Up First from NPR - Israel Vows To Intensify War, India Deepens Ties With Russia, 2024 Union Lookahead

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Despite U.S. calls to protect Palestinian civilians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to intensify attacks on Gaza until Hamas is defeated. India's external affairs minister is meeting with his counterpart in Moscow to strengthen relations between the longtime allies. And, after some big wins in 2023, the United Auto Workers union is setting its sights on foreign automakers with plants in the south.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Dana Farrington, Michael Sullivan, Pallavi Gogoi and Mohamad ElBardicy.It was produced by Julie Depenbrock, Mansee Khurana and Lisa Weiner. We get engineering support from Phil Edfors. And our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Israeli strikes in the south and in central Gaza cause more devastation as Israel's prime minister says attacks will intensify even more in the coming days. How is the U.S. responding after repeated calls on Israel to do more to protect civilians? I'm Asma Khalid, that's Leila Fadl and this is Up First from NPR News. India has gotten a lot of leeway for not fully condemning the war on Ukraine, and now it seems it's doubling down on ties with Russia. A top Indian official is in Moscow for bilateral talks. What does it mean for U.S.-India relations?

And after some big wins in 2023, the United Auto Workers Union is setting its sights on foreign automakers with plants in the South. Volkswagen has even gone so far as to start each shift where they read out anti-union talking points. Stay with us. We'll give you 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. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is digging in on his war against Hamas as Israeli strikes in central and in south Gaza intensified over the past few days. In a speech to the Knesset on Monday, he vowed to keep fighting until Israel achieves its stated goal of destroying Hamas. That, despite some public pressure from the Biden administration to protect civilians in Gaza. Here to discuss all of this is NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom

Bowman. Good morning, Tom. Hey, Leila. Hi. So, Tom, let's start with Netanyahu. He says he'll continue and even go deeper with this war. What's the U.S. saying? Well, President Biden spoke with Netanyahu over the weekend and said only they had a long talk. And Biden said he did not ask for a ceasefire. The U.S. does want Israel to curtail bombing and go to a more precise ground operation. That's just not happening, at least not yet. And just a day ago, some 70 to 80 civilians were killed in airstrikes in Gaza, in the crowded neighborhood. And of course, as you know, the death toll is more than 20,000 now, with the majority women and children. You know, I was talking with a retired senior U.S. officer with long experience in the Middle East about all this, and he told me Israel will listen to the U.S. and then do things its own way.

Just staggering numbers there. What else do we know about what's happening on the ground for Palestinians who are trying to find safety? Well, a lot are displaced. The Human Rights Watch says 85% of Gazans now are displaced, nearly half kind of near the border with Egypt. A senior administration official told reporters a month ago the U.S. did not want to see large numbers of Palestinians who were in northern Gaza, remember forced south by Israeli forces, displaced once again. But that is happening to many thousands of Palestinians. Now, the Israelis are providing maps and information about safer places to go, but it's online and with communications blackouts, it's kind of difficult

to make that happen. Now, the U.S. wants Israel to curtail bombing and go to a more precise ground operation. That's just not happening, at least not yet. And, of course, the death toll, again, as we said, it's more than 20,000. Yeah, all this as the U.N. put a report out saying half a million people are starving in Gaza and the risk of famine is growing every day. But what about the concern about a larger regional war? The White House said last night that it conducted airstrikes on militants in Iraq. Help us understand the bigger context here. Well, the White House says three U.S. military personnel were wounded, one critically, in an attack by Kataab Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group in Iraq.

The U.S. responded with airstrikes. We're seeing these attacks from Iranian-backed groups that also back Hamas in the war against Israel. Houthi rebels in Yemen have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea, about a dozen or more in the past two months. The U.S. has responded by creating a naval coalition to protect commercial ships in the Red Sea. It's a wait-and-see attitude by the shipping companies. Some are going around Africa as a way to reach Europe, but again, this coalition of naval ships has just begun. Now, right now, as we're talking about the possibility of a regional war, the fighting continues in Gaza.

What do we know about any diplomatic efforts to try to stop it? Well, Egypt has proposed a plan to bring an end to the war by installing a new governing body in Gaza to replace Hamas. Reuters news agency is reporting Hamas has rejected the deal. The Egyptian plan calls for the release of all hostages and the freeing of more imprisoned Palestinians, along with exchange of bodies of Israelis and Palestinians killed during the war. Now, Qatar brokered the first ceasefire, as you might remember, with Hamas's political office in Doha. It's likely to be involved in any future deals, but we just don't know at this point. NPR's Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman. Thanks, Tom.

You're welcome. India's foreign minister is in Moscow for a five-day visit that began yesterday. These two countries, Russia and India, have a friendly relationship that goes back decades and has only grown closer since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But India, of course, is also close to the United States. So how does it square this circle? To talk about this, we've got NPR's Dia Hadid from her base in Mumbai. Hi, Dia. Hi, Leila. So India's top diplomat is in Moscow. What's he doing there? So India's foreign minister, he's known as S.J. Shankar, is likely going to talk about trade. India has been a huge customer of Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine,

and it's getting that oil cheaper because Western sanctions have kept other buyers away. But those sanctions have also complicated how India pays for that oil. Russia is also India's top arms supplier, and it has been for decades. The war in Ukraine may have complicated that, so that could be on the agenda as well. Now, India has been getting closer to the U.S. and its allies in Asia as it tries to counter China's influence in the region. But it's not on the same page when it comes to Ukraine, right? Right. It's not on the same page at all. And it's important to note that India has not condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine despite significant pressure to do so. And there's two reasons why.

The first, as you mentioned, India has an old friendly relationship with Russia. You might ask, how old? Consider then the tweet by the foreign minister S.J. Shankar yesterday. He wrote how it started and how it's going. And he posted a picture of a visiting card to the Red Square from 1962 when he went there with his father alongside a picture of himself yesterday at the same place. So that's one reason. The other is that India prides itself on its independent foreign policy, what it calls strategic autonomy. So Rajaswari Pillai Rajagopalan is a political scientist at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. And she says the Indian foreign minister going to Russia is a way of signalling that autonomy,

even as India moves closer to Western allies on issues surrounding China. Even as India has gotten closer to the United States, Japan, Australia, to sort of balance China, India still does not want to be seen as going completely into one camp or the other. Okay, so I guess that the US also wants to have India on side when it comes to China. So will it even criticize this visit? That's what analysts say.

But there's also some understanding that India's position is also difficult because it has its own tensions with Beijing. And that's part of the reason why it's drawing closer to the US and its allies. But it might need Russia's support as well if those tensions escalated. Michael Kugelman is the South Asia director of the Wilson Center. India has not condemned the Russian invasion, but that doesn't mean that it supports the war. It doesn't support the war at all. The war makes Russia more dependent on China. And India doesn't want that because China is India's strategic competitor. So India needs the US. It also needs Russia, both to counter what it sees as this threat from China. And PR's Diya Hadid in Mumbai.

Thank you so much for your time. You're welcome, Leila. No box, no truck! No box, no truck! From autoworkers to actors, nurses to newspaper reporters, more than half a million workers went on strike this year, and many emerged with big wins. So, is this a union comeback? NPR's Andrea Hsu is here to unpack all this. Hi, Andrea. Hi.

So is it a comeback? Well, it's hard to say exactly. You know, since the 1980s, there have really only been a few years when we saw unions asserting themselves like they did this year. Most recently, it was back in 2018 and 2019. But then it was government workers, teachers, you know, who walked off the job in a bunch of states. I talked with Johnny Callis about this. He runs Cornell's Labor Action Tracker. And he said what's notable about this year is that it's really been workers in the private sector at companies who have driven the surge. Which is important because that's where unions have been weakest. And it remains to be seen whether this really translates into more sustainable gains or an increasing unionization rate over time. Because, Layla, right now, only 6% of private sector workers in the U.S. belong to unions.

Well, that's a small share, 6%. Do unions seem to have the wind at their back? Could this be a turning point? Oh, I think it's really too soon to tell. I am closely watching what is happening with the UAW. You know, the union president, Sean Fain, he has a site set on Tesla and also all of these foreign automakers like Nissan and Volkswagen that have non-union plants in the South that the UAW has tried to organize in the past and failed. But, you know, the union is coming off major wins at the bargaining table. And at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sean Fain says already they have had more than a thousand workers sign union cards. He says workers are being harassed for wearing union stickers and passing out union flyers.

And he also added this. Volkswagen has even gone so far as to start each shift by having frontline supervisors hold quick captive audience meetings where they read out anti-union talking points. Now, this is exactly what happened with the newly formed unions at Amazon and Starbucks. Those companies have fought quite successfully to put up roadblocks. To put up roadblocks. So what does that mean for these fledgling unions at Amazon and Starbucks? 180 stores have now unionized, but not a single one has gotten a first contract because each side has accused the other of not bargaining in good faith. And getting a contract is really the whole point of having a union, to be able to collectively bargain for wages and benefits. I talked with Ian Mager, a barista in Oregon, whose store voted to unionize almost two years ago.

I kind of knew that it wasn't going to be a quick fight. It wasn't going to be an easy fight. I would have preferred that Starbucks play ball. But Mager says in a way, the union has already won something. Starbucks has actually granted non-union stores some benefits that the union had pushed for, like credit card tipping and faster sick time accrual. These are things that workers now have in the vast majority of Starbucks stores, 90-some percent of them. It's been a real win for the working class, you know, for the baristas of Starbucks on the whole. The other week, Starbucks sent an email to the union saying it hopes the two sides resume contract talks in January and get ratification. Okay, so we'll stay tuned for more on that. NPR's Andrea Hsu, thank you so much, Andrea. You're welcome. A note here that Amazon is among NPR's financial supporters and pays to distribute some NPR content.

And that's Up First for Tuesday, December 26th. I'm Laila Faldil. And I'm Asma Khalid. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Dana Farrington, Michael Sullivan, Pallavi Gogoi, and Mohamed Al-Bardisi. It was produced by Julie Deppenbrock, Monty Carana, and Chad Campbell. We get engineering support from Phil Edfers,

and our technical director is Hannah Glovna. Start your day here with us again tomorrow. And thanks for waking up with NPR. Your NPR station makes Up First possible each morning. Support their work and ours at donate.npr.org slash upfirst.