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The next day we get to the airport at about 8am to fly to Israel from Cyprus, and oh my God they’ve hired a crop sprayer. Well not quite, but with six people and all our gear it seems damn small. It is in fact a nine-seater Islander, and the passengers and crew are as follows: pilot and co-pilot, Doug Vogt (camera) Jim Preen (panic stations) Doug Mason (editor) John Donvan (correspondent) no duty frees.

The journey is actually quite uneventful, it lasts about two hours. We cruise at 10,000 feet and it is cold and bloody noisy. As we’re landing, we have to make way for some huge U.S. Galaxies, delivering air-defence Patriot Missiles, we later discover.

Originally, we were posted to Israel for general news coverage, but as soon as we get there we hook up with 20/20, a big time ABC show. Our correspondent is Tom Jarriel, Don Thrasher is our producer. We check into the Tel Aviv Sheraton (empty, I wonder why?) and then drive the forty minutes to check in with the guys at the ABC bureau in Jerusalem.

The bureau is complete chaos. Doug goes to use a phone, and a secretary screams at him, “Don’t touch that phone, I kill people who touch that phone.” People seem a little overwrought. The story we are to do, concerns the effect of the scud terror on the citizens of Israel, I suggested they go no further than the ABC Jerusalem bureau.

Meeting over we head back to our hotel in Tel Aviv, and it’s not long before the fun starts. Just after eight the sirens sound and now I’m glad I’ve practised putting on my chem suit. The sound of those fucking sirens is something I won’t forget, they made my stomach churn, even now if I hear an ambulance siren it brings me up with a jolt.

Doug and I are on the balcony of the 20^th floor, camera at the ready, when up go the patriots, and Doug gets it on tape, the first patriots to be launched on Israeli soil. We aren’t sure, but they don’t seem to have done the job (shooting down the scuds) as there is a god almighty explosion a short distance away.

Now it’s into a cab to record the wreckage. It’s not pretty, this has been a bad hit, several houses are destroyed, but fortunately not many are injured and thank god it wasn’t chemical. We spend a couple of hours, and it is dispiriting work filming wrecked apartments, screaming people and ambulances. I find I’m shaking; I’ve never been bombed before. That bastard Hussein, why can’t he leave us alone.

The next day we return to Jerusalem to film a hospital that is specially equipped to deal with the victims of chemical attack. Having not slept the previous night, for obvious reasons and having been working like a maniac, I am now somewhat overwrought, and when we are shown the special gas proof cribs for new-born babies this is all too much for me, and the tears come. The world seems a pretty sick place at times.

Swee is our driver and at 65 he is a little slow, but a pleasant old cove, who I’m mortified to learn was imprisoned by the British during the forties. Apparently, his guards were Irish, who as he said hated the Brits more than the Israelis, so they didn’t treat him too badly.

I don’t know if this story transmits to the page, but here it is. Don Thrasher our enthusiastic producer liked it. In the course of interviewing people on the street just after a scud attack we came upon an old lady who had just suffered her second scud hit, once again just yards from her. She was unhurt, but kept screaming, with some justification, “Saddam stop bombing me.”

I have previously tried to put the Jordanian case, but I guess I hardly need to do the same for Israel. This is a paranoid nation, and why not as just about every Arab nation has sworn to push Israel into the sea. Their argument for possession of the West Bank is that it provides a buffer against the Arab hordes, and to some extent this is true, but what I never got from talking to many Israelis is any sense that they are part of the Mid East problem. Blame it seemed could only be laid at the Arabs door, surely a realisation that Israel is part of the problem could be part of the solution.

That night we are bombed again, and Doug films the parabola of a patriot that ploughs into the city. The bureau wants our footage so I trudge down to the lobby to meet a motorbike messenger who has come for our tape. I’m dressed in full chemical suit; the biker is in shorts.

Once again we go off to film the wreckage. I spot the Mayor of Tel Aviv and get him to say a few well-chosen words. Apparently, the scud or was it the patriot (?) destroyed a school for disabled kids. (nobody was in it at the time)

The next day we interview Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir, and Doug and I impress the fuck out of everyone with our sartorial elegance. We wear suits and ties. (Incidentally, yes I had got my bag back from the airline) It seems we do good work and our bosses are very happy with the interview. Scuds notwithstanding the story cools down for us as the editing now starts.

It is aired on 25^th January, and everyone is delighted with the piece. I was not at all sure how it would turn out, but I have to say on seeing the final product, it is excellent.

Our last night in Jerusalem is spent on the roof, or as our southern correspondent would have it ‘ruff’, he also had the unnerving habit of calling sirens, ‘sire-eens’. This confused a good many of our interviewees. What were we doing on the roof I hear you say, well this was the live spot from which Tom broadcast, which would have been fine if it hadn’t been pissing with rain.

A few more brief observations about Israel. Because of the scud menace, many people who live in Tel Aviv packed their families off to hotels in Jerusalem and Eilat, with the consequence that it was something of a ghost town. At night there were always huge queues of traffic leaving the city, with the reverse happening in the morning.

Because Doug and I didn’t use the sealed rooms provided in the hotel in case of a gas attack, there was only one occasion where I was able to witness the fact that there were people even more panic struck than myself.

A bunch of us were sitting in the bar of the hotel one evening, when the sire-eens went off; I’ve never seen such a scramble to get into the lifts, raw panic. I was told that it was pretty horrible in the sealed rooms with about 30 people in a very confined space, all very nervous. I think Doug and I were much better off on our balcony, bloody idiots.

One of the other problems with this situation is that nobody talks about anything but the war. Now this may be entirely understandable, but my god it was boring not to say depressing at times. I tried on many occasions to steer the conversation to other topics with very little success. In fact I can safely say that the only subject that seemed to hold anybody’s attention for any length time other than war was sex.

Purely in the interests of science I put this theory to the test whenever there were any pretty women about. God, what I have to do for science.

But now it’s time to leave the delights of Israel, because somebody wants us in Cairo.

To be continued…

I was very amused by this patronising sentence I wrote 32 years ago: Swee is our driver and at 65 he is a little slow, but a pleasant old cove… It should be pointed out that as of September 2023 I’m now 69 years old.