Assignment: Leaving Israel for Cyprus
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Increasing numbers of Israeli people are moving to the nearby island of Cyprus. Sky high property prices, disillusion with domestic politics and security concerns following the Hamas attacks of 7th October have led several thousand families to leave. They’re building on a rich history of Cypriot hospitality towards Jews. But in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus, huge luxury developments built by Israeli companies are causing controversy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC World Service, welcome to assignment. |
| 0:04.4 | We're in the fields, camping. |
| 0:07.3 | I'm thinking, oh my God, we created so many great memories by the fire with the guitar and everything. |
| 0:13.9 | And six something in the morning, I hear something that I just like prayed that it was thunder. |
| 0:21.8 | Early morning, October 7, 2023. |
| 0:25.1 | Ghalia Sofa wakes up in a tent, her two young daughters beside her. |
| 0:29.2 | She's just outside the kibbutz she calls home, near the border between Israel and Gaza. |
| 0:34.2 | Something's very wrong. |
| 0:36.2 | I realize that it's gunshots and it won't stop. It won't stop. So I'm like, what do I do? |
| 0:41.7 | I haven't run this scenario in my head before. So I take my girls one in each hand and I start |
| 0:47.2 | running. Could you see anything or could you just do hear it? |
| 0:51.2 | Rockets up and gun fights going on. It was chaos, you know. |
| 0:56.8 | Palestinian militants have carried out an assault unprecedented in its scale in recent years. |
| 1:03.3 | This footage is from a party in the desert that was taking place. |
| 1:07.4 | We reached the safe room, so... |
| 1:09.5 | You had a safe room in your home. |
| 1:11.2 | Yeah. |
| 1:11.9 | And then you have to tell a three-year-old, you have to be quiet because there's bad guys. |
| 1:17.1 | For me, that felt like the closest moment to the Holocaust. |
| 1:20.6 | Like, you have to shut up because someone can know that we're here and can come and murder us. |
| 1:32.0 | Just over 400 kilometers away, across a short stretch of the Mediterranean Sea, |
| 1:37.8 | the chief rabbi of Cyprus, Rabbi Arizeev Raskin, is at prayer in the city of Larnika. |
... |
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