, Scott.

And Greg Myrie, Imperial National Security Correspondent, is here in our studio. Thanks for being with us, Greg. Hi, Scott. Let me turn to Daniel Estrin first in Tel Aviv. Daniel, how has the past half year changed Israel? Well, it was the deadliest single attack against Jews since the Holocaust, which is how Israelis still talk about that day.

1,200 dead by the Israeli government's count. And Israelis speak about it also as a second Holocaust because of the atrocities committed. Israelis hiding at home in their closets, burned alive, shot and killed in a field at a music festival, corpses decapitated, mutilated, hostages captured. The United Nations has documented these details in a report. And that brutality really has tapped into Israelis' trauma going back to the Holocaust. And it, I think, explains how Israelis have responded since. We've seen hundreds of armed civilian squads formed inside Israel. And Israelis' hearts have been hardened as soldiers have invaded Gaza, have reported

on finding weapons in homes and schools in Gaza. And you hear a common phrase in Israel, there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza. Israelis are not seeing the horrors of the war that Palestinians are experiencing as they watch the Israeli news. How do we understand the devastation that we have seen in Gaza and how it's been transformed? Gaza has been decimated to its core by Israel's bombardment. More Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than any other in their history, 33,000 and more, according to Gaza health officials, mostly believed to be civilians. There is no escaping this war for Gazans unless you have lots of money or connections.

The UN projects imminent famine. Most homes, roads, water systems, health facilities, ancient historical landmarks have all been decimated, damaged, destroyed. And Palestinian public opinion poll recently found wide support still for the October 7th attack, seeing it as a triumph of resistance to Israeli oppression. But very few Palestinians have seen videos of what happened to Israelis that day. And I think you can see this as two societies where each sees themselves as the victims and the other as the aggressors. Greg Myhre, let me turn to you now because war has had a powerful effect in the U.S. too, hasn't it? Oh, absolutely, Scott.

You know, on October 7th, we saw widespread public support here for Israel. Within two weeks, President Biden was flying to Israel and he was greeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the airport tarmac with a big embrace. But as Israel has waged this aggressive air and ground campaign that Daniel just described, we've really seen unprecedented criticism of Israel. It's coming from some Democratic members of Congress, on college campuses, among the broader U.S. public. And in the early days of the war, Biden proposed $14 billion in additional military assistance to Israel, and that's still on the table. But over the past six months, Biden has gone from totally supportive of Israel to mildly critical about its military operations. And then

on Thursday, we saw his sharpest criticism yet. It came in a phone call with Netanyahu. He told the Israeli leader he must urgently do more to protect Palestinian civilians and allow in more humanitarian aid. Biden warned that if Israel doesn't change the way it wages the war, the U.S. will change its approach. Now, we should stress the U.S. hasn't changed policy at this point. It's still backing Israel overall. But if you go back to October 7th, this is certainly not what we expected to be hearing from President Biden. And Jane, if you're in Beirut now, what's the effect been throughout the wider Middle East? Well, Scott, it's brought the Palestinian issue back to the forefront for really the first time in decades. The Palestinian issue being the lack

of a Palestinian homeland and six million Palestinian refugees, 76 years after Israel was created and they fled or were forced from their homes. In the past few years, that normalization spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates with Israel has papered over what countries like Jordan say over and over is instability that will last as long as the Palestinian issue isn't addressed. And in Jordan, which we have to remember is one of only two Arab countries with a peace treaty with Israel. The longer this goes on, the more civilians killed, the more tension rises. That was a protest last week near the Israeli embassy in Amman, now almost nightly. And something else I've noticed as the death toll climbs, more anger against the U.S. because of its arming of Israel.

Here in Beirut, the focus is on the Lebanese border, where Israel has been fighting the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah. The fear is that after the presumed Israeli attack on an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus this week, an escalation in fighting here could spark a wider war. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, a short while ago told his followers they can be sure that Iran will avenge the deaths, but they shouldn't be in a hurry to see it. And Greg, tell us about the concerns that certainly the U.S. has about the wider potential impact of this war in the Middle East. Yeah, a top priority since day one is that this war does not spread to other parts of the Middle

East and has taken several steps to try to prevent that. Initially, this meant putting an aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean as a show of force and deterrence. Now, despite this, U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq came under fire from various militia groups. The U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq came under fire from various militia groups. The U.S. struck back, and these attacks have largely subsided for now. The U.S. Navy is also in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen. It's trying to stop the Houthis from firing missiles at commercial ships. These attacks are ongoing, though at a lower level.

And the U.S.'s Iran is stirring the pot, supporting these groups. But so far, the wider region has not boiled over, though it remains very tense, as Jane explained. It seemed to be a real event that stirred things up even more over the past few days with the killing of a team of aid workers with the World Central Kitchen in Gaza, including an American chain of RAF. What are some of the repercussions we can see? Well, as Greg mentioned, possibly a turning point in the U.S. willingness to exert pressure on Israel. Israel has now agreed to U.S. demands that it open up a third border crossing and allow more trucks through the existing crossings. The reason that World Central Kitchen was delivering food by sea, and the reason for the airdrops of aid, which are just a fraction of what could be sent by road, and the reason for U.S. plans to build a pier

are Israeli restrictions on aid going by land into Gaza. Israel cites security concerns. But children are dying of starvation, according to the UN. Half the aid is getting into Gaza than it was before the war, and people need it much more now with so much of the infrastructure destroyed. We want to go around to each of you for some final thoughts. Jane Araf, let me begin with you. How is this war different from what we've seen in the past? You know, at the Lebanese border one day, I was watching a man

sitting in a plastic chair in the courtyard of his damaged home, surrounded by shattered glass as he looked out across the border. And for decades, people in countries around here have expected everything they build to come crashing down

because of the region's instability. This is the first time that I've heard hope that there could be a Palestinian homeland emerging from this somehow. It's also unprecedented, Scott, in terms of media coverage, because Israeli restrictions have made it almost impossible to cover the war on the ground. You know, I and many other journalists covered the US invasion of Iraq and the major battles afterwards on the ground. The only way to see what's happening, we're barred by Israel from seeing what's happening in Gaza. Daniel Estrin in Israel, what are your thoughts? I'm left with one image, Scott. A couple months ago, there was an Israeli commando raid that rescued two Israeli hostages in Gaza. And the Israeli military unleashed bombings to provide cover for their commandos and killed many Palestinians.

And I was driving in Tel Aviv as our producer in Gaza sent over some sound that he recorded of a mother wailing over her child who was killed. And while I was driving, I saw an Israeli driving on his motorcycle with a bumper sticker on it that said, go IDF, go Israeli army. And I think that just encapsulates the two worlds that Israelis and Palestinians live in now. And Greg Myrie. You know, I first covered the Israeli-Palestinian fighting in Gaza in the early 2000s, and it was very bloody. Palestinian suicide bombings, Israeli airstrikes. But it simply wasn't on the scale of what we're seeing today. I mean, there's this clear need to stop the killing and ease the human suffering. But it's also important to think about what comes next. I mean, if there's a ceasefire, but Hamas remains in power, it continues to hold Israelis

hostage and poses an ongoing threat to Israel, that's not going to be acceptable to Israel. And from the Palestinian perspective, as Israeli troops remain in Gaza, if there's no plan to rebuild the devastated territory and no political horizon for Palestinian statehood, that's not going to be acceptable to the Palestinians. You want to end this war as soon as possible, but you don't want to leave in place conditions that could lead to another conflict a few years down the road. And here's National Security Correspondent Greg Myrie, and here's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv, and here's Jane Aref in Beirut. Thank you all for your fine work and for being with us today. Thank you, Scott.

Thank you, Scott. Thank you all for your fine work and for being with us today. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. And that's up first for Saturday, April 6, 2024. I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon. Fernando Narro and Michael Radcliffe produced today's podcast. Ed McNulty and James Heider edited. We had engineering support from Patrick

Murray. E.B. Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Lucy Oliver is our executive producer. Jim Kane is our deputy managing editor. NPR is collecting coverage and analysis of the war between Hamas and Israel at npr.org slash Mideastates. You can hear voices from Gaza and Israel, the wider region, and from here at home. As well as facts, figures, differing views, and the latest news on the conflict. Again, that's npr.org slash MideastUpdates. Tomorrow on Up First, what to expect from Monday's eclipse. Thanks for listening, and remember you can find us on your radio every Saturday and Sunday morning. Find your station at stations.npr.org.