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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, October 13th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is “Apple News Today.” On today's show, we're focusing on the Israel-Hamas war, including the situation in Gaza, questions about war crimes, and how to deal with all the misinformation out there on social media.
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Israel's military is giving civilians in Gaza City 24 hours to evacuate to another part of Gaza. That's more than a million people, in a densely packed, blockaded area that doesn't have the capacity to shelter such a large population elsewhere. The order comes as warplanes continue to bomb Gaza, and Israeli tanks and troops are massing at the border. There hasn't been a ground invasion of Gaza in more than a decade, but signs are growing that this is what Israel has planned.
Israel has Gaza under siege, cutting off food, water, and power, leaving millions of civilians hungry and in the dark. The Red Cross, UN, and others have called for a break in the blockade to let humanitarian supplies in. Israel says it won't stop the siege until Hamas frees the hostages its holding.
There are hundreds of Americans trapped in Gaza. A few are believed to be held hostage by Hamas, but most are U.S. citizens with Palestinian family. The U.S. is chartering planes to evacuate Americans from Israel. But U.S. government employees can't get into Gaza, so there's little hope of a charter flight home for the Americans there.
Wafaa Abuzayda is one of the Americans trapped in Gaza, along with her husband and 1-year-old son. This was supposed to be a short trip to see their family. She told “NPR,” she's called U.S. embassies multiple times for help.
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Wafaa Abuzayda: They're not doing anything. We tell them we're running out of milk, diapers, we're not safe, we're citizens. They're not doing anything.
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She only has a couple hours of electricity a day, to try to keep her phone charged so she can call for help. And when airstrikes hit, she tries to comfort her son.
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Abuzayda: [TEARFULLY] The hardest feeling ever is to hide your fear and show the opposite, just to keep my son positive and full of energy because he doesn't understand anything. He thinks this is fireworks. And every time I tell him while I'm crying, “Okay, mommy, clap, clap. This is fireworks,” but sometimes he will jump, he will be scared and freaking out if I'm not next to him.
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“NPR” asked Abuzayda to speak directly to the U.S. government.
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Abuzayda: [TEARFULLY] Please save us. We have been trying to call my embassy since Saturday. Nobody's helping. Nobody's getting back to us. Please save us.
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Thousands are dead in this conflict, including many civilians. Hundreds of people killed by Hamas at a music festival. Hundreds of civilians, including children, killed in Israeli bombings in Gaza. Both sides accuse each other of war crimes.
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Now this issue of war crimes is a complicated one, one that'll be discussed and debated for a very long time. “Reuters” explains some of the key points to know about international law, what rules are relevant here, and what international organizations, can and cannot do, in this situation. Some of it is pretty murky but there are a few things that are concrete.
One place to start is the 1949 Geneva Conventions. You can think of them as the Laws of War, which every UN member state has ratified. They also apply to armed groups, like Hamas. Among other things, they ban hostage-taking and targeting civilians. Hamas has done both.
Collateral civilian deaths is a more complicated issue. Israel says its airstrikes are targeting Hamas, in retaliation for attacks. But scores of civilians have been killed too. “Reuters” explains that under international law, attacks on military targets must not lead to excessive civilian deaths. Then there's what Israel calls its "siege" of Gaza. “Reuters” explains that this blockade could be considered a war crime if the damage it does to civilians is disproportionate to Israel's goal of destroying Hamas. In other words, international humanitarian laws say, there's an obligation to protect civilians, even if the other side targets civilians themselves. Two wrongs don't make a right.
There's not much that international organizations can do now to stop the fighting if Israel and Hamas are determined to wage war. Accountability for war crimes is something that could be years away - if it ever comes. The International Criminal Court in the Hague has legal authority over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. But many powerful countries aren't members of the ICC, including the United States.
The ICC has investigated possible Israeli war crimes against Palestinians before, but Israel has refused to cooperate, saying the court lacks authority. The ICC's top prosecutor says it does have jurisdiction to prosecute any potential war crimes committed by Hamas or Israel in Gaza now. But the prospect of a faraway court, possibly doing something years from now, does little for the civilian victims caught in the middle of this conflict.
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If your social media looks anything like mine, you've been flooded with posts about what's happening in Israel and Gaza. And it's not always easy to tell what's real and what's fake.
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Alex Mahadevan: The misinformation situation online right now, is the worst I've ever seen it.
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That's Alex Mahadevan at the fact-checking and media-ethics organization the Poynter Institute. He says a lot of the false images and videos circulating might look pretty credible at first glance.
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Mahadevan: A majority of it is out of context videos, old videos that have been re-captioned by users saying that they are currently from the war. So, you see video that looks like rockets falling on a city, and it's not actually Israel or Gaza, it's from a war years and years ago. So, a lot of what we're seeing are real clips and real footage that is just completely out of context.
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But some are totally fabricated. For example, one user posted on X - formerly Twitter - a clip that he claimed showed a Hamas armed fighter firing a rocket cannon and taking down an Israeli helicopter. It was actually video game footage. The fake post got more than half a million views. X and Elon Musk have come under fire for cutting content-moderation staff and changing policies in ways that made it easier for disinformation to spread. The European Union is demanding information from the platform as it looks into whether X violated laws around stopping the spread of harmful content. X says it's removed hundreds of Hamas-linked accounts and taken down or labeled tens of thousands of pieces of content.
Now when you're scrolling at home, Mahadevan from Poynter recommends you ask yourself three questions. Is the person behind the information credible? What's the evidence behind what they're saying? And what do other sources say?
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Mahadevan: Most importantly, there's no editor on X, formerly known as Twitter. So, you kind of have to be your own editor, your own fact-checker, your own reporter when it comes to this stuff.
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Mahadevan says the best advice is to avoid getting your news from social media at all. Just go to credible news outlets, which have editors and fact checkers doing all that work for you. And if you're going on social media, be aware of the pitfalls.
We've bundled this advice about misinformation on social media with a few other good resources on this week's “In Conversation” episode. It's a sort of non-exhaustive guide to the Israel-Hamas War - a "start here" collection of solid reporting and historical explainers that we think are particularly clear and useful right now. Look out for that episode of “In Conversation” in the News app and the Podcasts app later today.
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Finally, before we let you go, let's take a quick look at some other stories we're watching in the news.
In Washington, Majority Leader Steve Scalise is dropping out of the race for Speaker of the House. This comes just after he won a closed-door vote of House Republicans. But several said they wouldn't support Scalise in the full House floor vote, so he dropped out. His opponent for Speaker was Jim Jordan, but it's not clear that Jordan can win a House floor vote either.
Staying in Congress, New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez faces new charges. He's now accused of accepting bribes from a foreign government and conspiring to act as a foreign agent. Menendez and his wife Nadine previously pleaded not guilty to corruption charges. They were accused of a scheme to help the Egyptian government. Menendez denied the new charges against him.
In labor news, Kaiser Permanente and its unionized health-care workers have a tentative deal on a new contract. This likely avoids another strike by more than 75,000 nurses, technicians, and pharmacists. Earlier, they staged a three-day walkout over a dispute involving pay and understaffed hospitals.
And in Colorado, a jury convicted one of the Aurora Police officers charged in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault. Another officer on trial in the death of the Black citizen was acquitted. A different officer, who put McClain in a chokehold, is also on trial. While in police custody, paramedics injected McClain with a powerful sedative. They will also go on trial.
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You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
And if you're already listening in the News app, we've got a narrated article coming up next from “Mother Jones.” It's all about the Colorado River drying up, and the danger that creates for the 40 million people who depend on it for water.
If you're listening in the Podcasts app, follow Apple News+ Narrated to find that story. I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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