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Young soldier, old soul · The Front

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, January seventh. A Bhutanese born man who attacked
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: his partner with a meat cleaver will be allowed to
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  Speaker 1: stay in Australia despite the former Immigration Minister Andrew Giles
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: canceling his visa. That's the latest Federal court decision highlighting
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the Albanese government's botched attempts to deal with violent criminals
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: who don't want to leave.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Anyone who serves.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Alcohol should have mandatory rape training, according to a new
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: plan to improve the experience of sexual assault complainants. Those
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  Speaker 1: two exclusives alive right now at the Australian dot com
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: dou we've told some remarkable stories from the Middle East
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: over the past eighteen months or so, and this is
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  Speaker 1: one of our favorites at the Front, the personal story
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: of one man who gave his life in this conflict
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that has taken so many young people. This episode was
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: first broadcast on October seven, twenty twenty four, the anniversary
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: of Hermas's attack on Israel, which triggered a catastrophic response.
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  Speaker 1: Sixteen years ago, a little boy named tal Grushka appeared
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  Speaker 1: on Israel's Channel twelve TV station, talking proudly about his
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  Speaker 1: upcoming performance in a major piano competition.
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  Speaker 3: Channel London MAJLONGHDA.
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  Speaker 1: By twenty eighteen, that little boy was twenty years old,
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  Speaker 1: a tall, muscular young soldier still in love with the piano.
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  Speaker 1: He posted a video on YouTube, where he had fourteen subscribers,
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  Speaker 1: of himself playing Bita Jhoven's Moonlight Sonata Part three. In
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the video, Tall Grushka is wearing whipped denim shorts and
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  Speaker 1: a T shirt, sitting at an upright piano. He's concentrating hard,
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  Speaker 1: playing on through a few tiny mistakes. He's not looking
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: at any sheet music. He's learned this piece by heart
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  Speaker 1: and a year ago today. Tal Grushka was a twenty
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  Speaker 1: five year old major with the Israeli Army's Nahull Brigade
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  Speaker 1: nine hundred and thirty first Battalion, based in the West Bank,
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  Speaker 1: just south of Bethlehem. Early in the morning, they were
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  Speaker 1: called to respond to a major terrorist attack unfolding to
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  Speaker 1: the south Hamas fighters flooding over the border from Gaza
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  Speaker 1: into rural villages including Kafar Azar. Grushka and his men
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: were racing to Kafa Azar to defend the civilians from
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  Speaker 1: what would be one of the day's worst massacres, but
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Grushka never made it. Their convoy was ambushed by Hamas
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: fighters a few hundred meters from kafa Aza, and when
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  Speaker 1: Grushka opened the door of his armored vehicle, he was
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: shot dead.
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  Speaker 4: Stunning developments in Israel as Palestinian militants fired thousands of rocket.
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  Speaker 1: Mass today launched a major surprise attack on Israel.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: Bi Air news reporter quoted an idea of commander who
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: mentioned the discovery of approximately forty babies who had been
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: subjected to horrifying violence, some beheaded.
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  Speaker 1: There is the mother, the fathers, in the bedrooms, in
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  Speaker 1: the protection rooms, and how the Tories killed them.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: It's not at all, It's not a butterfit.
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  Speaker 1: And on October tenth, as Israel reeled from the twelve
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: hundred deaths and hundreds of hostages taken in the attacks,
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  Speaker 1: Teal Gushka was buried.
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  Speaker 4: It's a military cemetery in an area called Kas Sabah,
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  Speaker 4: and it was quite late at night and packed with people.
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  Speaker 4: This was three days after October seven, at a time
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: when Israel was overrun with burials.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Johny Vashan is the Australian's journalist, and he'd scrambled to
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  Speaker 1: get to Israel. Just hours after landing in Tel Aviv,
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  Speaker 1: Johnny found himself among the mourners at Talgrushka's funeral.
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  Speaker 3: There was actually four soldiers buried that evening.
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  Speaker 4: Tahal was the first, and his funeral was held at
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  Speaker 4: approximately ten pm inside that cemetery because similar services were
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: just taking place all over the country and at all hours.
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  Speaker 4: So I just got off the plane, I'd just put
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: my bags down, and I had never attended a military
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: funeral in Israel before, but I found myself standing at
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  Speaker 4: this event with Tult's family, who I knew through my
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: own family, but I'd actually never met them before, and
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  Speaker 4: so there was an extra layer of poignancy.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Johnny has been back and forth to Israel over the
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: past year, and today in The Australian we're publishing his
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  Speaker 1: interview with Teal Grushka's family.
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  Speaker 4: The impression I got listening to Tal's family was that
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: he was a lovely guy, still very much of the
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  Speaker 4: ten year old kid who loved the piano, and he
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: was actually a piano prodigy at a young age, but
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: that he'd grown into this strong, fearless soldier who just
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: believed in the mission of being a soldier. What was
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  Speaker 4: clear to me was that he wasn't in the army
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  Speaker 4: and pursuing a career in the army for the sake
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  Speaker 4: of carrying a garn and wearing a uniform, which in
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  Speaker 4: this country there is a lot of cachet that comes
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  Speaker 4: with that, but Fatal doing these things was a.
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  Speaker 3: Matter of security and safety for the Jewish people.
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  Speaker 4: And I know this not just because his family told me,
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  Speaker 4: but because I've read some of his writings and some
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  Speaker 4: of his poetry which he posted online and which his
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  Speaker 4: family had given to me.
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  Speaker 3: But one of the other legacies of Tal as a
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  Speaker 3: commander was.
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  Speaker 4: That he was very insistent with his troops that every Friday,
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  Speaker 4: just before the Shabbat weekend, they take out their mobile
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  Speaker 4: phones and call their grandparents. And this is partly because
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  Speaker 4: he had his own very strong connection with his own
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: own grandparents. And possibly the saddest side I could have
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  Speaker 4: seen at his funeral was his grandfather standing there at
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  Speaker 4: the microphone and saying goodbye to him too. The legacy
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  Speaker 4: out of this is that this initiative of Tuls has
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  Speaker 4: become something of a movement in Israel, not just on
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  Speaker 4: social media, but fridge magnets have been printed, and there's
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  Speaker 4: a partnership with one of the telephone companies, and the
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  Speaker 4: university here has been promoting what Tull was doing with
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  Speaker 4: his soldiers.
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  Speaker 3: So there's this message that's going out there. Every Friday,
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  Speaker 3: you know, call your grandmother.
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  Speaker 4: Even among the people I've encountered on this reporting trip
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  Speaker 4: to Israel, I hear about young people making more of
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: an effort to call their elderly relatives.
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  Speaker 3: So it's undoubtedly having some sort of impact.
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  Speaker 1: In Israel. As in many societies where military service is
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  Speaker 1: a part of life, there's a thread in popular.
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  Speaker 2: Culture of the thoughtful warrior poet.
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  Speaker 1: Who dreams of better times.
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  Speaker 2: Yo, but I'm a soldier, and don't you cry for me?
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  Speaker 1: Girl, goes the chorus of this nineteen seventy nine hit
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  Speaker 1: by one of Israel's biggest stars, Shlomo Aatzi. Israel has been,
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  Speaker 1: by choice and by circumstance, a warrior state since it
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  Speaker 1: was founded in nineteen forty eight, after centuries of persecution
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  Speaker 1: and after six million Jews were murdered in Adolf Hitler's Holocaust.
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  Speaker 1: The United Nations split a tiny sliver on the eastern
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  Speaker 1: shore of the Mediterranean roughly in half, and called one
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  Speaker 1: slice Palestine and the other slice Israel. An acknowledgment that
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  Speaker 1: Jews and Muslims both regard this as their holy land.
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  Speaker 1: The idea was to give Jews somewhere safe to live forevermore,
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  Speaker 1: but the fighting has gone on ever since. October Evan
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three was just the latest iteration har Mass
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  Speaker 1: fighters swarming into Israel from Gaza and Israel pounding Gaza
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  Speaker 1: with a stated aim of returning the hostages, eliminating her
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  Speaker 1: Maas and destroying the tunnels under the strip. Her Mass,
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  Speaker 1: which began as an elected government but which morphed into
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  Speaker 1: a totalitarian regime, hasn't allowed Gazans a free vote since
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: two thousand and six. It brought on this conflict with
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  Speaker 1: an intention of galvanizing the world against Israel, and paying
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  Speaker 1: the price have been Gaza's civilians, with ha Mass claiming
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  Speaker 1: forty thousand have died in this year of bloodshed, and
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  Speaker 1: in Israel, a sense of complacency and tranquility, particularly for
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  Speaker 1: the post Holocaust generations, have been completely shattered. Israel has
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  Speaker 1: quite a remarkable missile defense system called the Iron Dome,
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  Speaker 1: which has protected it in a lot of instances from
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: rocket fire coming in.
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  Speaker 2: From over its borders.
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  Speaker 1: But October seven really shattered their sense of safety and
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  Speaker 1: their sense of faith in the Israeli state to protect them,
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  Speaker 1: didn't it.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, And one of the drawbacks of having an irondome
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  Speaker 4: system is that in Israel's case, it didn't have as
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  Speaker 4: much of an urgency to take care of the rockets
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  Speaker 4: being fired from Hamas in Gaza for many, many years
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  Speaker 4: because it had the safety of the Irondome system. So
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  Speaker 4: as long as it was working and as long as
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  Speaker 4: missiles weren't landing in Israeli population centers, there was no
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  Speaker 4: great need from the Israeli army to mount any kind
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  Speaker 4: of incursion into Gaza or what Israeli sometimes call a
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  Speaker 4: grass cutting mission, where you go in and mow the
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  Speaker 4: lawn to get rid of the problem and wait until
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  Speaker 4: it grows back.
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  Speaker 3: But because of that circumstance, you've got a.
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  Speaker 4: Situation on October seven where hundreds, even thousands of Hamas
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  Speaker 4: fighters and even ordinary Gazans have stormed across the border
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  Speaker 4: infiltrated Israel. And what happened was Israel's military was left
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  Speaker 4: flat footed by what happened.
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  Speaker 3: It was caught off guard.
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  Speaker 4: So I guess we're left in a situation where even
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  Speaker 4: now one year on, there's approximately one hundred and one
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  Speaker 4: Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza. And so the
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  Speaker 4: compact between the state and the people, in which a
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  Speaker 4: person gives three years of their life to military conscription
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  Speaker 4: and in return they're assured of that safety and security,
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  Speaker 4: the image of that, or the symbolism of that, seems
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  Speaker 4: to have been fractured, in part because Israelis are looking
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  Speaker 4: at Gaza and seeing their countrymen still held in captivity,
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  Speaker 4: and while the army is doing whatever it can to
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  Speaker 4: try and get them out, they are being hamstrung. They
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  Speaker 4: haven't been returned, and so that has had a devastating
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  Speaker 4: impact on faith in the army and faith in the
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  Speaker 4: security establishment. Although it's not totally broken, there are certainly
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  Speaker 4: some people who are asking themselves what it's all for
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  Speaker 4: at this point.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on the front for this fresh
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  Speaker 1: cut of one of our favorite episodes from the past
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  Speaker 1: twelve months. We'll be back with all new episodes from
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  Speaker 1: January eleven, and in the meantime, you can check out
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: all Australia's best journalism at the Australian dot com dot
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  Speaker 1: au