BBC OS Conversations: Palestinian losses
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 4 November 2023
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The fighting and funerals in the Israel and Hamas war are constant. Thousands have been killed.
The number of fatalities don’t tell the real stories though. In recent days, the OS team has been reaching out to people on both sides who have lost loved ones in the war; inviting them to tell the stories of those killed.
Next week’s programme will feature Israeli families. This edition, hosted by James Reynolds, is a conversation with two Palestinians who now live in Scotland and Turkey.
Yousef Almqayyad in Istanbul, had to have a heartbreaking discussion with his seven-year-old daughter about the deaths in his family.
“Your grandfather, your grandmother, your uncles and aunts and your cousins, right now are in heaven, in a good place,” he said. “Better than Gaza, better than Turkey, better than any place in this world. I told her they are waiting for us.”
Dr Ibrahim Khadra also shares his final conversation with a member of his family in Gaza, who said: “If we’ll survive, we’ll pray to God and if I’ll die just pray for me.”
“It was our last call,” said Dr Khadra.
A co-production between the BBC OS team and Boffin Media.
(Photo: Yousef Almqayyad with his parents Yaser and Inshirah)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Sport, but not as you know it. |
| 0:03.0 | Nothing is ever quite as expected. |
| 0:05.5 | Amazing sports stories from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:08.5 | If the story is wriggly, contentious, or hard to tame, I'll cover it. |
| 0:13.0 | Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:16.0 | Hello, I'm James Reynolds. |
| 0:19.0 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:22.0 | We bring people together to discuss the war between Israel |
| 0:26.0 | and Gaza and there is so much loss on both sides. This time we'll be hearing from two Palestinian |
| 0:32.3 | men about their grief. |
| 0:37.5 | The destruction caused in the Israel-Hamass war can be overwhelming. |
| 0:42.0 | And what we want to do over the next couple of weeks here is |
| 0:44.5 | take time in a small way to try to offer a glimpse of those killed amid the |
| 0:49.7 | bloodshed. In doing so we hear from those watching, listening from afar, and searching for information about their families. |
| 0:57.0 | I knew about his death from the news that his house has been bombarded and he's being killed. |
| 1:02.0 | So we start knowing what's going on with our family from the news |
| 1:05.0 | just to know who's still alive or still survive. |
| 1:10.0 | The fighting, the funerals are never ending. The numbers can only... The Israelis were killed on the 7th of October attacks carried out by Hamas. |
| 1:24.0 | More than 200 people were taken hostage by the armed group that's designated a terrorist organization by many Western governments. |
| 1:32.0 | Only a handful of those hostages have so far been freed. |
| 1:36.6 | At the time of recording these words on Friday morning, the Hamasron Health Ministry says that |
| 1:41.5 | more than 9,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip |
... |
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