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Israelis scoff chips and chocolate as the missiles rain down · The Front

0:05
Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
0:14
Speaker 1: The federal government says it won't give quote preferential treatment
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Speaker 1: alive right now at the Australian dot com dot au.
0:41
Speaker 1: Iran has renegged on a promise to stop attacking its
0:44
Speaker 1: neighbors and assaulted the Gulf States with an array of
0:48
Speaker 1: drones and missiles. That's as the US indicates the war
0:52
Speaker 1: is nowhere near over.
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Speaker 2: Today.
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Speaker 1: Our correspondent in the Middle East, Jonnie Basham, is here
0:58
Speaker 1: to talk about the mood in Israel as this war widens.
1:02
Speaker 1: Spoiler it involves a lot of comfort eating. Jonni Vashan
1:09
Speaker 1: is the Australian's correspondent in Israel and Yonni, you're a
1:12
Speaker 1: foodie and I've been detecting some signs that you've been
1:15
Speaker 1: hangry over the past week or so. I know it's
1:17
Speaker 1: not the biggest problem anyone's got in Israel right now.
1:20
Speaker 2: But why have you been hungry?
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Speaker 3: You're not the only one who thinks I've been hungry.
1:25
Speaker 4: One of our News Corp colleagues, Sophi Elsworth, is here
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Speaker 4: and all she ever does is ask me if I'm
1:29
Speaker 4: tired and hungry, and if so, how far away should
1:31
Speaker 4: she run? But it's really quite unfair, like I'm eating
1:35
Speaker 4: reasonably well. But the problem with being a war correspondent,
1:38
Speaker 4: or being a foreign correspondent, you don't get three meals
1:41
Speaker 4: a day, and sometimes your meals are a handful of
1:44
Speaker 4: cashier nuts and a protein shake if you can find it.
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Speaker 3: But that's the job, isn't it. We're not supposed to
1:53
Speaker 3: be sitting down and having a three course meal every day.
1:56
Speaker 1: There was a famous story about sixty minutes back in
1:58
Speaker 1: the day, sixty minutes with the famous journo Richard Carlton
2:01
Speaker 1: showed up and then they had to leave their hotel.
2:04
Speaker 1: I don't know why the story was finished, basically, and
2:06
Speaker 1: when other journals came in it was full of kind
2:08
Speaker 1: of caveat and smoked salmon, and they had supplied themselves
2:12
Speaker 1: incredibly well. I think that maybe the old school war
2:14
Speaker 1: correspondents had the right idea.
2:16
Speaker 4: Well, look, I've done this a couple of times, and
2:19
Speaker 4: I feel like the best way to fortify yourself for
2:23
Speaker 4: hunger is whenever you stop to get petrol by a
2:27
Speaker 4: large number of yogurts protein bars, And that's kind of
2:31
Speaker 4: what you have to break in case of emergency. And
2:34
Speaker 4: there's constantly emergency around here. There's never enough food. All
2:36
Speaker 4: the best restaurants are closed, coffee shops aren't open. Life
2:39
Speaker 4: is sort of slowly returning to normal here, but it's
2:42
Speaker 4: still taking a while for ordinary life to just return
2:46
Speaker 4: to the way it was where you can just find
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Speaker 4: a sandwich as you're walking down the street.
2:51
Speaker 2: This is a culture that loves food.
2:53
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole tradition of the Friday night shab
2:55
Speaker 1: but dinner is so central to Jewish culture, in Israeli culture.
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Speaker 1: And you went off to a supermarket the other day
3:00
Speaker 1: to speak to some moms basically about what they're cooking
3:03
Speaker 1: for their families in these shelters to get them through
3:05
Speaker 1: the long hours of boredom. I love to read that
3:08
Speaker 1: it was comfort food.
3:10
Speaker 3: It was comfort food. I expected that i'd show up.
3:13
Speaker 4: I mean what I did was I chose a very
3:15
Speaker 4: working class neighborhood chose a discount supermarket, and I just
3:19
Speaker 4: sat in the car park and just kind of assaulted
3:22
Speaker 4: people as they walked out with their trolleers, and just said,
3:24
Speaker 4: what's in there? What are you cooking, what's for dinner tonight?
3:27
Speaker 4: How are you finding this war? What are you doing
3:29
Speaker 4: to survive?
3:30
Speaker 3: And overwhelmingly what I found was people just buying snacks
3:34
Speaker 3: and junk food and crap.
3:35
Speaker 1: And we want to give our kids something that they
3:38
Speaker 1: know that we'll be on the table some.
3:40
Speaker 2: You know homeswee home kind of feeling.
3:45
Speaker 4: And I sort of asked them why, because we all
3:47
Speaker 4: know it's not very sustaining to just survive on pringles
3:51
Speaker 4: and sneakers, bars and things like that. But what they
3:54
Speaker 4: were saying to me is that when you're running with
3:55
Speaker 4: your kids down to a bomb shelter every three hours,
3:58
Speaker 4: every two hours, sometimes multiple times an hour, comfort food
4:02
Speaker 4: is what you reach for.
4:03
Speaker 3: Even the people who aren't cooking. There's just a mood
4:06
Speaker 3: at the moment on the ground here.
4:08
Speaker 4: It's there's something comforting about reaching for food that is
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Speaker 4: hiring sugar and carbs and fat, easy to eat, salty.
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Speaker 3: There is something comforting about that don't.
4:18
Speaker 1: You think, Oh yeah, completely, absolutely, But I mean most
4:20
Speaker 1: of us don't have the excuse of ballistic missiles flying
4:23
Speaker 1: overhead to get stuck into the dairy milk. There's a
4:27
Speaker 1: lot of forbearance in Israelis, isn't there. I mean they
4:30
Speaker 1: are used over the entire history of the country to
4:33
Speaker 1: getting into their safe rooms, getting into their bomb shelters,
4:36
Speaker 1: and just dealing with whatever terrifying reality they are confronting
4:40
Speaker 1: right now. But they're also really feisty. I'm intrigued about
4:46
Speaker 1: what their mood is now about this war because the
4:50
Speaker 1: war in Gaza was, although initially popular, becoming unpopular as
4:55
Speaker 1: it dragged on, Wasn't it with Israelis to.
4:58
Speaker 4: An extent, I think I think it would be fair
5:01
Speaker 4: to say that the war in Gaza was seen as
5:04
Speaker 4: there was a lot of popular support for the war
5:06
Speaker 4: in Gaza when before the war started, So just after
5:09
Speaker 4: October seven, there was a lot of polling that was
5:10
Speaker 4: being done of Israelis and the support for going in
5:13
Speaker 4: and routing Commas, which has always been the objective of
5:16
Speaker 4: the war. It wasn't to go in at Flat and Gaza.
5:19
Speaker 4: The popularity for going in and getting rid of this
5:21
Speaker 4: problem that existed beyond the border and which brought a
5:23
Speaker 4: massacre into Israel. And October seven that was always like
5:25
Speaker 4: remarkably high. I can't record the exact figure, but it
5:27
Speaker 4: was certainly above eighty percent. It might have even been
5:29
Speaker 4: above ninety percent. As the war dragged on, that pared
5:36
Speaker 4: back because of the cost it was having on israelis
5:39
Speaker 4: this is a very different equation with Iran.
5:42
Speaker 3: The support for the war on Iran is as highs
5:47
Speaker 3: perhaps around.
5:48
Speaker 4: The same heights, as it was for the war on Gaza.
5:49
Speaker 4: And it's because Israelis recognized that this is not a
5:52
Speaker 4: sustainable situation to have a country that's not located very
5:56
Speaker 4: far away that can launch ballistic missiles at you on
6:00
Speaker 4: a whim. And I actually remind people who are listening,
6:03
Speaker 4: like it doesn't take hours for a ballistic missile to
6:05
Speaker 4: reach Israel. Ballistic missile launch from Iran takes eight or
6:07
Speaker 4: nine minutes. And by the time you, the citizen of Israel,
6:11
Speaker 4: get notified this five hundred kilogram warhead at times is
6:15
Speaker 4: going to potentially land in your city. You have three
6:28
Speaker 4: minutes to organize your life and get yourself into a shelter,
6:31
Speaker 4: which is fine if you're forty one year old male
6:34
Speaker 4: sitting in a hotel room. But if you're a single
6:37
Speaker 4: one with three kids all under the age of five,
6:39
Speaker 4: that takes the KERRALI I did a story a couple
6:46
Speaker 4: of days ago where I visited the headquarters of the
6:49
Speaker 4: National Ambulance Service here the again David Adam. I was
6:53
Speaker 4: speaking to one of their representatives who told me that
6:55
Speaker 4: this war with Iran differed from the last war that
6:58
Speaker 4: Israel had with Iran in June, simply by the fact
7:01
Speaker 4: that more people are heeding the warnings to get into
7:03
Speaker 4: the shelters. They're getting these pre alerts to go down
7:06
Speaker 4: to prepare themselves to sit in a shelter for a while.
7:09
Speaker 4: People aren't hanging around to stand on their balconies and
7:11
Speaker 4: film the rockets coming in. And it's resulting in fewer
7:14
Speaker 4: people being killed, obviously, and it's also resulting in far
7:18
Speaker 4: fewer people being seriously injured. People are getting injured here,
7:21
Speaker 4: but they're injuries are slight or minor. They're not as
7:24
Speaker 4: severe as they were last time, So that was interesting.
7:28
Speaker 1: So they're in this enormous personal peril. They're obviously scared
7:32
Speaker 1: because they're taking those warnings seriously, So why are they
7:36
Speaker 1: supporting the war? I wonder And I heard Ahod Olma,
7:39
Speaker 1: the former Israeli Prime Minister, who is no fan of
7:41
Speaker 1: Benjamin Netanyah, who not a fan of the government, has
7:44
Speaker 1: been critical of the Garza war. He was saying, thank god,
7:47
Speaker 1: this is not about Israel. Thank god America has attacked
7:51
Speaker 1: Iran because Donald Trump says that Iran is a threat
7:55
Speaker 1: to America. But it's not. It's kind of not our fault.
7:58
Speaker 1: Do you think that's also what's going on in Israeli minds.
8:00
Speaker 1: It is that why the war is popular, even though
8:03
Speaker 1: it's so scary.
8:05
Speaker 4: Israeli see this as a just war because they've got
8:07
Speaker 4: a neighbor in Iran, which is openly trying to obtain
8:11
Speaker 4: a nuclear weapon. Its leadership in the IIGC. I mean,
8:15
Speaker 4: they say things on a regular basis like death to
8:17
Speaker 4: America and death to Israel. You can't have a country
8:20
Speaker 4: like that in the possession of a nuclear weapon because
8:22
Speaker 4: they're liable to use it. And so that's why the
8:25
Speaker 4: war is particularly popular with israelis The fact that America
8:28
Speaker 4: is getting involved is in large part because Israel's interests
8:32
Speaker 4: in the Middle East or America's interests in the Middle East.
8:34
Speaker 4: Iran with a nuclear weapon poses a direct threat to
8:37
Speaker 4: America in a scenario where the United States is providing
8:40
Speaker 4: aid to Israel in its fight against your owns. So
8:43
Speaker 4: the war is certainly popular with Israelis, you would imagine
8:46
Speaker 4: with the American people, although I did see polling that
8:48
Speaker 4: suggested it wasn't particularly popular with them, and they see
8:51
Speaker 4: this still as Israel's war that America is fighting. I
8:54
Speaker 4: don't believe that's correct at all, but that would seem
8:56
Speaker 4: to be the bey on the ground.
8:58
Speaker 1: There's been some polls that suggest that Benjamin Netna Who
9:01
Speaker 1: is getting a little bump in the polls because of this,
9:04
Speaker 1: he's going to have to call an election this year.
9:07
Speaker 1: He's got at least three corruption trials looming, ranging from
9:12
Speaker 1: very serious matters like a telecommunications bribery charge where he's
9:16
Speaker 1: alleged to have given favors to a telecommunications company in
9:19
Speaker 1: return for positive media coverage, and then there's some much
9:21
Speaker 1: more sort of trivial charges that actually involve the Australian
9:24
Speaker 1: billionaire James Packer about the receipt allegedly by nettnya who
9:29
Speaker 1: and his wife of things like cigars and Champagne is Netna.
9:33
Speaker 2: Who going to be the beneficiary.
9:35
Speaker 1: Of the support for this war or do you think
9:37
Speaker 1: israelis kind of separate that in their minds and they'll
9:39
Speaker 1: make their decisions about him on other matters.
9:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's an interesting question because the latest polling certainly
9:45
Speaker 4: shows a bump for his Liquid Party. If an election
9:48
Speaker 4: were held today, he would probably obtain a few more
9:51
Speaker 4: seats in the parliament. However, it doesn't necessarily translate to
9:53
Speaker 4: him whening government because his coalition partners, according to the
9:57
Speaker 4: latest polling, anyway.
9:58
Speaker 3: Would lose some skin.
10:00
Speaker 4: If you spend a lot of time in Tel Aviv,
10:02
Speaker 4: as most reporters do, including myself, you will fall into
10:05
Speaker 4: the trap of thinking that Bibi is one of the
10:08
Speaker 4: most unpopular prime ministers in the history of Israel.
10:10
Speaker 3: But it's just not the case.
10:11
Speaker 4: You do have to leave the population centers like Tel
10:14
Speaker 4: Aviv to understand that people out there see him as
10:17
Speaker 4: the leader that Israel needs. There's a lot of criticism
10:20
Speaker 4: of him for what happened on October seven and the
10:23
Speaker 4: circumstances leading up to it, but this is a guy
10:26
Speaker 4: who's largely seen as the only person who could convince
10:33
Speaker 4: America to join this war, to run a joint US
10:37
Speaker 4: Israel war against Iranian regime. Much of what is occurring
10:42
Speaker 4: at the moment, the war in Gaza, the escalating war
10:46
Speaker 4: on the Lebanon Front against Hasbolah, and the current war
10:50
Speaker 4: that we're seeing in Iran, much of that is about
10:52
Speaker 4: legacy building and righting the wrongs that occurred on October seven.
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Speaker 1: You mentioned legacy building. I mean, there's a sort of
10:58
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory out there that Netanya, who has prosecuted
11:02
Speaker 1: the war so hard in Gaza because he wants to
11:05
Speaker 1: stay in power. Do you think that there's any truth
11:07
Speaker 1: to that.
11:08
Speaker 3: No.
11:09
Speaker 4: No, I just think there's a real simple reason for
11:11
Speaker 4: why the war in Gaza is being prosecuted so hard.
11:13
Speaker 4: It's really because there's a problem that exists in Gaza.
11:16
Speaker 4: And it's a problem that's not just for Israel, it's
11:18
Speaker 4: a problem for the whole world. And it's a terrorist
11:20
Speaker 4: group called Comas, and as long as it exists, the
11:22
Speaker 4: people of Gaza are going to suffer for it. I mean,
11:25
Speaker 4: the whole point of what Donald Trump and Benjamin Netna
11:29
Speaker 4: who are doing at the moment, is to try a
11:30
Speaker 4: nation building project in Gaza.
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Speaker 3: Whether that's ill conceived or not is another matter. Or
11:34
Speaker 3: whether it will be successful, it's another matter.
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Speaker 4: But the whole point is to try and rebuild Gaza
11:38
Speaker 4: for the people of Gaza, and it's very difficult to
11:40
Speaker 4: do that when you have the obstacle of Commas.
11:42
Speaker 1: There coming up are the devoutly Muslim Arabian states that
11:48
Speaker 1: line the Persian Gulf, inching closer to Israel's world.
11:52
Speaker 2: For you, well, I've got you.
11:53
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12:12
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12:28
Speaker 1: Speaking of nation building, there's certainly some alliance building going
12:30
Speaker 1: on to Donald Trump has a close relationship with Mohammed
12:34
Speaker 1: bin Salman the letter at Saudi Arabia. Now, Iran has
12:37
Speaker 1: attacked the entire Arabian peninsula pretty much. All those seven
12:41
Speaker 1: monarchies along the Persian Gulf are the victims now of
12:45
Speaker 1: ballistic missile strikes by Iran that a.
12:48
Speaker 4: Alian missile struck the moffuk Ansukly this is in Jordan.
12:52
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia says that it shot down twenty drones, and.
12:56
Speaker 2: Here in Iraqi, Kurdistan.
12:58
Speaker 3: I've been heard here in Doha in the last few minutes.
13:01
Speaker 1: They're all expressing outrage and it's obviously bringing them closer
13:05
Speaker 1: to America and potentially also closer to Israel.
13:08
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
13:09
Speaker 1: Is this going to end up being some sort of
13:12
Speaker 1: new alliance where there's this kind of uneasy friendship between
13:16
Speaker 1: Israel and those largely sunny countries on the Peninsula.
13:20
Speaker 3: I think that that was always the idea.
13:22
Speaker 4: I mean, Israel's hope is that it can build alliances
13:25
Speaker 4: with the Gulf nations. That was what was in train
13:28
Speaker 4: with Saudi Arabia ahead of October seven. And you know,
13:32
Speaker 4: there there was a school of thought out there that
13:34
Speaker 4: the entirety of October seven was orchestrated because of what
13:37
Speaker 4: was on the cards between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
13:39
Speaker 3: Is saying alliance?
13:40
Speaker 2: Is that what Trump calls the Abraham Accords?
13:42
Speaker 4: Yes, well, exactly that is what we're pronounce. We're talking
13:45
Speaker 4: about the Abraham Accords. And the great success of the
13:48
Speaker 4: Abraham Accords. The Saudis were going to join that, and
13:50
Speaker 4: that was part of the reason why October seven happened,
13:53
Speaker 4: which is a great irony if you're Kamas and Jehisnoi,
13:56
Speaker 4: the leader from US. Later of Kamas, he was killed.
14:00
Speaker 4: Those created discussions may end up happening anyway, So it
14:03
Speaker 4: was awful. Nothing Comus has been destroyed. What Iran is
14:06
Speaker 4: doing at the moment is trying to create global disorder
14:09
Speaker 4: economically through oil supplies.
14:11
Speaker 3: It's closing the straight up homos.
14:13
Speaker 4: It's creating a lot of anxiety and panic in countries
14:15
Speaker 4: even like ours. I've been reading in our own paper
14:18
Speaker 4: that people are stockpiling hoarding fuel because of the expected
14:21
Speaker 4: price hikes that are going to occur.
14:22
Speaker 1: All of that. To fill a tank might cost you
14:24
Speaker 1: an extra sort of three dollars twelve next week today.
14:29
Speaker 3: Well you know, you can buy a lot for that
14:30
Speaker 3: kind of money.
14:31
Speaker 4: But we can't even get a coffee these dates. But anyway,
14:36
Speaker 4: but I guess the point of it is that all
14:37
Speaker 4: of that, I mean Iran is doing is what is
14:40
Speaker 4: Ran is going to do, which is that in this
14:42
Speaker 4: asymmetric war, it's going to find a way to find advantage,
14:44
Speaker 4: and it will do that by disrupting oil supplies and
14:48
Speaker 4: cargo shipments and create havoc with the world economy, and
14:51
Speaker 4: that will put pressure on Donald Trump to bring an
14:53
Speaker 4: end to this war. That is what the Iranians are
14:56
Speaker 4: trying to do, because they don't have the air power,
14:57
Speaker 4: they don't have the naval forces, they don't have the
15:00
Speaker 4: capacity to really hit back in any comprehensive way. I mean,
15:03
Speaker 4: even the strikes that we're experiencing here in Israel. I
15:06
Speaker 4: was woken up three times last night by ballistic missile attacks,
15:10
Speaker 4: none of them land, and no one's being injured. All
15:14
Speaker 4: of it is causing great economic destruction here and just
15:16
Speaker 4: general sleep disruption and irritations everyone. What I'm very eager
15:19
Speaker 4: to see unfold out of this is what happens with
15:21
Speaker 4: the Gulf States. They're sandwiched in the middle of America,
15:24
Speaker 4: in Israel on one side, Iran on the other, which
15:26
Speaker 4: is actively attacking them, launching strikes on oil refineries in
15:29
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and you know, throwing drones at
15:33
Speaker 4: hotels in Dubai.
15:36
Speaker 1: I mean, they're westernizing, aren't they. On the spectrum between
15:39
Speaker 1: fundamentalist Islam and secular democracy, which is where Israel is.
15:44
Speaker 1: They're coming closer to Israel's endo the spectrum, which is
15:49
Speaker 1: kind of mind blowing given how conservative they have been.
15:52
Speaker 1: Women haven't been allowed to drive in some of those countries,
15:54
Speaker 1: you know, guest workers have no rights like they are
15:59
Speaker 1: turning into much more tolerant kind of accepting places for
16:03
Speaker 1: pragmatic reasons.
16:05
Speaker 3: Certainly for pragmatic reasons.
16:07
Speaker 4: And I would just add to this the additional layer
16:11
Speaker 4: of the role of China. There are people who are
16:13
Speaker 4: suggesting that much of this war, the distraction is to
16:17
Speaker 4: think that this is a war between Israel and Iran,
16:18
Speaker 4: when actually it's war between America and China. This idea
16:22
Speaker 4: that Iran is a close ally of China, that it
16:26
Speaker 4: supplies so much of its oil and output to China.
16:30
Speaker 4: China is the big buyer of Iranian oil, that operations
16:33
Speaker 4: in Venezuela and in Iran affect China, et cetera, et cetera.
16:36
Speaker 4: It's fascinating to watch what's been happening in the region
16:38
Speaker 4: in terms of how they are westernizing for reasons which
16:41
Speaker 4: I think you would assume are pragmatic. I mean, this
16:44
Speaker 4: is all about increasing trade, increasing security cooperation.
16:48
Speaker 3: It's been exciting to watch well.
16:51
Speaker 1: I hope you get at least a nice meal today
16:53
Speaker 1: before the sirens start again overnight.
16:55
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
16:56
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thanks Jemmy. Thanks.
17:03
Speaker 1: Jonnibishan is The Australian's North Asia correspondent, presently in Israel.
17:08
Speaker 1: You can read Yoni's journalism, plus all the best reporting
17:11
Speaker 1: and analysis from our journals around the world and at
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