Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, June twenty, twenty twenty five. Federal police have
Speaker 1: written to more than a thousand parents and cares of
Speaker 1: kids who may have come into contact with a child
Speaker 1: sex offender who worked at after school care services. That
Speaker 1: story is live now at the Australian dot com dot au.
Speaker 1: Sleepless Nights, ballistic missile attacks and babies born underground. Our
Speaker 1: reporters in the Middle East, Leah Mendes and Yonnibashan, join
Speaker 1: us between trips to the bomb shelter to reveal what
Speaker 1: it's like reporting the Iran Israel war. Jonni Vashan and
Speaker 1: Leam Mendez. A week ago, you were in our Sydney newsroom,
Speaker 1: rushing to finish your story before you jumped on a plane.
Speaker 1: When this war began, we had one reporter already in Israel,
Speaker 1: Page Taylor, who spent several nights taking shelter as the
Speaker 1: missiles rained on Jerusalem. And then there was serious discussions
Speaker 1: between our editors about getting Paige out and whether it
Speaker 1: was right to send you guys in, especially as the
Speaker 1: airspace was closed and it seemed incredibly dangerous. Took me
Speaker 1: through the journey to where you are. Now, how did
Speaker 1: you get there? Starting from when you left Sydney, we were.
Speaker 2: Getting these alerts coming through our phones about Israeli attacks
Speaker 2: on Iran, and at first we were just thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: it's probably just nothing, like do.
Speaker 3: We even pay attention to this?
Speaker 2: And then as the kind of hours wore on, both
Speaker 2: Liam and I immediately start talking to each other because
Speaker 2: whenever anything happens in Israel, Lamb and I start texting,
Speaker 2: you know, is this us going back to Israel? But
Speaker 2: once it became clear that this was serious and would
Speaker 2: have long term ramifications and potential tectonic shifts are growing
Speaker 2: in the Middle East, we were getting on a plane
Speaker 2: and we had a few hours to put everything together.
Speaker 2: I started to write out of a column that we
Speaker 2: were putting out in the business section of the paper,
Speaker 2: which always fun. But then from Liam's perspective, you know,
Speaker 2: we're trying to figure out how long we're even going
Speaker 2: to be overseas for. We don't know how long this
Speaker 2: is going to tail out for. And so yeah, then
Speaker 2: we meet at the airport, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, we met at the airport and we get
Speaker 4: to the counter, and the checking gentleman says to us,
Speaker 4: if you're traveling to you know, places like Iran, Iraq,
Speaker 4: you're not allowed to flight. Tel Aviv turned out was fine,
Speaker 4: but our flight had been canceled. But we could still
Speaker 4: get on this flight to Dubai. So we thought, okay,
Speaker 4: that's great, but how are we going to get into
Speaker 4: Tel Aviv? So we spent about fourteen to sixteen hour
Speaker 4: flight I think it was figuring out how we were
Speaker 4: going to get from Dubai into Israel.
Speaker 3: Love Bie, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Journey, But I just remember most of that flight sitting
Speaker 2: next to Liam, say, Justin's okay, what are the borders
Speaker 2: with Israel? We're thinking, okay, Jordanian airspace is closed. Do
Speaker 2: we wait to go to Jordan and then drive over
Speaker 2: the border into Israel.
Speaker 3: It's not gonna work.
Speaker 2: It's gonna take too long. We need to get there
Speaker 2: really fast. I mean, we sort of debated whether we'd
Speaker 2: fly to a place called Charmel Shake, which is in
Speaker 2: the Sinai in Egypt. The only problem is to get
Speaker 2: there from Dubai you have to go through neighboring Arab
Speaker 2: countries that aren't especially friendly to all passport holders, and
Speaker 2: it was going to be a little bit risky, so
Speaker 2: we thought, look a little bit high risk.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if we're going to do that one.
Speaker 2: In the end, we decided to land in Cairo, which
Speaker 2: is an amazing place.
Speaker 5: We didn't get see enough of it.
Speaker 2: You could see the you can actually see the pyramids
Speaker 2: when you're coming into landing. Gorgeous if you on the
Speaker 2: rock side of the LEA was on the wrong side
Speaker 2: of the play.
Speaker 5: I got to see the pyramids.
Speaker 3: It's all happening here.
Speaker 6: It's all happening.
Speaker 1: If you.
Speaker 4: Just started to hit us, I feel like you're gonna
Speaker 4: kill So I've been in Egypt and never see a
Speaker 4: single pyramid.
Speaker 3: But yeah.
Speaker 4: And then and then we organized a car. We got
Speaker 4: in the car and we just started driving. It was
Speaker 4: an eight hour drive through the Sinai and we started
Speaker 4: hitting checkpoints and we get held up. And at the
Speaker 4: first checkpoint that we hit and it's you know, it's
Speaker 4: all quite serious, but also in a weird way, like
Speaker 4: very relaxed as well. And we get held up there
Speaker 4: for about an hour and a half and you know
Speaker 4: that they're standing there and like every guy comes around
Speaker 4: and that they're passing around our passports, and it was
Speaker 4: all it was incredibly entertaining sort of procedure to watch
Speaker 4: and a little bit, you know, a little bit anxious
Speaker 4: just to see what would happen.
Speaker 3: We're in a checkpoint.
Speaker 6: This is our first checkpoint, just before the sweers can out,
Speaker 6: before we go over it, and they've.
Speaker 3: Taken our passports, and there's a bit of there's a
Speaker 3: bit of chatter. They all seem to be very amused
Speaker 3: that we can't speak.
Speaker 6: Arabic, that's right, yeah, or any of the languages that
Speaker 6: are from our passports.
Speaker 7: We keep presenting them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yon's on a German passport. I'm on a Swiss passport.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how good that Germany is. All the Swiss, French,
Speaker 3: realmanch or German switch strata.
Speaker 4: But they're just kind of standing there, just holding our
Speaker 4: passports now stilletting some other people through. I don't think
Speaker 4: they actually believed that we were journalists and that we
Speaker 4: were traveling to Israel. They sort of thought it was
Speaker 4: quite strange that you also had forgotten your your your
Speaker 4: press past, so you were trying to explain to them
Speaker 4: what margin call was.
Speaker 1: That's the business column that y only writes in The Australian.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So the thing is like they didn't understand what we
Speaker 2: were doing in Egypt.
Speaker 3: We were like, we're trying.
Speaker 2: To get to Israel and they're like, why do you
Speaker 2: want to go to Israel. It's like, because there's a
Speaker 2: war on we need to be there. And they're like,
Speaker 2: so why are you here. It's like because our ticket
Speaker 2: to Bengorion got canceled.
Speaker 3: It's like, but why are you here.
Speaker 2: It's like because we're driving from Karro.
Speaker 5: Like no one does this, no one, No one gets
Speaker 5: into Israel this way. It's like very unusual. So they
Speaker 5: sort of sit.
Speaker 2: Around with like you know, a fag hanging from their
Speaker 2: lips and flicking through our passports and just saying, so,
Speaker 2: who do you work for?
Speaker 5: It's like the Australian. So they saw like my profile
Speaker 5: on the Australian's website.
Speaker 2: But then Liam goes show them the video of us
Speaker 2: in Israel last year with the Iranian missiles and stuff
Speaker 2: like oh yeah, great idea. So Liam gets the video
Speaker 2: up and the guy and he fast forwards to the
Speaker 2: relevant bit of us with the helmets on and all that,
Speaker 2: and then the guy looks at it, and he's sort
Speaker 2: of really suspicious, and then he sort of starts enjoying himself,
Speaker 2: and then he rewinds the video to the start and
Speaker 2: watches the whole thing.
Speaker 5: From start to finish.
Speaker 2: It seemed like five or six minutes after that, he
Speaker 2: was like, all right, passport to go, go, go, get out
Speaker 2: of our sight.
Speaker 1: Well, those those kind of checkpoints, you know, normally I
Speaker 1: think some people might might offer to pay a bribe
Speaker 1: to make things move a bit faster. But of course
Speaker 1: we've all done the News Corp, you know, anti corruption training,
Speaker 1: So you can't do that.
Speaker 3: No, we can't be doing that.
Speaker 2: The word backsheesh was constantly in my mind.
Speaker 3: Acts we didn't do it.
Speaker 1: So you crossed at a border crossing called a lad
Speaker 1: which is one of the few ways to get into
Speaker 1: Israel by land, and then you had to drive north.
Speaker 1: And of course all this time you're dealing with our
Speaker 1: editors anxieties, right, were you feeling nervous yourselves?
Speaker 4: Honestly, the you know, I'd never been to Egypt, never
Speaker 4: been through the SINI. You read through the Smart Traveler website.
Speaker 4: It says like do not travel here. That was probably
Speaker 4: the uncertainty of you know, going through this very unknown
Speaker 4: area that you know that you know there's occasional kidnappings
Speaker 4: and and things like that going on there.
Speaker 3: That was a little bit unnerving.
Speaker 4: We did take the safest route through that part of
Speaker 4: the country, but in terms of like drones and missiles,
Speaker 4: the idea of sort of gives you enough notice when
Speaker 4: they see are coming through, and we're able to get
Speaker 4: a bit of an advanced notice if that was going
Speaker 4: to happen, And thankfully that didn't really happen. Whilst we
Speaker 4: were traveling from Elat to Tel Aviv.
Speaker 2: It felt like for me anyway, the bigger risks were
Speaker 2: road accidents rather than getting hit by an errand drone.
Speaker 2: Driving at night in those locations is pretty hard. It's
Speaker 2: not very well. We were dog tired, I mean we'd
Speaker 2: left Sydney, we lost count of the hours. The whole
Speaker 2: thing's blur. We hadn't slept enough, we hadn't eaten enough.
Speaker 2: We were surviving and subsisting on like service station food,
Speaker 2: which if anyone who knows me, like that's just not enough.
Speaker 2: But that seemed to be the highest risk factor, not
Speaker 2: necessarily drones or missiles. Besides, when you're in that kind
Speaker 2: of environment, you sort of block all that out and
Speaker 2: you're just thinking, I need to get to where I
Speaker 2: need to go, and how do I get there fastest.
Speaker 3: We were running on adrenaline essentially.
Speaker 1: So now you're in Tel Aviv, you're staying in a hotel,
Speaker 1: and one of the things you have to do during
Speaker 1: the day, of course, is go out and do reporting.
Speaker 1: But at night you try to it's in sleep. But
Speaker 1: I've said to Yanni, it's a bit like having a newborn.
Speaker 1: By the sounds of things, You're getting woken up every
Speaker 1: two hours to rush downstairs to a shelter.
Speaker 7: Oh god, fuck, it's great.
Speaker 3: So you can one in half an.
Speaker 7: Half an Now that's great.
Speaker 1: You must still be absolutely exhausted. Tell me what it's
Speaker 1: like to be woken up like that, this kind of
Speaker 1: broken sleep that you and the whole country are going through.
Speaker 2: Look, I mean one thing, I have total empathy with
Speaker 2: expecting parents and parents of newborns now because I finally
Speaker 2: understand what it means to survive on one to two
Speaker 2: hours sleep a night, because that's basically what we're getting here.
Speaker 2: Like I think both Liam and I have learned that
Speaker 2: if you want to get enough sleep, first of all,
Speaker 2: you're never going to get it. You'll probably get maximum
Speaker 2: four hours sleep at night, so just get used to
Speaker 2: that real fast. But if you want to get any
Speaker 2: sleep at all, go to sleep at about eight thirty
Speaker 2: at nine o'clock in the evening. If you can sleep
Speaker 2: until the first alarm, which tends to be around midnight,
Speaker 2: and then very rudely sometimes like it'll come half an
Speaker 2: hour later, maybe an hour later, sometimes at four am.
Speaker 2: I think the most alarms we've had in one night
Speaker 2: is three. And that makes for a really crappy day
Speaker 2: the following day, especially when you know you're facing the
Speaker 2: usual pressures that any correspondents face, like you're trying to
Speaker 2: find stories, you're trying to write stories. I tend to
Speaker 2: find I'm at my most crankiest when I'm out of
Speaker 2: sleep and I'm trying to write something, and sentences, as
Speaker 2: you'll know clear because I often call you in a panic,
Speaker 2: going what do I do? But sentences that I know
Speaker 2: how to formulate. My brain just physically won't leave my
Speaker 2: fingertips and get onto the screen in front of me,
Speaker 2: or if they do, there are garbles, I need to
Speaker 2: rub them out and do them all again, and in
Speaker 2: doing so in rubbing out what you've done and then
Speaker 2: trying to do it again, you work yourself even harder,
Speaker 2: and then you make yourself more tired. And so what
Speaker 2: I've learned is just just stop doing everything and go
Speaker 2: to sleep.
Speaker 1: So Liam, we've got some amazing vision of you and
Speaker 1: Yonni Ami.
Speaker 5: You wake up and.
Speaker 3: Then what happens.
Speaker 4: Essentially the sky is just lighting up and there there's
Speaker 4: the Iron Dome and other interception missiles are coming up
Speaker 4: and essentially trying to track down these ballistic missiles that
Speaker 4: have come over from Iran, and you hear these explosions
Speaker 4: going off.
Speaker 2: You've got we've got a second wave missiles and the way.
Speaker 3: Last hour and.
Speaker 4: Then suddenly it gets through and it lands about two
Speaker 4: kilometers south of where we're staying, and you hear this
Speaker 4: huge eruption. Then there's a follow up all of eruption,
Speaker 4: and before that, you know, you see the flames because
Speaker 4: it takes a couple of seconds for the sound to
Speaker 4: come through, and you've sort of and then there's this huge,
Speaker 4: you know, waft of it smells like gunpowder and there's
Speaker 4: car alarms going off. And we actually went and visited
Speaker 4: that impact site yesterday, so I think one of the
Speaker 4: craziest things is, like we will set up our cameras
Speaker 4: on the belt.
Speaker 2: We've become very match fit at dealing with the sirens.
Speaker 2: We know exactly what to do now. But the first
Speaker 2: night we did it, we heard the sirens kind of
Speaker 2: got up and I very amateurly said to Lam, yeah, yah,
Speaker 2: we've got like twenty minutes. Don'torry about it, like, you know,
Speaker 2: we can set up a cameras.
Speaker 3: I'll make a coffee whatever.
Speaker 2: So Liam goes outside, sets up a camera and suddenly
Speaker 2: the iron doome swings into action and up go these
Speaker 2: brilliant flares from the rockets, and there we hear the
Speaker 2: incoming wosh of the ballistic missiles from Iran, and we're
Speaker 2: recording and we don't know whether to run or whether
Speaker 2: they say and there's a lot of kind of situational
Speaker 2: panic going on. In the end, we just keep watching,
Speaker 2: and then a missile lands and it looks like it's
Speaker 2: about a couple of kilometers away. We hear the sound
Speaker 2: and the blast wave of it a few seconds afterwards,
Speaker 2: because there's always a delay. But when Liam and I
Speaker 2: went back there yesterday just to take a look at
Speaker 2: what was going on, I mean, the place was decimated.
Speaker 4: You could tell exactly where that ballistic missile had landed,
Speaker 4: and then every single building surrounding it had sort of
Speaker 4: the front of.
Speaker 3: It, had been blown out.
Speaker 4: It was remarkable to see that the damage that had
Speaker 4: happened there.
Speaker 2: I think what I wasn't expecting was just how much
Speaker 2: damage is caused by either the missile itself or just
Speaker 2: a very large fragment of it that lands at velocity.
Speaker 2: It doesn't just hit the building, it'll completely wipe out
Speaker 2: the buildings around it. But then the blast wave will
Speaker 2: just shatter all timber, all glass, It will break non
Speaker 2: reinforced concrete off every building in two hundred meter radius,
Speaker 2: and that causes the shutdown of a particular part of
Speaker 2: the city, economically damaging, notwithstanding everything else that's causing economic
Speaker 2: damage around here, like all the shops are closed, there's
Speaker 2: no one around, you can't gather in places with more
Speaker 2: than thirty people, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Before this war started, you know, it was unheard of
Speaker 4: these ballistic missiles getting into Tel Aviv. But now it's happened,
Speaker 4: and it's happened on repeated occasions. You know, this war's
Speaker 4: been going for seven days now and there's been multiple impacts,
Speaker 4: and I think that is what people here are finding
Speaker 4: so unreal.
Speaker 1: Coming up Israeli's adapt to a new kind of war.
Speaker 1: When it's daylight, you're out in about reporting, but still
Speaker 1: some miss the tacks are occurring, and so you've got
Speaker 1: to kind of take shelter wherever you are, whether that's
Speaker 1: under an overpass or if there's nothing like that nearby,
Speaker 1: presumably you just got to lie down on the side
Speaker 1: of the road.
Speaker 2: So we've had an alert telling us that we need
Speaker 2: to find a protect the space and take some cover
Speaker 2: up because the missileparage is coming in.
Speaker 3: From you are.
Speaker 2: People just have to walk that's right, pull over to
Speaker 2: the side of the road to get out of the
Speaker 2: car and find a ditch and get away from the
Speaker 2: cars because they can turn it to shrapnel.
Speaker 3: And here we are, they're in the air and you
Speaker 3: can hear them exploding.
Speaker 5: Do you have a preference.
Speaker 1: Would you rather be in the hotel bomb shelter or
Speaker 1: under an overpass on a freeway in broad daylight?
Speaker 2: Personally, I'd rather be under the underpass in broad daylight
Speaker 2: with a large field around me, because you can just
Speaker 2: see the scale of what's available for where the missile
Speaker 2: can land, Whereas, for some reason, you feel very contained
Speaker 2: and sheltered in a good way when you're in the
Speaker 2: basement of a hotel or elsewhere, but you also feel
Speaker 2: like there's something kind of solipsistic happening in that moment,
Speaker 2: whereas when you're in a field, you're like, there's no
Speaker 2: way it's going to hit me. It's going to hit
Speaker 2: that tree, it's going to hit that thing over there. Also,
Speaker 2: when you're cramped in a shelter what they call here
Speaker 2: in the cloth, when you're cramped here in one of
Speaker 2: these things, you're surrounded by other people and you kind
Speaker 2: of absorb their panic and their anxiety, Whereas when you're
Speaker 2: in a field, there's a bit more space, you can breathe,
Speaker 2: there's something slightly more relaxing about it, and you can see.
Speaker 4: When you're in the field, you know some of these
Speaker 4: missiles come through. When you're in a shelter, you don't
Speaker 4: know what's happening outside. There's like hardly any phone reception.
Speaker 4: Sometimes an alert will come through and a little bit
Speaker 4: of information will come through, or like half a video
Speaker 4: will load of an impact, But at the end of
Speaker 4: the day, you don't really know what's going on until
Speaker 4: you've left and you've gotten a bit of Wi Fi reception.
Speaker 4: But when you're in there, you essentially don't know what's
Speaker 4: happening unless you hear an explosion or a thud or
Speaker 4: and even then you don't know what that is, hit,
Speaker 4: where that's hit. Whereas when you're out in the field,
Speaker 4: you can see everything around you. You can see the
Speaker 4: missiles being intercepted as we saw two days ago.
Speaker 2: You also, if I can just quickly add, there's like
Speaker 2: different characters to the shelters. So for example, when you
Speaker 2: whenever there's a siren in this particular hotel, we go
Speaker 2: to the shelter, but we get everyone who's been hanging
Speaker 2: out on the beach. So all these surfers will come
Speaker 2: in dripping wet and their bodies and like there'll be
Speaker 2: dog walkers coming in. We went into the shelter last
Speaker 2: night and like this beautiful husky turned up, so that
Speaker 2: like kind of lifted everyone's spirits for a minute. That
Speaker 2: was nice, and then other dogs got to come in.
Speaker 2: They all have to play nice, and you don't really
Speaker 2: feel like you're in a shelter, whereas at night everyone
Speaker 2: kind of like you know, Treasures of the Elevator, bleary
Speaker 2: eyed in their nineties, and you know, we go down
Speaker 2: to the shelter and look at each other like not
Speaker 2: this again, and.
Speaker 3: People are arguing with their families and things like that.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, you kind of get to know
Speaker 4: these people and you're like, oh, hey, it's you again.
Speaker 4: Hey here you go, oh because you And then you know,
Speaker 4: we were laughing at this one guy who'd sort of
Speaker 4: had an argument with his wife and daughter, and you know,
Speaker 4: they were trying to figure out how they were going
Speaker 4: to get down, and then one person didn't want to
Speaker 4: get in the lift, and then we just you know,
Speaker 4: you just kind of look at each other and have
Speaker 4: a bit of a laugh.
Speaker 5: It's a level of intimacy no one wants.
Speaker 1: Basically, well, we're thinking about you all the time. Take care, guys.
Speaker 1: Where Mendez and Yonni Bishan are our correspondents in the
Speaker 1: Middle East. You can read their reporting anytime at the
Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au