KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is EMBEDDED from NPR. For the next two episodes, we're going to talk about the war in Gaza. First, we'll talk to Daniel Estrin, who has been NPR's correspondent in Israel and the Palestinian territories for a long time. He's been reporting on Israel and Gaza almost nonstop since the Hamas-led attack on October 7. Next week, we'll talk to NPR Morning Edition host Leila Fadel about her reporting on Palestinians who are living through this conflict.
For today, Daniel - and something that strikes me when I listen to Daniel's stories is that they have this way of going beyond the idea that you're either on one side or you're on the other side in this war. Like this one story he recently did about an American Israeli professor, Ilan Troen. Troen's daughter and son-in-law were killed in the October 7 attack, and 100 days later, Daniel went to check on him.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: The first thing I want to ask you is how are you?
ILAN TROEN: How am I? In baroque music, there's something called the basso continuo. And if you listen to Bach, there's that bottom line that continues. And my basso continuo is one of sadness.
MCEVERS: He was also wrestling with how things have unfolded since October 7. Daniel asked him what his daughter might think about the Israeli offensive in Gaza, the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed and about Hamas. Here's what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TROEN: I think she would be appalled and concerned, maybe angry, but maybe she would understand. If you know of a better way, kindly tell us, tell the world, what the better, cleaner, nicer way of dealing with the kind of threat that we have to face, that has - like a phoenix, has continually re-risen after being quashed to achieve its ultimate, divinely inspired and commanded goal of exterminating us.
MCEVERS: He told Daniel he was also thinking about Israelis and Palestinians in ways he hadn't before.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TROEN: The capacity of one nation, however powerful it is, to totally suppress a movement of popular resistance that is deeply rooted in the population, is not a very good record. Palestinians are going to need to obtain what they so desperately want, which is what we so desperately want, which is a state of our own.
MCEVERS: Troen is pretty unique. He's able to hold all these ideas at once. That's not how everyone in this war thinks. Sometimes the people Daniel talks to are pretty straightforward in their beliefs - the father of one of the October 7 attackers, a soldier who has served in Gaza. But then Daniel keeps talking to more people, bringing in all these perspectives. And even though it can be hard to hear, it helps us see the bigger story.
So today on the show, Daniel is going to introduce us to some of the people he's reported on, and he'll talk about his approach to covering this difficult and divisive story. And just a warning - you will hear graphic descriptions of war and injuries, and the episode includes the sounds of gunfire and explosions.
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MCEVERS: We'll be right back.
Hey, Daniel, thanks so much for doing this.
ESTRIN: Hey, Kelly. Thanks for having me.
MCEVERS: So for people who follow the news coverage of this conflict, it could feel like you're seeing two different worlds, you know, the world according to Israelis or the world according to Palestinians. I've been wondering what that's been like for you as a reporter who is based there to navigate that.
ESTRIN: It is an almost constant sense of cognitive dissonance, Kelly. You know, Israel and the Palestinian territories are this tiny, tiny, tiny piece of land. It's about the size of New Jersey. And people here live so close to each other and yet in utterly different worlds. And as an international journalist, I get to cross into those worlds that the vast majority of people who live in them cannot. And then I try to present those dramatically different realities to listeners. And that has very much been my experience reporting on this current war, but it even felt that way before October 7.
MCEVERS: Tell me about that a little bit.
ESTRIN: So I was covering two societies where each society was turned inward and focused on their own struggles. So in Israel, for example, I was covering last year's unprecedented protest movement.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting, inaudible).
ESTRIN: People were pouring into the streets, demonstrating against the most right-wing religious government in Israeli history and holding this vibrant public debate about the very essence of their country. Should the government be more religious? Should it be more secular? And then I would cross the border to Gaza, into an entirely different world that Israelis themselves could not enter. And Gaza is this narrow sliver of land along the Mediterranean Sea. It's been under an Israeli-led blockade for more than a decade and a half, ever since Hamas took over there in 2007. And I would cover the everyday struggles of what life was like there for more than 2 million people who live there, who are struggling just to keep a coffee shop running, just to get routine surgery. And then October 7 happened, and these two completely different worlds collide. And the feeling that I'm left with is that nothing will ever, ever, ever, ever be the same here.
MCEVERS: October 7, of course, was the day of the attack led by Hamas. According to the Israeli government, more than 1,200 people were killed. About 240 hostages were taken. And then Israel started bombarding Gaza. Ground troops crossed into Gaza. And now more than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza health ministry. Almost 2 million people have been forcibly displaced. And, Daniel, if you experienced cognitive dissonance before, how hard is it to report on this war now?
ESTRIN: There are so many challenges. I mean, you know, just on the very practical level, there is the challenge of the war zone. And suddenly, there are even more checkpoints and barriers and closed military zones and rockets flying above you. But I think one of the big challenges is the challenge to find stories of actual people at the center of all this, and really putting a face to the people who are living the war and the people who are waging the war.
MCEVERS: So tell us about some of these people. How did you find them?
ESTRIN: A few weeks after the war started, the kibbutz communities that had been attacked along the Gaza border, the military started opening up these areas for journalists to see. And the Israeli government was bringing journalists down in and in buses. So my team and I boarded this bulletproof bus. And there were probably a hundred other journalists crowded onto this bus. And we were all corralled into this one kibbutz that had been attacked.
And while the government spokesman was giving his speech, my team and I started wandering off. And very quickly, we understood that we could actually wander around what still appeared to be this crime scene where there were search-and-recovery teams still recovering bodies. I mean, there wasn't even police tape. We were just crossing into homes that had been attacked just a few weeks before.
Three bullet holes in the glass door, more even. This is the television set on the floor.
Now, the kitchens that were just turned upside down with plates everywhere, and the walker on the floor that had been tossed aside in a bedroom of a man which we later learned had been killed. And we found graffiti in Arabic on the outside of some of these homes that were attacked with names. They left their names.
Mohmen (ph). There's a message here that says victory and the names of the militant groups that attacked it. And it's not just Hamas. You see here the Al-Quds brigades - that's the militant wing of Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group inside Gaza - spray-painted in blue and brown and green. Seeing that graffiti of people's names sprayed on the walls on the outside of the homes - it led us to report out a story of who was just one of the men who participated in this day, in this attack. And we managed to flesh out the contours of Mohammed.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: A producer for NPR, Abu Bakr Bashir, spoke with Mohammed's neighbor, who had known him for a long time. And he found out that Mohammed had made it a mile or two inside Israel on October 7 before he was shot by Israeli aircraft.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: And his neighbor told us that Mohammed had led a kind of ordinary life. He didn't finish his high school matriculation exam. He'd worked as a taxi driver. He tried to start a business selling food products. He had gotten married. He had a lot of friends and family at his wedding. But everyone in the family and everyone in the neighborhood knew he belonged to the militant wing of Islamic Jihad.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: His father told us, "may God be merciful with him. To be a martyr is a huge thing, and this is what he pursued. I hope God accepts him as a martyr."
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: So we dug deeper. We wanted to understand what motivated people like Mohammed to take part in the October 7 attack. And we spoke to a political analyst in Gaza, Mkhaimar Abusada. And he laid out the context.
MKHAIMAR ABUSADA: Aggression against the Palestinians for the past 75 years, I believe, is the driving force behind why many Palestinians youth join Hamas and join the fight against Israel.
ESTRIN: He talked about the fact that so many people in Gaza descend from refugees uprooted from their homes in the war when Israel was founded 75 years ago. He spoke about the failed rounds of peace talks that drive support for armed resistance to Israel. There is the poverty and unemployment, the 16 years of a strict blockade on Gaza. And Hamas rulers and other militant groups offered people like Mohammed a steady salary. And they shape the kind of world view that we saw spray painted on the kibbutz homes when we visited there after the attack.
MCEVERS: So I want to talk about another person you profiled. This was an Israeli soldier. You've actually talked to a lot of people in the military, which is a big part of life in Israel, right?
ESTRIN: Oh, it's huge. I mean, service is mandatory for most Israelis over 18 years old. Almost every decade since Israel's founding, there's been some kind of military conflict between Israel and its neighbors. Virtually everyone in Israel knows somebody who has served.
MCEVERS: OK. So one of your stories was about a soldier, a reservist. He had not been fighting on the frontlines but had actually been inside Gaza. Tell us about him and tell us how you found him.
ESTRIN: So we spoke with a young Israeli soldier who went to the same high school as one of our Israeli producers on our NPR team. And he spent two weeks inside Gaza, and then there was a very brief cease-fire. He had just a few days at home. He came home, did his laundry, saw his parents, saw his girlfriend and sat with us in his backyard with a beer the night before he had to report back to duty.
ALON KEREN: My name is Alon, Alon Keren. I'm almost 22 years old. And I was, like, two weeks in Gaza.
ESTRIN: He is a logistics guy for the Israeli military. And his job is to bring in supplies to the IDF soldiers - water, food but also beef jerky.
KEREN: Candies, chocolate that they get sometimes, snacks. The days for me are pretty simple. I don't - it's like a routine for me. We wake up. We drink the coffee. You can see the beach, and it's nice.
ESTRIN: Have you seen any of the Palestinians?
KEREN: No.
ESTRIN: Any...
KEREN: No, not one.
MCEVERS: Most Palestinians had already been ordered to evacuate the area, right? So he didn't see any people.
ESTRIN: That's right. The homes he had been sleeping in, you know, Palestinians had fled. They were sleeping on the ground, on cots. And all the windows were blown out. And he said the flies gathered on his feet at night in the morning. And that bothered him. And then they were moved to this other building, which he couldn't tell - was it a home? It was weird. Maybe it was a pool house. You know, I've been to homes in - along the beach where there are pools. You know, it's not homes, but it's beach clubs in Gaza. And in his off-the-cuff way, he described this utterly changed, conquered landscape.
KEREN: And that area is very safe, so you don't feel the war. You feel that the IDF, this is his place. So it's not Gaza anymore.
ESTRIN: The one time I felt like he opened up and I could see his inner world is when we spoke about the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. And he said, you know, sometimes I'm in Gaza, and I imagine captives somewhere near me. They're being held, and I don't know where they are. But maybe they're close to where I'm sleeping.
KEREN: It feel very weird that because of Gaza Strip is very small, when I'm in Gaza Strip, I said to myself, so, like, there is 200, 250 Israeli civilians probably very close to me.
ESTRIN: His own neighbor - down the street from when we were sitting there in his backyard - his own neighbor, who's his age, who he grew up with in high school, is captive in Gaza. And for me, it was just important to see the war through the eyes of a young, 21-year-old soldier. This is not a soldier fighting on the front lines. He is a foot soldier. He's without his phone. He's completing his daily missions. And he reflects that kind of sense of disconnect. He's unable to see the wider perspective.
KEREN: You can't understand the big picture. So for me, it feel right to be - to take part. It's not fun for us. It's not fun for no one. But we have to do it to protect our civilians and to make sure they can live in their cities safe.
MCEVERS: So you've been telling us about how in your reporting, you try to find the people who can help us understand the news. But I wonder, do you get pushback for that? Like, somehow just by telling these stories, you're justifying what people are saying.
ESTRIN: Every day - I received pushback for telling the story of that Israeli soldier while Palestinians are facing what they're facing. You know, I know listeners will hear his story and say, this guy is completely disassociating himself from the horrors of the war that his own army is inflicting. And he's bringing chocolate and beef jerky into Gaza, and Palestinians are waiting hours in line for bread. And you're giving him a platform, and we're hearing his voice talk about that.
You know, and the story of the - of Mohammed, the attacker who was killed on October 7 during the attack on southern Israel - an Israeli acquaintance of mine, I sent her that story, and she said, I'm sorry, but my capacity for empathy ended on October 7. You know, Israelis do not see the everyday horrors that Palestinians are experiencing when they tune in to the nightly news. Palestinians have not seen all of the footage of the horrors of October 7 that Israelis are seeing played on a loop on their TV screens.
MCEVERS: These, like, two completely separate realities, what do you do with that?
ESTRIN: Well, I try to remember the victimhood that each society is experiencing. And I think that's critical to understanding the motivations that are driving them now. You know, I was driving a few weeks ago in Tel Aviv, and our producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, had just sent me some voice recordings he had gathered of Palestinian families whose children were killed in one of the latest bombardments. And so I'm driving, and I'm listening to the wailing of a woman whose son had been killed in this massive Israeli bombing campaign.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Screaming in non-English language).
ESTRIN: Israel had said that it had carried out that bombing to provide cover for their special operations forces, who were rescuing two Israeli hostages. And I'm listening to the sounds of this mother, Palestinian mother, in Gaza wailing. And I see a motorcycle driving by, an Israeli driving on this motorcycle. And the bumper sticker on the motorcycle said, go, IDF. You know, go, Israeli army. And I just thought, my God, you know, look at these two worlds that are irreconcilable. And I just think about those two worlds a lot. I think about when my NPR colleague and I went to this screening of about 40 minutes of footage the Hamas attackers had filmed themselves during October 7. I was looking down. I didn't watch most of the footage, but just hearing the audio alone, even today when I think about it, I feel physically sick. And I think about the images that I see that Anas films and sends me, that I see on my own Instagram feed - skeletons in the streets of Gaza, skeletons of bodies that had not been collected. I never used to be the kind of person who remembered my dreams. And I'm waking up with vivid nightmares, and I think so many of our listeners are, too.
MCEVERS: After the break, Daniel will talk about what it takes to get the story from inside Gaza.
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MCEVERS: OK, we're back. And we're talking to NPR's correspondent in the Middle East, Daniel Estrin. Daniel, we've talked about the challenges of reporting on this war, and one huge challenge is that you cannot get into Gaza right now, right?
ESTRIN: It's impossible to get into Gaza now independently, yeah. You can only get into Gaza if you embed with the Israeli military and you see the places that they take you to. And I'm on the board of the Foreign Press Association here, and we petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to ask them to grant independent access for journalists in Gaza. We lost that case. And it is absolutely a challenge to cover a war that you cannot be on the ground to see with your own eyes.
MCEVERS: Yeah. So to be able to get actual reporting from Gaza, you are working with your Palestinian colleagues. One of them is producer Anas Baba. He's reported there since the beginning on the mass displacement of Palestinians who had to flee their homes after Israel ordered them to evacuate.
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: See a mother just holding and carrying her 5 months daughter that looks totally reddish from the hair. I do believe this is a sunburns. She went for the journey, all of the journeys just five months ago.
MCEVERS: Now he's in southern Gaza reporting on the bombings there.
BABA: It's a very intensive shelling all around me.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNFIRE)
MCEVERS: Anas isn't just reporting the stories of so many people getting killed. I mean, he's trying to stay alive himself through all of this. The Committee to Protect Journalists says a record number of journalists have been killed in Gaza. I mean, how does Anas talk about all this with you?
ESTRIN: Anas is really - he maintains his composure incredibly, and he is living through the most extreme conditions. Early in the war, he and his family fled Gaza City, where they live, and they moved to his uncle's building in Rafah, in the southernmost part of Gaza. And as the Israeli military went from north Gaza to central Gaza, you know, approaching south Gaza, all this extended family started coming to the house where he is sheltering, sleeping in a room with several other men - small room. His dad's there.
(SOUNDBITE OF TELEPHONE DIAL TONE)
BABA: Hey. It's Anas.
ESTRIN: Hey, Anas.
I speak to Anas on the phone basically every day, and sometimes he'll give me an update on how he's doing.
Are you still living in a house with 70 people?
BABA: Now with 120.
ESTRIN: Oh, my God, how many bathrooms?
BABA: We do have five bathrooms. And we do have, like, each family needs to clean the bathroom three times a day.
ESTRIN: There's a routine and everything? Wow.
BABA: Exactly. We have routine for the bathrooms cleaning. We have a routine for who's going to make the dinner (ph) tonight. We have a routine for which family is going to make the lunch and what exactly is the lunch going to be. We are now relying on rice and flour.
ESTRIN: So Anas and his family have to deal every day with just the basics of food and internet. How does he connect to us and send us the audio and the video and the photos he's been taking? And then there's the war itself, which can surprise you when all of a sudden there is a blast of an Israeli bomb. And this bomb has landed close to where he is, and he's described jumping into the car, driving through the fog of an airstrike where the debris is still in the air and you can't even see outside the windshield. And he followed the flashing red light of the ambulance in front of him to the sight of one of these bombings.
(CROSSTALK)
BABA: People are saying that they can spot a leg under a car that's totally, like, blown away. And maybe he's under the car and all of the rubbles. They lift the car using a bulldozer. (Shouting in non-English language).
ESTRIN: I can't tell you the number of bodies he's seen piled up at the hospital, at the morgue, the young children who are sheltering at hospitals who are witnessing these scenes of more and more and more and more bodies being brought in.
BABA: Unfortunately, I can tell that he's a young boy, and he's totally turned into pieces.
(CROSSTALK)
ESTRIN: You know, there are even parts of Gaza that Anas himself cannot access now. The parts of Gaza City, north Gaza, that he fled is now inaccessible to those who have fled. And he found us one of the few photojournalists who did not flee Gaza City and has remained in that part of Gaza. And that photojournalist, Omar El Qattaa, went out and documented historical and cultural landmarks that were the pride of Gaza and what they look like now - an old mosque that had previously been a Crusader church that had gone through many iterations over history and the bathhouse, the Samaritan bathhouse, the last Turkish Hammam bathhouse of Gaza. And almost every single one of these beautiful places that I myself have visited in the past and reported on are gone now.
MCEVERS: So I'm thinking about how we started this conversation, these, you know, two worlds that you report on. Is there a story where you were able to kind of bring a perspective from each of these worlds into the same place?
ESTRIN: Yeah, it was a radio story about radio. You know, when you drive here, you turn the radio dial, and you can flip between Israeli and Palestinian radio stations so easily. I mean, the airwaves are literally crossing each other in the same tiny geographical space. And I reported a story about Israeli radio stations that are broadcasting to Gaza to try to reach hostages in Gaza because some hostages that were released earlier in this war said that they had heard Israeli radio in captivity.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GIL DICKMANN: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: This is a recording of Gil Dickmann. He says he's from Tel Aviv. This week, we bid farewell to Kinneret Gat - that's his relative - when she was killed in the Hamas attack on her kibbutz. He says she loved to sing. She loved to travel. Two of his relatives were taken hostage, and one of his relatives was released from captivity. And she said that she had heard that broadcast when she was in Gaza, on the radio, and that hearing his voice had given her strength.
DICKMANN: She said that that was one of the most important things for her while she was in captivity, keeping her strong, knowing that her husband and child are still alive and that we fight for her.
ESTRIN: Similarly, Palestinians are broadcasting messages to their loved ones in Israeli jails. They've been doing this for years, radio programs that do - you know, the airwaves do reach Israeli jails where their loved ones are being held.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DIMA ALI: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: This is a voice message from 18-year-old Dima Ali. It was broadcast by a Palestinian radio station. She hoped this message would reach her father, who was taken away by Israeli soldiers five days into the current war. She says, "hi, dad. Don't worry about us. Everything's OK. I hope you're well."
ALI: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: Hundreds of Palestinians are broadcasting messages like these now on the radio. Except now, Israel says that during this war, it has confiscated the radios inside jails.
ALI: We have no connection to reach them or to speak with them. Where's the human rights? Where is the prisoner rights? Even the lawyer can't reach to him.
ESTRIN: These are two peoples using the radio to try to reach the people they love. And when I spoke with the radio station managers, both Israeli and Palestinian, and said, you know, on the other side, there's a radio station kind of doing the same thing you're doing, they resisted that comparison. But I think this story encapsulates so much truth of the reality now because they're not speaking to each other. They are speaking to their own people, in pain in very similar ways, almost in a mirror - you know, mirroring each other - and no connection, no communication between the two and no sense of sympathy or interest in putting their pain side by side. But it is, again, a reminder that at the heart of this conflict, there are people with families reaching out who just want to be reunited with their loved ones and who just want to be safe.
MCEVERS: Daniel Estrin, NPR correspondent in the Middle East, thanks so much for your time. I know you have a lot going on. We really appreciate it. Thank you.
ESTRIN: Thank you so much, Kelly.
MCEVERS: On the next episode of EMBEDDED, NPR's Leila Fadel will bring us the story of a Palestinian college student whose world has been blown apart.
SHAIMAA AHMED: It is continuous. It seems like we might have to evacuate again. But I don't think we're moving this time because we've had enough.
MCEVERS: Plus, a Palestinian American family who was stuck in Gaza when the war started but managed to make it out.
ABOOD OKAL: We hear of bombings. You try to reach out to the people that you - live in that neighborhood, and the calls won't go through, and then there's no way for you to confirm.
MCEVERS: That's coming up on EMBEDDED. If you want to hear the next episode in this series early, sign up for EMBEDDED+ at plus.npr.org/embedded or find the EMBEDDED channel in Apple. It is a good way to support our work. That is plus.npr.org/embedded.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: This episode was edited by Luis Trelles and produced by Abby Wendle. It was mastered by Josh Newell and fact-checked by Nicolette Khan. The EMBEDDED team also includes Rhaina Cohen, Ariana Gharib Lee, Dan Girma, Adelina Lancianese, Alison McAdam and Nic Neves. Liana Simstrom is our supervising producer. Katie Simon is our supervising editor, and Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of the Enterprise Storytelling Unit, our home at NPR.
Thanks to our managing editor of standards and practices, Tony Cavin, and Johannes Doerge for legal support. Special thanks also to Erika Aguilar, Alon Avital, Anas Baba, Samantha Balaban, Abu Bakr Bashir, Claire Harbage, Tamir Kalifa, Maya Levin, Nuha Musleh, Natan Odenheimer and Sami Yenigun and to our friends at NPR's international desk - Greg Dixon, Larry Kaplow, James Hider and Didi Schanche. We'll be back next week.
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