With no flights in or out of Israel, here’s how stranded Floridians are getting home
Rabbi Yossi Harlig says his daughter is ending her year in Israel the same way she started it: Ducking into bomb shelters as missiles fly overhead.
“The year ended last Tuesday and she was supposed to go back home,” said Harlig, of the Chabad Center of Kendall and Pinecrest. Now, “everything got locked down” and she’s trying to find a way back home.
Harlig’s daughter is one of many waiting to be evacuated out of Israel by Grey Bull Rescue, one of the groups coordinating evacuation and rescue efforts with the state of Florida as commercial flights to and from Israel are halted amid the conflict between Israel and Iran. Early Friday, the second rescue flight from Israel landed at Tampa International Airport, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced during an early morning news conference.
“There are going to be more folks that are going to be rescued, said DeSantis, noting that the evacuation missions are the “most logistically challenging rescues” the state has done. “This is an ongoing effort.”
The confrontation began last week after Israel launched a surprise wave of airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists, the Associated Press reported. The U.S. federal government is warning U.S. citizens to not travel to Israel “due to armed conflict, terrorism, and civil unrest.”
MORE: ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?’ Miami visitors stranded as missiles target Israel
DeSantis said the people being rescued include college students, families and a Christian church group. While many are Floridians, some are from other parts of the U.S.
Broward County resident Josh Hammer, a Newsweek senior editor-at-large and host of “The Josh Hammer Show” podcast, was one of the many who arrived early Friday to Tampa.
Hammer, who lives in Hallandale Beach and is dad to a 6-month old baby girl, went to Israel about a week and half ago with his family to attend the wedding of his wife’s cousin. They were staying in the Tel Avivi area when the airstrikes began. After that, they were “living on pins and needles for the sirens to go off,” with just “90 seconds to two minutes” to get into a bomb shelter, he said.
“The whole week has just been a total blur,” Hammer said at a news conference. “I feel like I’m not even here right now, physically.”
Bryan Stern, founder of Grey Bull Rescue, said during an online news conference Thursday that there are several college students from Florida and other states who are waiting to be evacuated, including from Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Finding the way back to South Florida
Harlig’s daughter has been in Israel since September attending Machon Alte in Safed, a Jewish seminary for women located in the northern region of Israel.
She took a “gap year” after high school to go to Israel to experience a “year of growth, of study, of learning the history,” he said. It wasn’t long after arriving in Israel that she began to run into bomb shelters, “every night,” as fighting escalated between Israeli forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah group last year, he said.
“She says the difference is — ‘in the beginning of the school year, I had 30 seconds to run into a bomb shelter. Now I have 12-10 minutes because Iran is further,’” Harlig said.
Harlig said his daughter and her friends plan to head to Jerusalem Friday. They will then cross into Jordan to take a flight to Cyprus, an island nation in the Mediterranean Sea, to then board another flight to Tampa. Harlig doesn’t know if she’ll be put on a flight to Miami. If she’s not, he’ll make the four-hour drive to pick her up.
His daughter is hoping to arrive in Tampa Sunday “but the situation is so fluid now in the Middle East that you know things could change quickly,” he said.
“A lot of parents are nervous ... You have to trust and have faith in God and trust the people that are organizing this, that have done this in the past,” said Harlig, who knows many families who are either trying to get back to South Florida or are trying to get back home to Israel.
Also waiting to be evacuated: A group of 22 University of Miami students who were participating in an internship program in Tel Aviv, according to The Miami Hurricane, the University of Miami’s student newspaper.
Arielle Green, 22, a UM student who was in the final week of her internship in Israel, told Miami Herald news partner CBS Miami that she recently woke up in the middle of the night to a missile alert blaring on her phone. She rushed to a nearby bomb shelter, where she and other students remained for nearly an hour.
The University of Miami, in an emailed statement to the Miami Herald Friday morning, said it was notified on June 13 that about “two dozen University students are currently in Israel, participating in educational programs, including Birthright and Onward Israel, that are not sponsored by or operated by the university.”
“The university immediately engaged with campus partners, including Hillel, and state officials to ensure that safe travel for our students back to the United States has been secured.” UM said it’s also in communication with the organizations sponsoring the student’s visits to Israel.
State of Florida coordinating rescue efforts in Israel
Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, which is in charge of overseeing the state’s response to hurricanes and other disasters, posted on Facebook Sunday that it’s “coordinating efforts to assist Americans seeking evacuation from the hostile situation in Israel.”
“If you or someone you know needs help returning home, visit: FloridaDisaster.org/IsraelRescue,” reads the post.
The link directs people to fill out an evacuation assistance form from Tampa-based Grey Bull Rescue, a veteran-led team that helps rescue people from dangerous situations.
Grey Bull Rescue has received over 4,000 evacuation requests and expects to hit 6,000 requests by Saturday, according to Stern, who founded the group several years ago. State Sen. Jay Collins of Tampa, a retired Green Beret, is in Israel assisting the rescue group with the evacuation efforts.
Stern said all of the rescue flights Grey Bull has coordinated so far with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis office have been “successful” and that it has several other flights in the works.
DeSantis has chartered at least four jets to fly nearly 1,500 Jewish Americans, who fled Israel to Cyprus via cruise ship, into Tampa, with Birthright Israel paying for all its participants’ transportation costs, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
As of Friday morning, two rescue flights have been conducted, with one “cruise ship mission,” said Kevin Guthrie, executive director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management.
“As of today, we have flown over 300 individuals and we have put on a passenger ferry over 1,100 more,” he said Friday.
South Florida resident Danielle Gozlan and her family had to travel across the Jordanian border to catch a flight that landed at Miami International Airport Thursday morning, according to WSVN.
“We couldn’t find another way back we signed up for different ways—evacuation, rescue ways—and it just didn’t work out for us so we had to go through Jordan. We had to get back home,” Gozlan told WSVN. “It was really hard, especially for the kids, hearing the sirens go off every so often. It was really hard.”
This isn’t the first time the state of Florida has helped coordinate rescue efforts when there’s been escalating conflict in the Middle East. In October 2023, at the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reported that nearly 700 Americans were flown to Florida on four flights from Israel that were coordinated with Project DYNAMO, a veteran-led Tampa-based nonprofit that conducts rescue missions in conflict zones.
On Tuesday, Project DYNAMO announced that it had “completed its first successful evacuations of Americans out of Israel” during this latest conflict in the Middle East, including 30 veterans who were on a retreat in Jerusalem with South Florida non-profit Heroes to Heroes.
Travel advisory
Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department raised its travel advisory for Israel to Level 4, its highest level, and is warning U.S. citizens to not travel to the country. The West Bank and Gaza are also under the “Do Not Travel” Level 4 advisory.
“The security situation in Israel, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is unpredictable, and U.S. citizens are reminded to remain vigilant and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness as security incidents, including mortar and rocket fire and armed UAV intrusions and missiles, can take place without warning,” reads the travel advisory.
The U.S. government is also “unable to provide routine or emergency consular services to U.S. citizens in Gaza as U.S. government employees are prohibited from traveling there,” according to the state department.”The security environment within Gaza and on its borders is extremely dangerous and volatile.”
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on the social media platform X on Wednesday said that the U.S. embassy in Israel is “working on evacuation flights and cruise ship departures.”
He also directed U.S. citizens who want to leave Israel to enroll in the Start Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive updates.
This story was originally published June 19, 2025 at 4:14 PM.
