Up First from NPR - Israel-Hezbollah Conflict Escalates, UN General Assembly, Alabama Mass Shooting

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Israel's military has warned people in southern Lebanon to evacuate homes used to store weapons for Hezbollah. This comes after last week's explosion of Hezbollah communication devices and multiple strikes. World leaders gather in New York this week to discuss the biggest geopolitical issues and crisis, and the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, is calling for action after a mass shooting.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Vincent Ni, Tara Neill, Russell Lewis, HJ Mai and Mohamad ElBardicy. It was produced by Iman Maani, Nia Dumas and Julie Depenbrock. We get engineering support from Carleigh Strange, and our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Israel's military sent a warning. It told Lebanese people to evacuate homes used to store weapons for Hezbollah. Israel's prime minister talks of extensive strikes. So how far will their military push it? I'm Ian Martinez with Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. Heads of state gather in New York this week with a sense that something has gone very wrong. With greater displacement, more prospective famine than we have seen in generations. What, if anything, can the U.N. General Assembly do about it?

Also, the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, calls for action. Elected officials have a duty to solve this American epidemic of gun violence. His city experienced a mass shooting on the street. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. 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.

Hey there, this is Felix Contreras, one of the co-hosts of Alt Latino, the podcast from NPR Music where we discuss Latinx culture, music, and heritage with the artists that create it. Listen now to the Alt Latino podcast from NPR. Read about the impact of women in music with NPR's new book, How Women Made Music, A revolutionary history from NPR music. This stunning anthology offers original writing and illustrations, interviews and photos.

And the audio book includes 52 years worth of interview excerpts with more than 60 legendary artists. Visit NPR.org slash How Women Made Music to order now. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalates step by step. Last week, Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded. Then, Israel conducted its deadliest strike in Lebanon in decades. Yesterday, Hezbollah rockets landed deeper in Israel than in the past. This morning, Israel is carrying out extensive strikes in Lebanon and publishing this video warning to some Lebanese villagers. It says, if you suspect Hezbollah is hiding weapons in your area, evacuate immediately. References to schools there. Let's try to understand what Israel is aiming to achieve with NPR correspondent Daniel Estrin, who's in Haifa in northern Israel.

Hey there, Daniel. Good morning, Steve. How is Israel explaining what it's doing here? You know, it's signaling that it wants to gradually increase its strikes on Hezbollah, but not cause an all-out regional war. And it really seems that Hezbollah is kind of acting in kind. It's gradually broadened its strikes, but not enough to spark a bigger war either. Israel really is driving the initiative here. It argues that Hezbollah could do what Hamas did on October 7th last year and storm across the border. So Israel says it wants to degrade Hezbollah's rocket launching capabilities

to distance eventually Hezbollah fighters from the Israeli border and to allow Israeli families that were evacuated from that northern border region to return to their homes safely. We are here in North Israel. NPR producer Itay Stern spoke this morning with some Israelis who are pleased with what Israel is doing with Hezbollah. This is Haifa resident Ruti Lamed. It's straight out of the movies. It was time. I hope it will finish quickly. Now Israel's defense minister is telling the public this is a new phase of the war. There's more to come.

Although when you say you're in Haifa, you're closer to the rocket fire out of Lebanon. Are Israelis prepared for more? Well, yeah, here in Haifa, it is calm. It's a bit eerie, though. Schools are closed. Many restaurants are only open for takeout. You do hear the rumble of warplanes every once in a while. Hospitals are preparing, especially for maybe possible Hezbollah rocket attacks. We watched Rambam Hospital, the biggest hospital in this area,

transfer its patients underground to a fortified parking garage. We spoke with deputy director of that hospital, Avi Weissman. It's a little bit complicated to move all the hospitals, including delivery rooms, including ICUs, ventilated patients. It's really, really complicated. So people are calm, but, you know, with any military action in Israel, there are always some who are opposed to Israel's moves as they are in Lebanon. I met a dozen Israeli anti-war protesters on the street this weekend. Listen to Orit Zaks.

I would like them to stop provoking and stop playing with Hezbollah like a cat and mouse. All the time they create more and more escalations, so we don't have time to cry over the disaster that we have suffered. You know, she's referring to the Gaza War. She says Israel should end the Gaza War and get the hostages freed. Talking to people here, I do feel people get confused, and so I need to explain once again. Hezbollah is to the north of Israel. They are based in Lebanon. They are allied with Hamas, the group that is in Gaza and is at the center of the Gaza

War. There's an effort to have a ceasefire in Gaza. Where do the talks stand? The talks between Israel and Hamas have been frozen for weeks, and now we're seeing Israel taking this new initiative in Lebanon. So we are looking at what is just the beginning of perhaps a new front. And Piers Daniel Estrin, thanks so much. You're welcome. World leaders are gathering at the United Nations in New York this week. Amid high security, they'll meet each other in a glittering city to talk about parts of the world that do not glitter at all. Samantha Power, the Biden administration's lead official on aid, assessed the situation. With greater displacement, more prospect of famine than we have seen in generations, and the significant risk of escalating

violence in parts of the world like the Middle East, you know, this is an incredibly important week. Which NPR's Michelle Kellerman will be covering, as she has annually for years. Michelle, good morning. Good morning. So what did Ambassador Power say the United States intends to do about all the problems she described? Well, this is President Biden's swan song speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, but the high-level week isn't just about these speeches. It's really about the meetings on the sidelines to try to push forward diplomacy. You heard Power talk about the need for that in Gaza and the escalating war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. That will likely overshadow everything, especially if, as expected, Israel's prime minister comes here midweek. But there's, you know,

a lot of other conflicts that the Biden administration wants to highlight. There's Haiti and the slow efforts to get gang violence under control and get that country back on a path to elections. And there is, of course, Sudan, which is what she was talking about with that famine. Oh, okay. Well, let's talk about that one then. What does the administration intend to do there with what is described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis? Not as many headlines as some others, but considered the worst. Yeah, I mean, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and others involved in the diplomacy did manage to get some promises to open up aid routes in Sudan. But Samantha Power says that's really just not enough.

There is no way to humanitarian assistance our way out of this crisis. The only way to, in an enduring way, to get out of this crisis, the only way civilians will have access to food going forward in a reliable way is for the end of the war. The end of the war, and that means getting the Sudanese armed forces and a paramilitary known as the RSF to negotiate. And the trouble is, Steve, there's just a lot of other countries that are fueling this crisis. The United Arab Emirates is one, they're backing the RSF, and Biden administration officials have been quietly pressing the UAE to cut it out to stop that. The UN General Assembly is really a chance to get all these leaders and foreign ministers together to work on these solutions. And that's, you know,

one area where they hope to make some progress. You know, when I heard her say there's no way to humanitarian assistance our way out of this crisis, it occurred to me that that could apply to a lot of places. Yeah, including Gaza. Yeah, yeah, to say the least. And then there's Ukraine. What is the administration likely to say about Ukraine? Well, the focus is really going to be on planning to help Ukraine get through another winter of war, how to protect critical infrastructure from Russian attacks. There's a meeting about that today. There's also a Security Council meeting this week, but very little gets done there. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is coming, and he's going to present

what he's calling his plan for victory. But he's been trying to rally more support around the world to end the war in a way that preserves Ukraine's territorial integrity. Russia is a permanent Security Council member. It does have outsized influence at the UN and veto power. So really not much gets done there. And Pierce, Michelle Kellerman, thanks so much. Thank you. Police in Birmingham, Alabama are looking for suspects in a mass shooting that killed four people and left at least 17 wounded over the weekend. The incident took place Saturday night in a popular entertainment

district. It also has the city's mayor talking about the need to solve the gun violence epidemic in America. Andrew Yeager is covering this story. He's with our member station WBHM in Birmingham. Andrew, good morning. Good morning. What happened? Well, police say that they believe this was a targeted killing, possibly a murder for hire. They say multiple suspects drove into that entertainment area, got out of a vehicle, began shooting, and then left in a vehicle. And this happened outside of a hookah bar where people were lined up to go inside. Police believe that one of the people killed was the intended victim, while others were just caught in the crossfire. Now, in terms of the guns, authorities say they were fully automatic weapons. These might involve Glock switches, which convert semi-automatic weapons

into fully automatic weapons. The devices are banned under federal law, although Alabama has no equivalent state-level ban. Andrew, every detail you're giving me is like a gut punch, that only one person was targeted, that so many were hit by these fully automatic weapons. So, what does Birmingham's mayor say about this? Mayor Randall Woodfin called gun violence an American epidemic. He added that Birmingham is at the tip of that spear. But he also said gun violence is a solvable problem if people work together. He specifically called out elected leaders.

Elected officials, locally, statewide, and nationally have a duty to solve this American crisis, this American epidemic of gun violence. We should not allow people to just ride around with any style type of weapon that doesn't even belong on domestic streets. It should not be allowable, period. I don't care what your politics are. Woodfin went on to say that to attack gun violence, law enforcement needs stronger laws, particularly at the local level. And he went on to say that leaders owe it to the victims, to their families, to the community to actually solve that problem of gun violence. One of the ways this is different from some other mass shootings is that the, well, the attacker,

our attackers got away. You don't have somebody who's been shot. You don't have somebody who's been arrested. So where does the investigation go from here? Well, police say that they're reviewing surveillance footage of the incident, but beyond that, they're really imploring the public to come forward with any information that they might have. Here's Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurman. Really, it just comes down to some time, information from the public, and us just doing our job. So I can assure you that us doing our job is not going to be an issue. It's the public's assistance is where it's really going to come down to at the end of the day.

Saturday night shooting follows another shooting that happened at an event hall during an adult birthday party in Birmingham back in July. Four people were killed in that event, about 10 wounded. No one was arrested in that case. Authorities, I should mention, don't believe there's a link between these two shootings, but it is an instance of how violent Birmingham has been this year. How bad a year has it been? Well, the city has already seen 123 homicides this year. The record is 148 that was set back in 1933. And there's a variety of reasons for the increase, including the availability of guns. And officers say another problem is just a culture of tit-for-tat violence,

where criminals escalate their responses to skirmishes and disagreements, and it explodes into shootings. Andrew Yeager, managing editor at WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama. Thanks so much. Thank you. And that's our first for this Monday, September 23rd, the first Monday of fall. I'm Steve Henskeep. And I'm A. Martinez. How about listening to Consider This from NPR? For months now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been requesting permission to use Western long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia. These weapons have the potential to transform Ukraine's ability to defend itself, but at what cost? Listen to Consider This from NPR.

Today's Up First was edited by Vincent Nee, Tara Neal, Russell Lewis, H.J. Mai, and Mohamed El-Bardisi. It was produced by Iman Maani, Nia Dumas, and Julie Deppenbrock. We get engineering support from Carly Strange, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us tomorrow. One year ago, the event that changed a region. Heavily armed Palestinian militants in Gaza flew across the border. The October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel.

Israeli ground troops have entered northern Gaza. How the war unfolded and where it could be headed. Pagers carried by Hezbollah members began exploding in cars. Listen to a special episode of the podcast State of the World from NPR. How does the brain process memories? Why is AI a solution and a problem for our climate? What is leadership in 2025 and beyond? The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions and the most complicated ideas of our time with the world's greatest thinkers.

Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.