--:-- [Sound of music fading out]
--:-- Steve Inskeep: One year ago today, Israelis hid from Hamas. We all were on the radio hearing them whispering to the radio people, why doesn't anyone come? And there are hostages still in Gaza.
--:-- Leila Fadl: I'm Steve Inskeep with Leila Fadl, and this is Up First from NPR News. The deadliest attack in Israeli history preceded the deadliest war in Palestinian history. Funerals are non-stop. Families are waving goodbyes, the last farewell for their beloved.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Death and suffering remain constant in Gaza as Israel expands the war to the north in Lebanon. And in the U.S., the Detroit metro area is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans. How is the Biden administration's support for Israel's war shaping their views on the election?
--:-- Leila Fadl: Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
--:-- [Sound of a sponsor message]
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This message comes from NPR sponsor Adobe. Introducing the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio, now with AI-powered PDF spaces. Need to turn 100 pages of market research into five insights with a click? Templates for a sales proposal that'll close that deal? Or an AI specialist to tailor the tone of your market report? You can do all that with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat.
--:-- Leila Fadl: At 6:29 a.m. on this day, one year ago, Hamas launched its ambush on Israel. It was the deadliest attack in Israeli history, killing around 1,200 people. And Hamas forces took hostages, unleashing the deadliest war in Palestinian history.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: In Gaza, the health ministry says at least 41,000 people have been killed over the past year, more than half of them women and children.
--:-- Leila Fadl: I'm joined by two NPR correspondents who've been covering the conflict for this whole year, Daniel Estrin in southern Israel and Ayah Batraoui in Dubai. Good morning to you both. Good morning.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: Good morning, Leila.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: Good morning, Leila.
--:-- Leila Fadl: So Daniel, I want to start with you. How are Israelis marking this day?
--:-- Daniel Estrin: They're holding a lot of memorials, and I attended one at 6:29 this morning. That was the minute that Hamas launched its attack a year ago. It was at the site of an outdoor music festival where more than 360 people were killed.
--:-- Leila Fadl: And at this memorial, they played the very last track of the music that was played at the festival before it was attacked. And then there was a moment of silence and someone in the crowd wailed.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: This is what it sounded like.
--:-- Leila Fadl: The whole time we were there at the memorial, we heard Israel firing artillery across the border into Gaza.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: At that memorial, we met Ophir Duchovne. His close friend was killed at the festival. And I asked him, one year later, how is he feeling?
--:-- Ophir Duchovne: Like, like no time has passed. We cannot believe she's not with us. Try to wake up from this nightmare, but we cannot.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: And many in Israel feel that way. First, because no one thought it would last this long. And even today, there were rockets fired out of Gaza towards central Israel.
--:-- Leila Fadl: But also because Israelis are not able to grieve together as a nation, even to remember this worst disaster in their country's history, because the country's divided.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: The official state ceremony was pre-recorded to avoid heckling. It being boycotted by many communities that were attacked. Many Israelis are angry at their government for not striking a deal to end the war and to free the hostages who are still in Gaza.
--:-- Leila Fadl: So it's a nation also divided on whether to continue that war. Now, Aya, you've been following the situation in Gaza for much of the past year. With the daily realities of war, are Palestinians marking this day?
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: So, Leila, in Gaza, there's no moment for standing in silence or reflection. This is what it sounds like on day 366 of the war in Gaza today.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Now, Israel says these operations are aimed at Hamas, but Palestinians say every day and night brings terror from these advanced fighter jets and drones and that it's a collective punishment.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And every day families are killed, sheltering in bombed-out schools or homes. And war planes dropped flyers just yesterday again, ordering people in the north of Gaza to leave their cities to other parts of Gaza.
--:-- Leila Fadl: But this is what they'll find if they heed those orders. More death and mourning from people killed in Israeli airstrikes.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, recorded that just yesterday from a morgue in central Gaza.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Women are struggling to find sanitary pads. There's been no running water for the past year. Kids are forgetting how to read and write. We're in a second year without schools, and people are dying in hospitals without fuel just to keep life support machines running.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: It feels like all of Gaza is on life support, dependent on aid and just surviving one day at a time.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Just listening to Daniel and then to you, just so much pain. Daniel, how has Israel changed this year, and what's next for this traumatized and divided society, one at war on several fronts now?
--:-- Daniel Estrin: This really was a pivotal moment in Israeli history, October 7th. Nearly everyone in Israel knows somebody who was killed. And the basic social contract of the country was shattered.
--:-- Leila Fadl: That contract is that Israel will come to protect you and aid you when you're attacked. The army failed miserably on October 7th to do that.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: So this past year, Israel's military has pummeled Gaza. It has tried to make up for its failures on October 7th. It has now expanded that war into Lebanon against Hezbollah, which has joined the fight with Hamas against Israel.
--:-- Leila Fadl: It's also brought the war closer between Israel and Iran. And yet, despite all of that, Israelis are not feeling safer today.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: They do feel that their wars are just, but they feel that they don't trust the leaders waging the wars. And many Israelis I know and many know have left the country this year because they don't see hope in this country.
--:-- Leila Fadl: It's a day of reflection today, Leila, but many Israelis are also looking forward and saying, what next? The leaders of Hamas and Israel are showing no rush to end the war. Questions about what happens in Lebanon now with Israel's ground invasion there.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: What happens with Iran as Israel vows to attack? Who wins the U.S. election will be key to especially how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu navigates the war.
--:-- Leila Fadl: The biggest question for me is how do these societies in Israel and Gaza ever heal? And Aya, how has this war changed Gaza and impacted people across the region now?
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: It's a question that's really hard to put into words, but as Daniel was talking about people able to leave Israel, you know, in Gaza, there are at least 12,000 people who need urgent medical evacuation and they're unable to leave.
--:-- Leila Fadl: And there are countless crowdsourcing pages like looking for funding for people to be able to leave if the border ever opens again with Egypt and one of those people is Tala Abu Ajwa, father Hossam. Now the 10-year-old girl she was wearing pink roller skates one afternoon with her brother to go outside and play in Gaza City.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: It was on day 332 of this war. And she was killed when shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike targeting an apartment in her building sliced through her neck as she was at the gates of that building just wearing her pink roller skates.
--:-- Leila Fadl: So that's his father, Hassam, telling me every time he goes in and out of this bombed-out building, he sees his daughter, where she was last playing and where she died.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And for the sake of his family and his other three kids, he's one of the many people now ready to leave Gaza altogether.
--:-- Leila Fadl: You know, the social fabric of the entire society has been decimated, just like its buildings and its streets. UNICEF has called Gaza a graveyard for children.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: The health ministry has identified, Leila, at least 11,000 children who've been killed, 700 of them, babies under a year old, thousands of orphans, kids who've lost limbs.
--:-- Leila Fadl: There's just no vision for the future of Gaza now. Who's going to lead it? How do you clear the rubble? How does life even resume there for people?
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And all that's now being overshadowed by the war in Lebanon, where over a million people are displaced and sleeping on the streets and in schools.
--:-- Leila Fadl: So the real question, I think we go back to the beginning and how it started, where does this lead to, if not two states, where Palestinians and Israelis are able to live in security.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: That's NPR's Aya Batrawi in Dubai and Daniel Estrin in southern Israel. Thank you both so much for this past year of reporting and the reporting you continue to bring us every day.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Thank you so much, Leila.
--:-- Daniel Estrin: Thanks, Leila.
--:-- Leila Fadl: The Middle East war is personal for people across this country. And Leila, that must be especially true where you are this morning.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: Yeah, it is. It's because, as Daniel and I explained, Israel's war has expanded beyond Gaza into Lebanon.
--:-- Leila Fadl: And not only is it the largest Arab American population, it's the largest Lebanese American population in the country here in Michigan.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And so you really feel the human cost of that conflict here. Many people have families that hail from the very places being bombed right now.
--:-- Leila Fadl: And when we hear that number from A, about a million people displaced, there must be a lot of people getting calls in Michigan. Is this group large enough to swing the election, though?
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: I mean, it's possible. Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by something like 10,000 votes back in 2016.
--:-- Leila Fadl: And polls show Harris and Trump neck and neck. So for many voters here, the Biden administration's inability to secure a ceasefire, the weapons the U.S. government sends Israel to use in Gaza, and the expansion of Israel's offensive into Lebanon for voters that are Arab-American and Muslim-American, it's turned many of them away from the Democrats.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And that became starkly clear when I met Samra Lookman in a coffee shop in Dearborn. She's a Yemeni-American community organizer. I have endorsed Trump, yes.
--:-- Leila Fadl: And this is coming from somebody who wrote in Bernie Sanders in 2020. That's how far left I was.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: That's how far left I was, she says, as she says she's supporting Trump.
--:-- Leila Fadl: How does she square that with some of Trump's record, just to pick an example, a travel ban, which was initially advertised as a Muslim ban and ultimately targeted a number of majority Muslim countries?
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: Yeah, I mean, he has actually promised to bring that back. And he's also said things like Israel should, quote, finish the job in Gaza.
--:-- Leila Fadl: But many Many people here Lebanese Palestinian Yemeni have family members displaced or killed and they see Harris and Biden as one in the same.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And some like Lukman are determined to punish the Democrats for what they see as unconditional support of Israel.
--:-- Leila Fadl: She says whether Trump limits rights whether it travel or reproductive rights it brings with it a year worth of death and destruction.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: So she's doing whatever she can to rally her community to get out and vote against the Democrats, even though she still identifies as a Democrat.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Now, of course, not everyone is going that way. Actually, most Arab Americans I spoke to said they're either backing the third-party candidate, Jill Stein, or maybe not voting at all because they say they don't think the candidates value their lives or their families' lives.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: Not voting at all is not good if you're Kamala Harris. So what's the Harris campaign doing about that?
--:-- Leila Fadl: I mean, they've made some overtures, met with some Arab American and Muslim leaders in Michigan, and about 25 imams around the country endorsed her in an open letter along with a few groups.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: But she's running out of time to win them over, and it's just not clear how many voters these leaders and groups really represent.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Okay, so that's what you're hearing around Detroit. What happens when you get a little outside the city?
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: Yeah, my team and I spent some time in some of Michigan's smaller towns, and there's quite a bit of anxiety around how Election Day may play out after what happened in 2020.
--:-- Leila Fadl: I mean, Steve, we've been talking about this for a long time, the way people were really convinced the election was stolen despite a lack of evidence.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And some people still do not accept it was a fair election.
--:-- Leila Fadl: We attended a meeting for a group known as America First in a town outside of Detroit about an hour and a half away. And it's a right-wing offshoot of the Republican Party.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And a representative from the Trump campaign's election integrity team dropped by to encourage people there to be poll watchers and report any suspicious activity.
--:-- Leila Fadl: What I need are people on the ground. I need troops in the trenches. I need poll challengers. I need poll workers. We're going to do our bit to make sure that everything goes according to plan without a hitch.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And it's making some poll workers kind of nervous. And they're thinking about, if something goes wrong, how do I get out of the polling station?
--:-- Leila Fadl: Oh, interesting.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: And we've been hearing from poll workers and election workers on NPR over the past many days.
--:-- Leila Fadl: So what else is coming this week as you report from Michigan, Layla? I mean, you'll hear from pretty much every demographic in the state. Young voters, black voters, white voters, Jewish voters, all voting groups that could determine selection for one candidate or the other.
--:-- Ayah Batraoui: OK. Eager to hear it. Layla, thanks so much.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Thank you.
--:-- [Sound of music fading in]
--:-- Leila Fadl: Now you can hear many stories of lives changed in the past year on NPR's State of the World podcast, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts or on the NPR app.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And that's Up First for Monday, October 7th. I'm Leila Fadl. And I'm Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Up First gives you the three big stories of the day. Our colleagues at NPR's Consider This dive into a single news story for 15 minutes or so. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Vincent Nee, Arzu Razvani, Ali Schweitzer, and Alice Wolfley.
--:-- Leila Fadl: It was produced by Paige Waterhouse, Nia Dumas, and Ana Perez.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: We get engineering support from Carly Strange, and our technical director is Zach Coleman.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Join us again tomorrow.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This message comes from Ritual. What makes Ritual vitamins different? Ritual vitamins are made with bioavailable, clinically studied key ingredients, as well as the essence of mint.
--:-- Leila Fadl: Get 25% off your first purchase when you visit ritual.com slash NPR. Thank you.
