The man behind the Hamas attack

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘The man behind the Hamas attack’

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Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, October 13th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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US inflation is looking pretty sticky, and the EU is investigating whether X is allowing disinformation to spread about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Plus, we take a closer look at the Hamas military commander who claimed to be behind Saturday’s surprise attack. I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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US headline inflation didn’t budge last month. It clocked in at 3.7 per cent year on year, which, wouldn’t you know it, was exactly the same pace as August, but it was higher than what analysts had expected. I’m joined now by the FT’s Nick Megaw to unpack all this. Hey, Nick.

Nicholas Megaw
Hey yah.

Marc Filippino
So, Nick, is this good news? Is this bad news? Where are we at?

Nicholas Megaw
It’s not great news, no. Economists had been hoping for a more clear reduction in the different inflation measures. We saw some of it, but not as much as people had been hoping for. And so it’s just one month. The Fed probably won’t get too carried away with it, but it does serve as a reminder that the fight against inflation is not completely over. And there’s still a lot of uncertainty about what happens going forward.

Marc Filippino
Yeah. I want to get to the Federal Reserve in just a bit. But first, why is inflation so sticky right now?

Nicholas Megaw
So it’s interesting because, as we mentioned, the inflation headlines were not good news, especially if you’re a central bank official. In a way, they are kind of a product of good news, which is that the economy has been holding up better than a lot of people had expected. We saw this also last week with data showing that the job market remains really tight, and all of that means is that demand is staying fairly high, and that means price pressures remain very high, especially in areas like the housing market which was one of the big drivers of the higher than expected inflation in September.

Marc Filippino
So how is this all gonna affect the Fed’s next interest rate decision? When I say this, I mean not just inflation, but, you know, the jobs report was really surprising. It came in much higher than economists had expected.

Nicholas Megaw
Yeah. So the latest couple of sets of data, they probably don’t tip a decision definitively one way or the other. But it does mean that all options are remaining on the table for now. So with that higher inflation and the strong jobs market, I think most people expect the Fed will at least keep rates steady at its next meeting in November because it’s still just one month and it can take a long time for monetary policy to have an impact. So they want to see how things are going. But there’s a lot of uncertainty about what happens at the next meeting in December.

Marc Filippino
Nick, it seems like markets have been coming around to the idea of higher rates for longer. What was the investor reaction to the consumer price index report that came out yesterday?

Nicholas Megaw
So in a way, the reaction kind of reflected the general uncertainty about what all of this recent data means for the Fed’s interest rate picture going forward. So Treasury yields went up, which does reflect the fact that there’s a higher chance that the Fed lift rates by the end of the year. And even if it doesn’t, they’re likely to keep rates high for a long time. But we’re not quite at the peaks that we were at last week. So it’s just basically yields have been bouncing around quite a lot as people try and work out what’s gonna happen next.

Marc Filippino
Nick Megaw covers US capital markets for the FT. Thanks, Nick.

Nicholas Megaw
Thanks.

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Marc Filippino
The website formerly known as Twitter is in hot water with the European Union. On Thursday, the EU opened an investigation into the social media site X. Brussels is looking into whether the platform is spreading disinformation and violent content after Hamas attacked Israel last week. Sources told the FT that the EU sent X a bunch of questions that it needs to answer by next week. If X doesn’t reply or botches the information, it could get hit with heavy fines. This is the first formal probe launched under the EU’s new Digital Services Act. The DSA is cracking down on Big Tech as the bloc tries to keep Europeans safe online.

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Mehul Srivastava has been reporting on the Gaza conflict for the FT, and he’s been looking into a central Hamas figure.

Hamas clip
[Mohammed Deif speaking in Arab]

Mehul Srivastava
The morning of the attack on Saturday, within a couple of hours of the beginning, an audio message was released by Hamas claiming to be from Mohammed Deif where he declared that this operation was his and took credit for it.

Hamas clip
[Mohammed Deif speaking in Arab]

Mehul Srivastava
Mohammed Deif is a man in his fifties at this point who has spent the majority of his adult life with Hamas, carrying out murderous assaults against Israeli soldiers and civilians. Over time, he has risen to the top of the command structure in Hamas’s military wing, and he’s described as Israel’s enemy number one.

Marc Filippino
Mehul says Mohammed Deif isn’t his real name. It’s probably a pseudonym derived from the Arabic word for guest that refers to a tactic where Palestinian militants move from house to house.

Mehul Srivastava
Palestinian fighters since the 1980s and even before had picked up a habit of spending each night in a different sympathisers home so that they can evade detection from the Israelis, who have a large network of informants, electronic surveillance, drones in the sky in order to catch fighters such as Deif.

Marc Filippino
Israel has vowed to uproot and eliminate Hamas, including Deif. In fact, they’ve tried several times to kill him before this latest conflict even started.

Mehul Srivastava
There was an air strike in which Mohammed Deif was hit. Reportedly, he crawled out of a burning car and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, having lost an arm, maybe a leg. There was another assault on his house where reportedly his wife and a child were killed. But Gaza is a very densely populated place, and he’s been able to hide from Israeli intelligence, from Israeli surveillance, from drones for more than 20 years.

Marc Filippino
Mehul says that if Deif were to die, it would be a huge win for Israel, but maybe only a temporary one.

Mehul Srivastava
Deif is considered to be the mastermind behind not just this most recent assault but so many in the past that were he to be killed, it would be a huge victory for the Israelis. But in the past, as we’ve seen in Hamas, as people like Deif are assassinated, people that they have trained, their protégés, they rise up to the top. Deif himself got this job because his mentor, who taught him how to build bombs in the nineties, was killed by the Israelis.

Marc Filippino
That was Mehul Srivastava, who’s covering the Israel-Hamas conflict for the FT.

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This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back next week for the latest business news. The FT News Briefing is produced by
Kasia Broussalian, Sonja Hutson, Fiona Symon and me, Marc Filippino. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. We had help this week from Sam Giovinco, David da Silva, Michael Lello, Peter Barber and Gavin Kallmann. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio, and our theme song is by Metaphor Music

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