Washington resident is stuck in Israel, waiting to get home

Timothy is a listener of KTTH’s Jason Rantz Show and is stuck in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Grays Harbor County resident was in Israel for a Holy Land tour. Timothy decided to go ahead of the tour group to spend time with a friend of his who is an exchange student. Now he finds himself stuck in a war zone, unable to get home.

“We had a great week, and because they are from here, and we had our own personal tour guides,” Timothy said in an in interview with KTTH’s Jason Rantz. “So what was really nice was, since they knew where the Holy Land tour was going to take us, they took us to all the other stuff.”

Timothy said they went all the way up to the Lebanese border, north of Gaza.

“We literally drove right by Gaza, on our way home Friday night, because we had been down in the Negev desert, and when actually stopped in Be’er Sheva to get ice cream, which is was just right outside where a lot of this stuff was going on.”

He said they made it back all the way to Tel Aviv when all the sirens started to go off.

“There’s an app that you can download, and it’s called Homefront Israel,” he explained. “It gives you warnings. So if you’re out anywhere, and there’s an incoming missile, it tells you, ‘Hey, you got one coming in your area.'”

Timothy said the app tells how many seconds it will take for the missile to reach your location.

“Typically, we have a 90-second window from the time that it’s launched, unless the Iron Dome picks it up, to impact.” The Iron Dome is an Israeli defense system that can often destroy missiles before they hit their targets.

He said all new buildings are required to have a bomb shelter. Timothy explained that the building that he was staying in had a shelter with concrete walls that were about 10 feet by 10 feet.

“My wife and I were actually able to survive (because of the bomb shelter), but there’s been eight of us sleeping in that 10 by 10 room for the last few days,” he said.

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He said one in four buildings has a bomb shelter in the neighborhood and people were helping each other.

The next goal was to get out of Tel Aviv.

“As far as I know, we did get a notification from the State Department. They are going to start facilitating travel for Americans to get out,” Timothy said. “But the plans that we had were actually better than what the State Department was giving us because at least as far as the latest, what’s going to happen is they will get you out of here, you’ll either be on a boat, from Haifa to Cyprus, or they will put you on an airplane to one of multiple different locations.”

Timothy said that right now they don’t know when or where they are going to go.

“And then you have to find this promissory note that you’ll repay the government for this charter. Then wherever they drop you off in Europe or Cyprus or whatever, then it’s up to you to arrange the rest of your travel to get home.”

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He said he had chartered a flight on El-Al Airlines to get to Athens.

But for now, Timothy said it is all surreal, including how people act in between indiscriminate bombings.

“I’m sorry if I laugh, but some act as if it’s business as usual,” he said. “I’m sitting here overlooking a park seeing people on the bench, walking their dogs, and pushing strollers. There were kids out earlier today. It was like everybody was just ready to get back to their normal lives.”

But it seems normal is a long way away. For now, Timothy waits and hopes this nightmare will end soon.

“If you’re a true believer, and I’m a born-again Christian. I believe God values every soul as much as mine as much as yours or anybody else’s,” Timothy said. “We’re all on equal ground in God’s eyes. And when people see that, and we’re all created in God’s image and so that puts a basically a value on everybody’s life.

“We should all be able to live with each other.”