From:
https://tinyurl.com/muhbyn7s (theepochtimes.com)
===
Stranded Americans Say US Embassy Did Not Help Them in Israel When
War Started
By Dan M. Berger
10/24/2023
Quigg Lawrence, an Anglican bishop, and his wife Annette had the
misfortune to fly into Israel on Oct. 7, the day Hamas began its
horrible massacre of Israeli civilians. Planning to lead a church
tour, arriving a day or two early to be ready for it, they spent the
rest of that Saturday sorting things out and finally canceling the
trip.
Looking to their safety, they called the U.S. Embassy for guidance.
They were appalled, they said, that when they asked for shelter,
embassy personnel denied it. They didn't help the Lawrences arrange
to leave the country and even refused to give them the embassy's
address in Jerusalem, Bishop Lawrence told The Epoch Times.
He is the suffragan bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Christ Our
Hope, about 40 congregations in Virginia and North Carolina.
When they finally managed to fly out of the country, he said, on one
leg, they found themselves on a plane with 55 Ethiopian immigrants to
America.
"I'm pro-immigrant, but it's ironic that U.S. citizens couldn't get
our government to lift a finger, let alone talk to us, while refugees
on a paid flight are coming from Ethiopia," he said.
He didn't expect this treatment from the embassy, he said. "I've
traveled all over the world as a pastor and bishop," amassing many
frequent flier miles. "I've watched too many movies. You run to the
embassy, they open the doors, and you're safe."
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment from
The Epoch Times.
The Lawrences said they spoke with U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.),
who represents their Roanoke district, and told them he had heard of
other such complaints. Mr. Griffith responded to The Epoch Times in
an email:
"I am so thankful Bishop Lawrence and his wife were able to safely
get out of Israel. Before and after my conversation with Bishop
Lawrence, I have heard from a number of my colleagues about other
situations where the State Department was not helpful," Mr. Griffith
said.
The Lawrences were preparing to lead a tour of more than 30 people
from four countries and eight states, including an Anglican
archbishop from Rwanda and a retired one from Nigeria.
They flew into Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport on Air France, landing
around 11 a.m. local time, a few hours after the Hamas attack began.
Their flight didn't have wifi, Bishop Lawrence said, so they were out
of touch and unaware of the situation. They didn't see any rockets as
their plane landed.
When they landed, he said, "my phone blew up," with word about the
massacres of people, including children and the elderly.
Their friends Keith and Kathy Martin, also of Roanoke, who arrived 90
minutes after the Lawrences, already knew the situation. Their flight
did have wifi, and they had been sitting next to an Israeli with
intelligence ties who'd spent the whole flight clicking around on his
phone.
"As they got ready to land, he told Keith, 'You're going to be
landing in a war zone. Israel is at war.'"
The airport itself seemed calm when they entered. Customs was almost
vacant, Bishop Lawrence said, which he found strange as he was
familiar with Israel's strict security there and elsewhere. He and
his wife had made two previous trips to Israel.
"We hadn't seen the full scope. The airport felt calm. Israelis are
used to skirmishes and fighting with Hamas and Hezbollah. Most people
didn't seem worried," Bishop Lawrence said.
"As the day went on, people were getting more and more frightened.
They were hearing stories about loved ones. Israel is so small, it's
like a small town. Everyone knows your business. Everyone knows
someone who was killed or kidnapped," he said.
"I saw a deep sadness."
He initially told his group, most of whom were preparing to leave,
that the tour would go ahead. On Saturday afternoon, they considered
altering the tour to accommodate late-arriving group members,
condensing it, or delaying its start, but many airlines began
canceling flights. By dinner time, it was clear that the tour would
have to be canceled.
They went to dinner, served buffet style at their beachfront hotel in
Netanya, north of Tel Aviv, with many large Orthodox families in
attendance.
As they were finishing up around 7:30 p.m., he said, "Two bombs
exploded directly overhead. It shook the windows and the building. It
felt like a small earthquake."
"We all ran down the stairwells to the safe room in the basement.
There was pandemonium. There was screaming. Kids were screaming,
speaking a language we don't know. Everyone was talking at once,
being loud."
When they got to the basement, they found an unusual situation. A
small group of about a dozen men were conducting a religious service,
one marking the beginning of the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah. It
celebrates the completion of the annual cycle of Torah reading and
the start of the next one.
The men ignored the noise and confusion and continued their service,
Bishop Lawrence said.
"The men just kept doing their thing, like nothing was happening.
Everyone else was freaking," he said.
The crowd finally calmed down, and after an hour, the hotel told them
they could return to their rooms. The Lawrences did so and texted
their group to cancel the trip.
It was a sleepless night, he said. Mr. Martin advised them to put
their bed's headboard against the window to block any shrapnel from
coming through, but their bed wasn't moveable, Bishop Lawrence said.
They moved some other furniture and the drapes to compensate. "It
probably didn't do much, but it made us feel better."
They heard bombing intermittently. They heard helicopters and jets
nearby. Rumors circulated that Hamas was attacking from the sea, and
the hotel was right on the beach in Netanya.
Mr. Martin contacted him at around 5 a.m. Sunday, saying he'd been
trying to book flights out. Mr. Martin had clicked on a link he
thought took him to United, Bishop Lawrence said, but perhaps through
lack of sleep, he ended up talking to a fly-by-night travel agency.
Over the next few hours, the agent assembled a complex itinerary-four
legs beginning with an Ethiopian Airlines flight to Addis Ababa,
connecting to Dublin, Chicago, and then Roanoke. Starting Monday,
Oct. 9, the trip would take them 46 hours.
"The guy was an angel and a devil in the same package," Bishop
Lawrence said.
The tickets were $1,336 for each of the four of them, money that it
took seven credit cards between them to pay, as the agent padded the
whole thing with an additional $12,000 charge. The two couples were
charged more than $17,000. The couples are now disputing the charges,
Bishop Lawrence said.
On Sunday, Oct. 8, as they ate breakfast in the hotel dining room, he
recalls hearing helicopters flying up and down the coast, which they
did all day. "They were probably looking for a naval assault," he
said.
That morning, they called the embassy. "They said 'fill out this
form'. I said, 'Come on, man. It's a war zone. Fill a form out?'"
They asked if they could come to the embassy, he said. They were
refused, and the staff member wouldn't even tell them where the
embassy was located.
Bishop Lawrence was unimpressed. "Why pay for an embassy when they
won't respond to the needs of their citizens?"
The day passed uneventfully. He and his wife left the hotel for lunch
and found a cafe where Israelis were eating. "No one seemed uptight."
But Bishop Lawrence suspected what lay beneath the calm.
"I'm a former paramedic," he said. "In stressful situations, some
people panic and scream. Others get stoic, like the shock of
everything, the brain is trying to figure out how to assimilate."
They saw few people in the streets.
They ate dinner in the hotel dining room. Few people were there. "It
was odd, like being in the Twilight Zone."
That night, they continued hearing jets and helicopters, but the only
sounds of bombing were far away. They packed a go bag in case of
emergency during the night and otherwise made ready for a pre-dawn
departure from the hotel to go to the airport.
They had various ups and downs making their flight. They got in
someone else's Uber by mistake and were running late but got to the
airport in time because of the driver's heroic speeding. At the
airport, they found enormous security lines.
Bishop Lawrence, who had heart surgery earlier this year and
regularly monitors his heart rate, saw his heart racing. Meanwhile,
he worried he could neither endure the long line nor get through the
airport. His wife suggested he use a wheelchair, and they found one
unlocked near a long line of locked ones.
He was challenged by an airport employee but convinced her he was a
heart patient. She relented and said they'd take him to the gate, but
his wife and friends would have to go through the regular line. The
other three met up with him around an hour later but told him they
had been pushed through the security line a little faster to reunite
with him.
Their expensive flights home were long but uneventful, including two
lengthy layovers.
He remains dismayed over their treatment by their own government. The
confusion he found, he said, reminded him more of "Benghazi or the
fall of Saigon."
They would keep getting emails days after arriving home.
Some told them to shelter in place and not to come to the embassy.
One said they'd get flights but would have to sign a promissory note
for the charges and couldn't pick where to fly. They'd be limited to
one suitcase. A couple of days later, they got an email advising them
that now they'd been taken out on a ship.
"We wrote off the embassy," Bishop Lawrence said. "It was apparent to
me, after the form emails, that they were not going to do anything.
Nada. Zip."
Bishop Lawrence noted that, in contrast, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
mobilized the state government to evacuate Floridians free of charge,
more than 700 as of this writing. "It's no joke that DeSantis makes
(President Joe) Biden look incompetent by comparison."
===
--Sean
... Wiler's Law: government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)
