← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
A Footnote to Conflict
00:28:20
Foreign correspondents tell their stories - in this edition, discussions in Israel the...
Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening to a download from the BBC.
- [00:02]
B
This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the
- [00:06]
A
programme we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our site at BBConline. But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:16]
C
Hello. Today, the Turkish Prime Minister bids to become president. And he's not too bothered what his critics make of it. The government of Argentina's railing against the vultures it said made it default on its debts. First an earthquake, then the worst storm in history. But Filipinos are managing to turn disaster into opportunity. And we're off to the beach on Long island to sample the classic lazy pleasures of a traditional all American summer. But first, Israel has continued its bombardment of Gaza. Palestinian militants have fired further rockets and mortars into Israel. A 72 hour ceasefire expired on Friday morning. The humanitarian situation is said to be desperate, with hundreds of thousands of people unable to return to their homes. The current conflict has seen some 1900 Palestinians killed, 75% of them civilians. According to the United Nations, Israel has lost nearly 70 of its people, most of them soldiers. Tim Whewell has been gauging the mood in Israel.
- [01:20]
A
It's often the footnotes that are most intriguing. And there's a footnote to the Gaza conflict. You may have seen. The casualty lists record the Palestinians killed, the Israelis and one Thai described as a worker. Seeing that brings a particular stab of sadness, a death somehow even more random than so many of the others. Unexpectedly, last week, I found myself standing where the tie was hit by a Hamash shell in a greenhouse in southern Israel, right on the Gazan border. I know now what happened. The Israeli farmers who employed him to pick tomatoes had warned him and his two fellow Thai workers they'd have less than 15 seconds to take cover if there was a mortar attack. But when the shell came, he didn't hit the ground. He took out his mobile to photograph it. The trail makes a beautiful silver streak that fascinates me, too. His boss's wife, Ronnie, explains he was still alive just when her husband, Ovadia, arrived minutes later. But though they tried to staunch the bleeding, he died before he reached the hospital. I've got a different husband now, Ronnie says he can't sleep, worrying that he's somehow to blame for his employee's death. As for the trauma the two remaining ties are suffering, we can only guess. They speak little Hebrew and no English. We immediately offered them return tickets to Bangkok, Ronnie says, but they wouldn't go. But why has Ronnie herself stayed? She's been in equal danger from the missiles and from the tunnels Hamas dug under the border. The entrance to one was uncovered under another greenhouse nearby. Half her village has left. But she stayed because it's her home. And as an act of defiance, because the ultimate aim of Hamas, Israelis believe, is, as defined in its charter, to drive them not only out of occupied territories, but from their whole country. A country where, finally, after the Holocaust, Jews hoped they would be able to feel safe. Rania Navadia used to have a farm in Sinai, but after that desert peninsula was returned to Egypt in 1982, they deliberately decided to move, not as many Israeli settlers did, to another occupied area, but to within Israel's internationally recognized borders. And there they believe they have a right to live in peace without the gnawing fear that gunmen will emerge from underground to murder them. According to the Israeli media, apparently relying on Israeli intelligence reports, Hamas planned to send thousands of its fighters through the tunnels to invade Israel at Jewish New Year next month. That's the reason most Israelis tell you they were dragged, reluctantly, into a defensive war. Why they demand, don't you foreign correspondents ever report that? And again and again, I slip into the same argument. We do report the reasons, but we also have to report the results. And then much of the audience for our reporting concludes that being afraid or traumatized like Roni is bad, but not nearly as bad as being dead, as so many more Palestinians now are. We're talking now, uncomfortably, about hierarchies of suffering. And Israelis reply, so what do you want? More dead Jewish children? Do we also have to die just to make you report the story fairly? Is it our fault we've developed technology to protect ourselves from their rockets? And why are there no shelters in Gaza? It's not true that Israelis don't care about the suffering of Gazans. Most I've met do. But what scares them almost more than Hamas missiles is its embrace of martyrdom. We love death as our enemies love life, they quote its leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, as saying. Hamas, they say, does nothing to protect its own citizens. Citizens who, bewilderingly for Israelis, voted freely to be ruled by people whom Israel, the us, the eu, and other countries now count as terrorists. Discussions like this are exhausting. At one meal with Israeli friends, we moved eventually onto Safer House, the family territory. And then the woman I'd been arguing with said quietly, my grandson's in Gaza. She didn't say army. In an Israeli context, you don't need to. So for a fraction of a second, I wasn't sure what she meant when I was. I also realised that she was trying not to cry, and I wished I'd never had the argument. No one wants a dead grandson, but no one wants either to be dreading constantly that the phone might ring with fatal news. After the Thai worker died on the Gazan border, a Buddhist monk was sent by his embassy in Israel to perform a ceremony exorcising the spirit of death from the farm. Perhaps that's why his two fellow workers stayed. But after this latest war, what ceremony can exercise the spirit of death from this region for Israelis and Arabs who have nowhere else to go? We all know there isn't one, and that's Tim Whewell.
- [06:28]
C
They're voting for a new president in Turkey tomorrow, but most observers agree that while there might be three candidates, only one man's certain to win it, and that's the current Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His campaign's been dominated by a series of huge rallies around the country. He's been telling crowds about his achievements as prime minister, speaking out in support of the Palestinians in Gaza and criticizing the Israeli government. His supporters, meanwhile, have been out delivering food parcels to the poor. Natalie Martin, who is in Istanbul, says Mr. Erdogan has his critics both at home and abroad, but that won't stop him landing the top job.
- [07:09]
D
The last time I stood in Istanbul's majestic Taksim Square was the evening of the 11th of June last year. I'd watched all afternoon as tens of thousands of protesters meandered through, stopping for a chai in a tulip shaped glass teacup and an exquisitely barbecued fish kebab from one of the many stalls which had sprung up out of nowhere since these protests had begun the week before. They were here because the Turkish state had tear gassed a makeshift camp of peaceful, eco friendly, idealistic hippie student types in Gezi park next door. They'd been protesting against the chopping down of some of the last trees in central Istanbul to make way for a five star redevelopment way out of the reach of most Istanbulians. The development plan and the government's reaction to peaceful protest had stirred middle aged urban and secular residents of this city out of their slumber and into Taksim Square in solidarity with the young. They were also demonstrating against what they saw as the increasingly hectoring and moralistic religious style of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Their protest was met by water cannon and tear gas as the police turned on everyone present, young and old, without warning Many here insist that what happened that night and on several others after was a scandal by European standards of liberal democracy and should have foretold the end of Erdogan's career at home and abroad. But no. Teflon Tayyip, as he's known in more irreverent Turkish circles, is still a force to be reckoned with, and tomorrow he'll make a bid to be the democratically elected president of Turkey. It's widely expected that he'll succeed in taking his prime ministerial powers with him from parliament to the presidential palace, Putin style. Not even the recent corruption allegations made by his former political allies, his habit of locking up anyone who disagrees with him, nor the government's inadequate reaction to the Soma mining disaster in May in which some 300 died, have seriously dented his chances. Likewise abroad, diplomats roll their eyes in frustration at any mention of his name. But any inclination of politicians to publicly criticize Teflon Tayyip is quashed when their advisors point out Turkey's crucial diplomatic role in the region, not just in dealing with Syrian refugees, but also in coping with the jihadists of the Islamic State and in northern Iraq. This means Mr. Erdogan is not overly troubled by what his friends in London, Brussels or Washington say about him, on or off the record. What he is intent on now is remaining in power until the centenary of the Turkish Republic in 2023. And he will probably succeed because while Turkey is not a liberal democracy, it is still a democracy and enough people will vote for him. Many Turks like the new roads, metro lines, high speed rail links and shiny hotels which have sprung up across Istanbul and the whole of Turkey, providing a boost for the economy. The AKP has also improved social welfare and healthcare provision for ordinary working class Turks. The harsh reality is that a significant proportion of people in Turkey don't give two hoots about the liberal secular elite and their over educated, idealistic, eco friendly offspring. They had their turn and now it's ours, said a man playing backgammon in a tea shop on a narrow sloping street in the less trendy Talebasher district on the other side of Taksim square. And so Mr. Erdogan can continue to accumulate power and influence because enough of the electorate don't care about the AKP's cronyism, control of the media, alleged corruption or even the suggestion by the deputy prime minister that women shouldn't look laugh in public. It seems those who oppose the AKP know they are beaten for now, such a foregone conclusion that the prime minister will now become the president. That protests and the prospect of another tear gassing are just not worth the bother. Hardcore activists remain, of course, but most Turks, even those bitterly opposed to Mr. Erdogan, would rather stay at home and watch the telly with their feet up. And perhaps you can't blame them. It's not pleasant being tear gassed after all.
- [11:53]
C
Natalie Martin in Istanbul Argentina says its high time global financial systems were reformed. They're unfair, its government insists, and skewed towards Western economic giants like the United States. This week it asked the International Court of Justice to take action. Earlier, the country had defaulted on its debts, failing to pay some one and a half billion dollars to creditors it calls Vult in the United States. Katie Watson in Buenos Aires tells us that Argentina maintains it has the cash to honour its debts, but the decision of an American court is preventing it from doing so.
- [12:33]
E
What do Argentina's financial troubles have in common with the crisis in Gaza? It's hard to find a parallel, if you ask me. But Argentina's president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirschner, did. In a marathon speech to her supporters just after the country defaulted, she brought up the horrors taking place in the Middle east, pointing out that missiles in war cost the lives of children and women. But then she went on with a slightly awkward analogy, saying that financial missiles cost lives and dreams of people, too. The missiles she was talking about are lobbed from New York. The perpetrators are known as buitres in Argentina. That's Spanish for vultures, and it's used to describe the US Hedge funds that Argentina is indebted to. According to the government, these vultures are preying on Argentinian people, demanding payment with no thought of the consequences for the country. It was a comparison that the president's supporters cheered. I even saw an audience member or two shedding a tear while she spoke. Gaza, it most certainly is not, but the issue has become hugely political. You only need to turn the television on for a few minutes in Argentina to see how the vultures have taken over the airwaves. Most people don't understand the detail, but many have an opinion. One young man told me he was worried about Argentina's reputation around the world. Another even started shaking with anger, telling me that Argentina had to resist and that other countries would be eaten alive by these birds of prey if nothing was done about them. The country is still deeply scarred by its Last default. Nearly 13 years ago, when it couldn't pay its debts, there was a run on the banks. People lost their savings and some even lost their lives. In street protests. This time around, though, it's very different. Argentina does have the money to pay off the vulture funds, but it's chosen not to. There's a complex legal dispute centering on the default process. The president says a new word needs to be invented to classify what's happened. Her speeches have included long, rambling explanations claiming Argentina has done nothing wrong, it's simply a victim of the evil international financial system. But while the people at the top argue about semantics for the people on the streets, there's an overwhelming sadness that it's come to this. Many are just resigned to the fact that the country cannot work with its creditors. The country is already in recession and inflation is high. Life has become difficult in the past few years. So this default will just make life that little bit harder. Amid the rhetoric coming from Argentina's government are calls for a new, fairer global order. It was only a month ago at the BRICS summit that I heard the same thing. With the World cup celebrations barely put to bed, Brazil hosted leaders from Russia, China, India and South Africa in the northeastern city of Fortaleza. And it was there that they unveiled a new BRICS development bank, giving loans to emerging economies for infrastructure projects. A bit like the World bank, but the important thing is that it isn't the World Bank. These countries feel that the Western world has too much influence. The World bank president is always from the us. The IMF is European led. Emerging economies often complain there are too many conditions attached to loans given to them. And so the BRICS want a bigger role in the global financial system. As Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff said at the summit, the BRICS countries have the power to introduce positive changes that are more equal and fair. Argentina was also invited to the BRICS summit to meet the big players. With a struggling economy and just 40 million people, it's hardly an ideal candidate to join the gang. But President Cristina Fernandez de Kirschner must have felt pretty good hobnobbing with the big shots and sharing in the feeling that the world needs an alternative. But unlike China and the other BRICS economies, which can vie for more financial clout, Argentina has a long way to go before international investors will respect its financial decisions. The country's critics, both at home and abroad, say the government is being childish. The country wanted American money when it borrowed in the first place. Now it has to abide by American law governing that debt. It can't have it both ways. The past few days have been long on criticism, but short on solutions. So there I found it. That's probably the only parallel today between Argentina and the Middle East.
- [17:00]
C
Katie Watson in Buenos Aires the Philippines were battered by yet another powerful typhoon last month. Hundreds of thousands of people took shelter in evacuation centres, but damage was limited. The Red Cross said people had become more aware of the dangers after Typhoon Yolanda struck the islands last year. Yolanda, known here as Typhoon Haiyan, was the most powerful and most deadly storm ever seen in the Philippines. It destroyed towns and villages. More than 6,000 people were killed, and it came as many were still trying to put their lives in order after a huge earthquake struck the previous month. Since then, rebuilding has been underway and tourists have started to return. Rajan Datta has been to join them on the island of Bohol.
- [17:48]
B
Hello, sir. Welcome. Do you want to help us? Agnes cheerful voice sings out in greeting. She straightens her back and beckons towards the rubble that she and four others have been moving all morning from beneath the damaged belfry. A tourist trip to this island in the Philippines central region often begins with a look around its old religious monuments. I must admit I'm not a great fan of sightseeing in churches, but like the ubiquitous shopping malls in this country, they do offer welcome sanctuary from the incessant dusty heat. Yet now I find myself under the searing blaze of the midday sun, sifting through the coral stone debris of the Church of Our lady of Immaculate Conception. Agnes, in her 20s, works in the church museum in the town of Beclion in Bohol. She tells me, like many others on the fateful day last October, she rushed to the site in horror as soon as the aftershocks of the earthquake 7.2 on the Richter scale had subsided. They felt fortunate that only the imposing bell tower and the front facade of the main building suffered. Other distinguished churches in the province, all legacies of early Spanish colonialism, and many of which lay on the geological fault line, were reduced to rubble. Inside, the church is decorated in baroque and classical styles. Sister Nasia, who is tending to the flower arrangement in the altar, isn't sure whether the quake was God's will. First she says it was just nature. But then she concedes, yes, maybe it was a message from above for children in the Philippines to pray more. This is, after all, unlike most in East Asia, a very Catholic country. But it's also blessed with a unique, irrepressible spirit that seems to smile, dance and sing in the face of any adversity that's thrown at it. Hours later, I'm watching people do all three of those things on a riverboat cruise through rich, lush forestation where tropical rainfall can and does cascade down at any moment. Staff on the floating restaurant are bopping along to I will Survive while foreign tourists munch away in slight bemusement. Lourdes, a pragmatic lady whose company operates two boats, tells me how she watched tourism collapse last year, but she says she was always sure it would bounce back. Filipinos are raised to believe there is light at the end of the tunnel, she tells me. They just had to work hard to crawl out and reach that light. The news agenda can be a cold hearted beast. It took the typhoon of just a few weeks ago to remind the world about Typhoon Yolanda. Otherwise it would have been consigned to history. Yesterday's news and the earthquake that struck only weeks before that barely registers a tremor today as a story. The government in Manila, basking in an economic boom of 7% growth a year, was criticized for failing to respond adequately after those twin disasters. But as ever, the people of Bohol, who don't go in for self pity reacted with resilience and determination and are even trying to turn disaster into opportunity because it seems experience has steeled Filipinos against acts of nature or God, depending on your point of view, that strike over and over again in this geologically volatile part of the world. And now they're inviting tourists to come and marvel at the results of nature's most powerful events. They don't call this dark tourism or desert disaster tourism. No, this is geotourism in the world's natural laboratory, as I learn when the next day I tour the island's most famous feature, the Chocolate Hills. This freakish formation of more than a thousand almost identical brown mounds has itself been fundamentally altered by the quake. Some of the hillocks were split apart, revealing interiors of vanilla colored limestone, which provide fossil evidence that this extraordinary terrain once lay under the sea. Renato Solidem, a genial, boyish but highly respected geoscientist, showed me around the area and later explained how those events of last year had actually helped protect parts of the Philippines. The sheer power generated by nature had pushed some of the islands up beyond the danger of rising sea levels. It was, he said, a natural counterforce to the effects of global warming. So here you have it again, a positive, very Filipino take on the regular return of typhoons and other natural disasters. Not just a chance to develop a new branch of tourism or to sing, dance and pray more, but also an opportunity to marvel at how nature can build its own defense system against what many reckon is one of the most serious issues threatening our planet today.
- [22:36]
C
Rajandattar the American summer holiday season's in full swing. Seaside communities up and down the country have been basking in sunshine and making the most of a bumper crop of visitors. Sag Harbour, at the eastern end of Long island, is not as smart as the nearby resorts of the Hamptons. It's a former whaling village. Its streets have wooden houses with painted shutters and porches with rocking chairs. It's the sort of place where a typical American seaside summer is enjoyed, the kind you might know from the jaw films, barbecues, ball games on the sand, sailing, corn freshly picked from the farms which still dot the island and only the occasional shark. Reggie Nadelson, a regular visitor, says it's also one of the few places on America's east coast where African Americans traditionally take their summer holidays.
- [23:28]
F
The population here is aging out, says Diane McMillan Brannan, a local estate agent, as she shows me around the African American district of Sag harbor, not far north of East Hampton. It's on the east end of long island, about three hours drive from New York City. McMillan Brannan's family has been here for more than half a century, and she now lives full time in Sag harbor, where she's a painter and printmaker as well as a real estate agent. This is where black professionals, lawyers, doctors, CEOs come to get away from it all, she adds. In the summer here, people swim and sail or dig for clams in Gardner's Bay or walk along its sandy beach. Kids ride their bikes, and there are visits to farm stands for corn just pulled out of the fields, followed by barbecues in the backyard. Visiting back and forth, one house to another is practically an art year, as guests and relatives come and go. And there are expeditions to Sag Harbor's Art Deco cinema or B. Smith's Restaurant on the main dock, or an ice cream cone on the long wharf. The classic lazy pleasures of the all American summer along the East Coast Nineveh Beach, Eastville, Azurist. These are the tiny communities a few blocks from the center of Sag harbor, about 500 homes in all here, where African Americans have been coming for decades. Langston Hughes, Colin Powell, Lena Horne, Paul Robeson and many others vacationed here. It was a necessity. The Civil War may have ended slavery. There was plenty of de facto segregation in the North. Colson Whitehead, author of a novel, Cold Sag harbor, spent many summers here. More prosperous black people, he said, had some scratch and wanted a place to go in the summer. The people who really got the community going My grandparents generation were from Manhattan. Brooklyn, New Jersey. Sag harbor was close. There was a block of land available in the 1930s and 40s for them to get a foothold. They weren't prevented from coming here. That is, they weren't run out of town. But Sag harbor has a centuries old connection with African Americans. In its graveyard, headstones mention colored troops during the Revolutionary War. In the early 19th century, along with Nantucket, it was one of two great whaling ports. At a time when whale oil lit the world, it was a boom town. Whaling captains built the big white houses with deep porches and the rooftop platforms known as widow's walks. The sailors the characteristic slope roofed houses known as salt boxes. With the money came sin and diversity. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville described Sag harbor as a town packed with brothels and bars. The whaling industry needed workers and almost anyone could make a buck here. Portuguese, Hawaiians, Native Americans like the local Shinnecock and Montauk, and African Americans. Some of the seamen were escaped slaves. By 1847, the area was fished out. Young men, including some African Americans, went west to the California gold rush. The others found factory work in what became a forgotten poor blue collar town. By the 1960s and 70s, writers and artists began snapping up the old houses in the center of Sag Harbor. It was still cheap, arty and laid back. It thought of itself as the un Hampton. But as the money pours in, residents are wary of their town now becoming Sag Hampton. With prices skyrocketing in the center of town, buyers have started looking a little further afield. There are more white people moving in, attracted by the beaches and the quiet, says Diane McMillan Brannan, who notes that there is also more choice for African Americans. Some now prefer the glamour and ocean beaches of the Hamptons. For decades here, almost everybody knew everyone else. But now even the annual community fish fry is no more.
- [28:08]
C
Reggie Nadelson observing the changing face of the All American summer and bringing another edition to a close. I'll be here again next Saturday morning with more dispatches from far and wide. Do join us. Goodbye.