Stranded Americans claim US Embassy offered no aid during Israel’s outbreak of war.
Anglican Bishop and Wife Stranded in Israel During Hamas Attack
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.
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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.”
State Department’s Lack of Assistance
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.”
What were the reasons that led the Lawrences to cancel their trip?
The Lawrences made the difficult decision to cancel the trip entirely.
Concerned for their safety, the Lawrences reached out to the U.S. Embassy for assistance and shelter. To their dismay, embassy personnel denied their request for shelter and did not offer any help in arranging their departure from the country. Bishop Lawrence expressed his disappointment, stating that he expected more support from the embassy, especially considering his role as a pastor and bishop who had traveled extensively around the world.
Upon finally managing to leave the country, the Lawrences found themselves on a plane with 55 Ethiopian immigrants to America. Bishop Lawrence commented on the irony of U.S. citizens receiving little assistance from their own government while refugees on a paid flight were being brought in from Ethiopia.
The State Department has not responded to requests for comment on the matter. However, U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, who represents the Lawrences’ district, said that he had heard of similar complaints regarding the lack of assistance from the State Department. He expressed relief that the Lawrences were able to safely leave Israel but acknowledged that there were ongoing issues with the State Department’s responsiveness.
Prior to their departure, the Lawrences were preparing to lead a tour of more than 30 people from various countries and states. They arrived at
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