A Spiral of Violence

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News Commentary, News

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As missiles have rained down on Gaza and on Israel, violence at street level has also been at its worst for years. There have been clashes between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel within Israel’s own borders. There have been confrontations between security forces and Palestinians in the West Bank. On a far greater scale, Gaza has been under heavy rocket fire as the Israeli Defence Forces struck back against what they identify as control centres for Hamas. Jeremy Bowen weighs up the damage.

In Brazil, Congress is conducting an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic. But the president still has keen backers, who admire his energy and instinct for confrontation. Mark Lowen is just back from Brazil and reflects on Jair Bolsonaro's playbook - and its echoes of another leader whose tactics he knows well.

The number of boats carrying migrants keen to reach the shores of Europe is on the rise again. Enforcement is stricter across the Mediterranean so other routes are getting busier. But the journey via the Atlantic and Spain’s Canary Islands can be lethal. Bruno Boelpaep reports on a tragedy at sea and a moving reunion.

Mexico’s Sea of Cortez is home to the most critically endangered sea mammal on earth: a small porpoise called the vaquita . There are fewer than a dozen left and they risk getting tangled in the nets cast out for fish. Those fish, in turn, are also under threat – even though they’re legally protected. Linda Pressly saw the pressures at work in the town of San Felipe.

And a historic collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture is back on public view for the first time in decades. The new display of the Torlonia marbles delighted David Willey, who has lived in Rome for nearly fifty years. He remembers them looking rather different…

Producer: Polly Hope

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts
0:04.8	Today the cult of having a strong man in charge is alive and well, from Turkey to Brazil,
0:11.6	but we hear some are more vulnerable than others. The migration season is well underway and
0:17.6	we hear of a rescue on one of Europe's deadliest routes. In a CD Mexican seaside town there's
0:24.7	a lucrative trade in fish, an endangered fish, and the glories of ancient Rome come to life
0:31.2	with a collection of marbles, which are correspondent remembers as just a jumble of dusty clutter many
0:38.1	moons ago. First the Middle East, and added to the missiles raining down on Gaza and Israel,
0:46.4	is serious street violence. Clashes around Jerusalem's holy sites are frequent, but across the country
0:53.2	there's been violence between Arab and Jewish citizens, with shops burned, people dragged from
0:59.3	their cars and beaten. There've been confrontations between Israeli security forces and Palestinian
1:05.4	protesters in the West Bank, and Gaza has been under heavy rocket fire. The Israelis targeting what
1:12.4	they identify as Hamas control centres. Jeremy Bowen
1:17.6	I have never much like the phrase that sometimes pops up on television news programs that says
1:23.1	some of the videos were too graphic to show. I don't believe in gratuitous gore, but killing is
1:29.4	at the core of warfare however much it's dressed up with euphemisms like eliminate or deliberate
1:35.5	deceptions like collateral damage, sometimes it is necessary to see. The truth which should be
1:42.3	the purpose of journalism can feel uncomfortable. Please don't switch off the radio, I'm not about
1:48.9	to try to horrify you. A video arrived on my phone this morning from Northern Gaza.
1:54.4	The man filming with the phone is running towards the place that has been hit, getting more and more
1:59.0	agitated as he realises what he's about to see. The video shows the destruction of the family.
2:05.9	A grown man holds the body of a small boy. The man throws back his head and roars with grief to God.
2:13.6	He lays the body down next to two other dead boys. The man filming goes from dead body to dead
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.