A coordinated effort is underway right now to evacuate U.S. citizens from Israel, many of them are residents of South Florida.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order last week that will enable the State of Florida to carryout rescue and evacuation operations. At the national level, the U.S. government is also arranging flights to get Americans who want leave Israel, Gaza and the West Bank out safely.
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WATCH HEREIsraelis broke out in song at Miami International Airport Saturday, singing “the nation of Israel lives on” as they waited to board their flight back to their homeland.
Amid chaos and heartache, the South Florida Jewish community is banding together to help as much as they can.
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“We're sending between 20 to 50 suitcases every flight we have over a thousand volunteers that added to the joint effort in the first five hours after this started. We have a big warehouse, we have people donating money, we have people donating suitcases, people donating supplies,” said Nati Schnitman.
MIA has become the hub of activity to donate supplies to Israel.
The Director of Logistics for America for Israel, Mike Vilker, said they’ve been shipping military gear that's not restricted, like tourniquets, and other basic supplies to Israel.
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“A hundred percent of every dollar that we raise goes to support our operation of getting the requests from the soldiers that we're receiving in Israel, sourcing the materials here, getting them over to Israel and then distributing them specifically to the units that need them,” said Vilker.
The U.S. Department of State announced its charted flights from the Tel-Aviv airport will depart Monday, Oct. 16 and Tuesday, Oct. 17. There are also sea departures leaving from Haifa which is north of Tel-Aviv to take U.S. citizens to the island of Cyprus. The U.S. government said it’s working on identifying departure points in Gaza but the ongoing conflict in that area has made it challenging.
