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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is “In Conversation,” from Apple News. I’m Shumita Basu. Today, a guide to help you understand the Israel-Hamas war.
The news coming out of Israel and Gaza this week has been fast-moving and devastating.
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Raz Cohen: 6 a.m., we start to hear all the rockets. We started, uh, to hear the gunshots and a lot of people screaming.
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Reporter 1: Hamas militants came, uh, on a pickup truck. This was the first place where they breached that border wall.
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Reporter 2: Another bombardment.
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It has been incessant.
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Basu, Narrating: We've learned more since Hamas's attack on Israel last weekend about what it was like for Israelis under fire, and for those whose loved ones were taken hostage by Hamas, or went missing, or were killed.
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Shaylee Atary: My husband is missing. I know it's not, like, a great hope, but if I think of the hours that… [SIGHS] that were since the bombing, it's too much time for him to last. So, I hope he was kidnapped.
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Basu, Narrating: In Gaza, there's been a constant bombardment by Israel in response. Israel also cut off food, power and water to Gaza. And while some people have managed to leave, most Palestinian civilians have nowhere to go.
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Speaker: Here in Gaza, the situation is just getting worse. There are literally no words to describe what's happening. No electricity, no water, no Internet. Like almost 90% of Gaza, they don't have connection. We can't even call each other. Uh, there's no Internet, as I previously said…
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Basu, Narrating: It's always hard, during a rapidly changing news event, to know where to find accurate, contextualized information. It's especially hard in this particular war, where the history of conflict is so long, so complicated, and so emotionally charged. There's no one-stop, read-this-and-it's-got-all-you-need-to-know solution.
So, today on the show, we're sharing some of the best pieces of analysis, history and explainers that we've come across, from sources and experts we think are worth listening to, as well as some tips on how to navigate all the good and bad information you're seeing out there. Think of it as a sort of non-exhaustive guide, a starting point for you to get your head around what's happening in this moment.
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Basu, Narrating: Let's start with on-the-ground reporting from this week. We've watched as journalists have had to take cover as bombs go off nearby. Here's "Fox News's" Trey Yingst reporting from an Israeli city close to the border with Gaza.
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Trey Yingst: And so, we're having these little pieces of information trickle in about what the Israelis knew and what they didn't know.
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Get down, everyone.
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Next to the car. Lay down flat.
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Everyone down, flat, cover your head. Uh, more rocket fire now.
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Loud explosions coming off.
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Uh, another time, they’re, they're trying to overwhelm the Iron Dome again. I can see them coming off the Gaza Strip from multiple locations…
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Basu, Narrating: "Haaretz" journalist Amir Tibon shared his first-hand account of what it was like when Hamas attacked his community. He spoke with "The Atlantic," and it's pretty harrowing to hear him tell the story of how he survived. When he and his wife first heard mortars flying overhead, they moved into a safe room in their house. But then Amir heard something he hadn't heard before: gunfire getting closer and closer. And he eventually learned from a colleague that Hamas fighters had infiltrated their town.
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Amir Tibon: That's where I thought, "Okay, we're going to die here. Nobody's going to be able to come in time. And, um, if they manage to break into the house, they will then try to break into the safe room. And if they manage to do that, we will be dead or kidnapped.
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Basu, Narrating: Amir, his wife and their two daughters waited in the safe room for hours until Amir's father, who's a retired military officer, was able to reach them and rescue them.
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Tibon: There's no light and we don't have cellphones anymore. And there's one sentence that is keeping them from falling apart and starting to cry. I'm telling them, "Grandfather is coming." I tell them, "If we stay quiet, your grandfather will come and get us out of here." And at 4 p.m., after 10 hours like this, we hear a large bang on the window. And we hear the voice of my father. And Galia, my oldest daughter, says, "Saba Hegia." Grandfather arrived. And that's when we all just start crying. [SIGHS] And that's, that's when we knew that we were safe.
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Basu, Narrating: I highly recommend listening to Amir's full story on the "Radio Atlantic" podcast. Another piece of on-the-ground reporting that stood out to us comes from filmmaker Yousef Hammash. He's been sharing narrated videos from inside Gaza, where Palestinians are enduring daily strikes from Israel.
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Yousef Hammash: This little boy was pulled out alive, his face blackened. His rescuer rushes to his mother. But before she can embrace her boy, she passes out in shock.
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Basu, Narrating: He shows scenes of packed, chaotic streets, families rushing to safety as explosions crash overhead, buildings that have been destroyed, and people standing in the rubble.
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Hammash: We are not strangers to war, but how it feels this time. It's hard to find the words.
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It feels like the world is collapsing.
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Basu, Narrating: "Al Jazeera" has several journalists reporting from Gaza, including Maram Humaid.
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Maram Humaid: And, as you can hear, uh, the home now is shaking and the, the explosions, the bombings are everywhere.
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Basu, Narrating: Maram has been documenting the bombardment and the sleepless nights with a daily diary on "Al Jazeera English." Earlier this week, her home was hit by an Israeli airstrike, so now she's holed up in a house with dozens of members of her extended family, including her eight-year-old daughter and two-month-old son. On day four of the strikes, she wrote, "As I write this, I no longer believe we will get out of this alive. There is not a home in Gaza that is safe."
As Yousef Hammash said, and everyone in the region knows, Palestinians and Israelis are no strangers to war. If you want to better understand the history that led us here, we've got a long list of resources for you, that do a really excellent job of explaining it. First, I recommend "NPR's" podcast "Throughline." They published an episode two years ago called "Palestine," and it's worth listening to this week.
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Ramtin Arablouei: When it comes to a conflict as politically charged as this one, there are a lot of complex layers to pull back and examine.
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Basu, Narrating: As the podcast explains, Israel is considered holy land to Jews, Muslims and Christians. For centuries, these groups coexisted relatively peacefully. Then, in the early 1900s, the Ottoman Empire, which had controlled Palestine, began to lose power, and the British Empire took over. In 1917, the British decide to divide up the land - this was the Balfour Declaration - and declare Palestine as the home of Jewish people. At the same time, anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe.
Here's "Throughline’s" guest, Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of the book "The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine."
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Rashid Khalidi: Anti-Semitism in Europe was so virulent, was so murderous. There were pogroms going on in, in the Russian Empire at the time. Um, given that reality, that lived reality of eastern and central Europe in particular, the idea that Jews could not live in Christian Europe and had to find an alternative, uh, seized many Jews. Most, uh, felt that they had to live elsewhere and went to the United States. Millions came to the United States. Thousands ended up going to Palestine.
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Basu, Narrating: It was these dynamics that shaped the thinking of early Zionists.
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Khalidi: The idea was not to go from being a minority in eastern Europe and become a minority in Palestine. That's not Zionism. That's just emigration, you know? The idea was to go and found a nation-state which would be a Jewish state, a Jewish majority state, a Jewish sovereign state with, most importantly, control over immigration. So you bring in as many people as you can, and you slowly drive out the existing population.
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Basu, Narrating: Coming out of World War II, Khalidi says the United States and Soviet Union supported carving out a piece of Palestine for a new Jewish state. The United Nations agreed, even though Arab leaders in the region objected to the plan. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven out, displaced from their homeland during the Nakba, also called the Palestinian Catastrophe.
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Khalidi: For Israelis and for most other people who know only the Israeli narrative, uh, 1948 represents the miraculous establishment of a Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust. For Palestinians, it represents the destruction of their society, the loss of self-de… the right to self- determination, and the expulsion of most of them, and the expropriation of the property of most of them. That's why it's a catastrophe for Palestinians.
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Basu, Narrating: Let's fast forward to 21st century politics, a time defined by the expansion of Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal under international law, frequent violence, and continued occupation of the Palestinian people. The UN says, starting from 2008 up until last week's attacks, more than 6,400 Palestinians have died in this conflict and 300 Israelis. Amnesty International and other rights groups have said Israel's oppression of Palestinians amounts to "apartheid."
Today, Palestinians reside mostly in two territories, separated by Israel — the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The West Bank is governed by a moderate political group known as the Palestinian Authority. Gaza is governed by Hamas, a militant group that was voted into power in 2006. There have been no elections since. "Vox" has a detailed explainer on Hamas, which it describes as very polarizing among Palestinians.
Ever since it came to power, Israel has implemented a blockade on Gaza, saying they need it in place to protect Israeli citizens from Hamas attacks. "NBC" has a solid write-up about what this many-years-long blockade has meant for Gaza. See, Gaza is penned in by Israel and Egypt, cutting it off from the rest of the world. And it's quite small. It's roughly 25 miles by six. But there are two million people living there, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world, with half of the population under 19 years old. That density is why there are so many civilian casualties when Israel attacks. Hamas fighters and innocent civilians are all packed together.
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Basu, Narrating: Aside from the more historical and geographical explainers, it's important to understand how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shaped this conflict. Here's how "Wall Street Journal" correspondent Dov Lieber explained it on the "Journal's" podcast "What's News."
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Dov Lieber: For many years, Netanyahu had pursued a policy of containment with Hamas. Israel has fought many rounds with Hamas in the past. And each time, there are calls to topple them, to finally get rid of them. But each time, Netanyahu decided that it was better to broker a ceasefire than going into a full-out war. And at the same time, Netanyahu, while he was playing this game with Hamas, he was constantly attacking the Palestinian Authority, which controls the Palestinian population in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority is Western backed. They're supposed to be the moderates here. They're supposed to be the group with which Israel can make a peace agreement with. And some people said, you know, that it was a big mistake that Israel had played this game of divide and conquer, and sometimes bolstering Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, which takes us to where we are today. And that's why some people see Netanyahu's policy with Hamas as being part of the problem here.
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Basu, Narrating: And lastly, for a bit more of a pulled-back view, I recommend the latest piece by "The New Yorker's" David Remnick. He writes about the grief and rage being felt by people on both sides of the border. One former Israeli national security official tells him there's no analogy in Israeli history for this kind of attack. Remnick's take is thoughtful, and it reminds us that it's possible for many things to be true at the same time - that what Hamas has done is horrific, but that the Netanyahu government and its populist movement are not blameless here either, and that innocent people are paying the ultimate price.
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Basu, Narrating: Finally, I want to end on a note about a hugely complicating factor this week: misinformation and social media. 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 easy to tell what's real, what's unconfirmed, what's fabricated. There have already been plenty of identified examples of misinformation - things like fake accounts posing as journalists, spreading false claims. For some advice on how to parse what you're seeing online, we reached out to Alex Mahadevan at the fact-checking and media-ethics organization the Poynter Institute.
Alex Mahadevan: The misinformation situation online right now is the worst I've ever seen it.
Basu, Narrating: He says a lot of the false images and videos circulating might look pretty credible at first glance.
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.
Basu, Narrating: But some are totally fabricated. For example, one user posted on "X" - the website formerly known as "Twitter" - a clip that he claimed showed a Hamas armed fighter firing a rocket cannon and taking down an Israeli helicopter. That footage is actually from a video game called Arma 3. The original 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 make it easier for misinformation to spread. Regulators in Europe are 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 either taken down or labeled tens of thousands of pieces of content.
So, back to what this means for you, scrolling at home. Alex from Poynter recommends you ask yourself three questions when you're seeing posts on social media. First question: Who is behind the information?
Mahadevan: Check out the user's bio who shared the tweet or the TikTok. That goes for organizations too. Doing a quick keyword search in your favorite search engine for an organization that's sharing information and seeing: Are they biased? Are they invested in what is happening? Are they legitimate?
Basu, Narrating: Question two: What's the evidence?
Mahadevan: So that starts with: Was there data or quotes shared? Doing a quick search for that data source. Does it exist? How about the quote? Just plug the quote into Google or Bing or something and see if it was actually spoken by a, you know, general or a politician.
Basu, Narrating: A useful tip here: Try doing a reverse image search.
Mahadevan: And that's essentially when you plug in a screenshot from a video or an image that you download into a search engine like Google or Bing or TinEye, and it will do its best to track down the original source of the image.
Basu, Narrating: And finally, question three: What do other sources say?
Mahadevan: Basically when you see a post or video or image online, do some searching to see if multiple outlets have done any reporting on it.
Basu, Narrating: Alex says it's important to remember that social media doesn't come with an editor.
Mahadevan: You kind of have to be your own editor, your own fact checker, your own reporter when it comes to this stuff.
Basu, Narrating: One last thing to just be aware of - and this comes from research that has been done about why misinformation spreads so quickly - when we're taking in a lot of information fast, our brain looks for shortcuts. Sometimes, it means we glom onto ideas that confirm what we already believe to be true: confirmation bias. Sometimes, if we see a false claim enough times, it starts to feel true. And on top of that, it can be really hard to uproot bad information from your mind. Even reading a fact-check later doesn't remove the original false headlines from your memory. There's not one clear tip or hack I can give you for this, but it's just to say: Be aware of how your brain works to process information at times like this, so you can separate speculation from fact.
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Basu, Narrating: That's our show. We've made a list for you, of every article and podcast episode we referenced here. You can find that on our show notes page. We'll have much more day-to-day coverage of the conflict on "Apple News Today" and here on this show in the coming weeks, plus, of course, across the Apple News app.
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