Up First: What Do We Need to Know to Stop Biden from Trying to Stop Israel From Opening Up More Trucks and Open up More Border crossings?
Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. You can get all the news you need to start your day by listening to the up first podcast and subscribe here.
Arraf: This looks like it could be a turning point in President Biden’s willingness to exert more pressure on Israel. Israel agreed to allow more trucks through the existing ones and open up a third border crossing.
The No Labels group said they would not run a presidential candidate. In a statement the organization said it wouldn’t put forth a Unity ticket because it wouldn’t find a candidate. In order to foster bipartisan cooperation, no Labels were formed in 2010.
A Brief History of the Future: Los Angeles Children’s Camps as a Demonstration of the Border Patrol’s Uncertainty
A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that border officials are responsible for the welfare of children sheltering in makeshift encampments on the California side of the U.S.-Mexico border. Even though the Border Patrol didn’t create the camps, the adults and children there are still considered to be under the supervision of agents because they are being told where to go.
Many on the far right are distrustful of traditional institutions. Some of them are trying to create a parallel economy with their own payment platforms, social media, and computers. It is a matter of survival, according to many. Supporters of this parallel economy are part of a subculture that brings together modern-day conspiracy theories about COVID-19, elections, and transgender visibility with conservative values and free speech absolutism.
Movies: If you’re looking for a movie with a magical ending that’s still tied to reality, Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera is a period film that’ll check all your boxes. A tomb raider in Italy in the 1980’s tried to find treasure and himself.
Executive producer of the new PBS show A Brief History of the Future is a critic of the pop culture obsession with dystopias. Host Ari Wallach travels around the world to meet the people shaping a hopeful future.
The Memory of Gaza: What Happens When You’re There, and What Comes Next? A Portrait of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Books: Hanif Abdurraqib’s latest book is all about the phrase “there’s always next year.” He considers the idea after victories and defeats of basketball.
Music: This week’s contenders for NPR Music’s Songs of the Year include Big Thief singer Adrianne Lenker’s latest solo outing and wry punk from the Brooklyn band Gustaf.
Arraf: I was at the southern Lebanese border one day watching a Lebanese man sitting in a plastic chair in the courtyard of his damaged home, surrounded by shattered glass, looking out across the Israeli border.
For decades, people in neighboring countries have expected anything they build to come crashing down because of the region’s instability. The attention focused on this war has prompted some hope of a Palestinian homeland for the first time in decades.
This war is being covered in unprecedented detail in the media. In past wars, journalists could usually go into Gaza. This time, Israel is not allowing journalists in, except for brief visits when they are escorted by the Israeli military. Many journalists and media workers were killed at the same time.
Estrin: One moment I experienced that sums up what it feels like to be here was the morning we learned an Israeli commando raid in Gaza had rescued two Israeli hostages. Israeli airstrikes provided cover for the commandos and killed scores of Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
A mother wailing over her child who was killed was recorded by our producer in Gaza. I was driving in Tel Aviv and listening to the cries of the Palestinian mother, as an Israeli drove past on his motorcycle with a bumper sticker that read, “Go IDF!” a reference to the Israeli military, the Israel Defense Forces. One people’s tragedy is another people’s triumph. Israelis and Palestinians live in very different worlds.
I covered Israeli-Palestinian fighting in Gaza in the early 2000s. Back then, Hamas was sending individual suicide bombers into Israel. Israel was carrying out individual airstrikes against Hamas leaders.
The fighting is worse now than when it was bloody. It’s important to think about what comes next, though there is a need to stop the killing and ease the suffering.
If there’s a cease-fire, but if Hamas remains in power, continues to hold Israeli hostages, and poses an ongoing threat to Israel, that’s not going to be acceptable to Israel.
Some children have already died of starvation, according to U.N. and aid groups. The infrastructure of Gaza has been destroyed so much that only half the aid is getting into it as compared to before the war.
Israel’s restriction on aid that goes by road into Gaza explains why World Central Kitchen was delivering food by sea. Israel cites security concerns.
Gaza residents have been blown to pieces or buried under rubble in Israeli airstrikes that have flattened buildings. Unless you have connections to a foreign government that has allowed a limited number of people to leave, you cannot escape the war.
Most homes, roads, water systems, health facilities and historical landmarks have been damaged or destroyed in a territory with more than 2 million Palestinians.
A Palestinian public opinion poll last month found 71 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza supported the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. Many see it as a triumph of resistance to Israeli oppression. But only 1 in 5 Palestinians surveyed in the poll said they saw videos showing what Israelis endured the day of the Hamas assault.
But as Israel waged its aggressive air and ground campaign, and the civilian Palestinian death toll soared, we’ve seen unprecedented criticism of Israel, a country that has long received bipartisan backing in the U.S. This criticism is coming from many sources — some members of Biden’s Democratic Party to college campuses to the broader public. The majority of Americans supported Israel’s effort in the war. A recent poll shows that most Americans don’t approve of the way Israel is conducting the war.
Israel was one of the first countries Biden proposed new military aid for during the war. That plan is still on the table, though it’s being blocked in Congress.
The normalization efforts with Israel spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates have papered over what countries like Jordan say is inevitable instability as long as that issue is unaddressed. In Jordan, one of only two countries that has a peace treaty with Israel, tension has risen along with the death toll in Gaza.
Near the Israeli Embassy, there are often nightly protests. And as the civilian death toll climbs in Gaza, more anger – in Jordan and many other Arab and Muslim countries – is being directed at the U.S. because it is the main military supplier to Israel.
Israel is trading attacks with Hezbollah on the southern border of Lebanon. There’s growing fear that the presumed Israeli attack on the Iranian Embassy compound in Damascus, Syria, this week, could spark a wider war.
The United States increased its naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean as a show of force. Despite this, relatively small U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq came under fire from various militia groups, which led the U.S. to hit back. The militia attacks ceased for the past month or so.
The U.S. Navy is also in the Red Sea, off the coast of Yemen, trying to stop the Houthis from firing missiles at commercial ships. The attacks by the rebels are still occurring on a regular basis.
The U.S. says Iran is stirring the pot, supporting proxy groups across the Middle East. It remains tense, though the wider region has not yet boiled over.
Part of that tension is the killing of a team of aid workers with World Central Kitchen in Gaza, including an American. What have the repercussions been?
The Israeli government’s count of the number of dead in the attack on Israel is over 1,200, making it the single deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust. Israelis speak about the Oct. 7 attack as a “second Holocaust” because of the atrocities committed. They hid when they were killed. Some were burned alive. Others were killed and shot at a music festival. Corpses were decapitated and mutilated, among other acts of violence documented by the United Nations. More than 250 hostages were taken to Gaza.
On the Status of the CP-Violet Crisis and the Palestinian-Israeli War in the Mid-Arctic Region
There are three people in this picture, Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv, Jane Arraf in Amman, Jordan and Greg Myre in Washington.
The current conflict in the region was one of the reasons that a trio of NPR correspondents looked at how the war was affecting the region and where it could go.
This Sunday is the six months anniversary of a Hamas attack in southern Israel that caused the deadliest war ever between Israelis and Palestinians.