Space Coast evacuees from Israel describe war zone; others hope to flee Gaza

It was the second war zone that 75-year-old Melbourne resident Ron Neumann found himself leaving behind — the first, the jungles of Vietnam over five decades ago as a soldier and this time, a place the retiree calls his spiritual home, Israel.

The world in Rehovot, a growing community in the central part of Israel, was gripped with dread over deadly incursions carried out by roving Hamas militants to the south, punctuated with the growing sounds of thuds from falling rockets fired from Gaza.

Amid the barrage of soul-piercing sirens warning residents to take shelter, the Vietnam veteran and retired insurance businessman decided to find a way to safety — America — for his wife, Linda, and the couple’s 5-year-old toy poodle, Annie.

“You can’t imagine … there is no way to explain how you actually feel, the idea of an invasion. We had heard rockets come in before,” said Neumann, recalling his efforts to book a flight out of Israel as the nation declared war and called up more than 300,000 reservists for pending military operations.

“That’s when I thought, ‘I got to get my wife to safety.'"

More: For Brevard residents with connections to Israel, a time of horror, history as war escalates

On Oct. 15, the couple was among 270 people flown out of Israel on a plane operated by the nonprofit Project Dynamo, a private organization that specializes in cutting through bureaucratic red tape and providing passage back to the U.S. from conflict zones across the globe.

The Neumanns, who arrived at Tampa International Airport, were part of a large group of Americans living in Israel or Gaza, now struggling to find a way out as commercial flights stop connections as the latest Israel-Hamas conflict escalates.

More Project Dynamo flights are expected; however, as Israel prepares for a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, a move that could edge quickly into a regional conflict, even more Americans could be left stranded. Already, the U.S. State Department has issued a rare worldwide caution as tensions rise.

More: Israel-Hamas conflict a frontline in social media

“Due to increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests, the Department of State advises U.S. citizens overseas to exercise increased caution,” the alert, issued late Thursday, read.

More Florida evacuees from Israel anticipated

Bryan Stern, CEO and founder of Project Dynamo, said more evacuations from Israel are anticipated.

“We knew that Americans would be in trouble,” Stern said during an Oct. 18 teleconference call. Stern shared how after the Israel-Hamas war got underway, the organization received word of an emergency declaration from Gov. Ron DeSantis. The organization quickly moved into action while talking to state officials.

It was Project Dynamo’s fourth deployment during a wartime situation and one of 602 missions conducted to move 6,500 Americans out of places like the Ukraine or Russia, officials reported.

“We rescue everyone. We rescue gay people, straight people, I don’t really care. They are Americans,” Stern said. "We have a lot of people registering and asking for help."

The emergency flight, along with hotel bills and car rentals, cost Florida nearly $4 million, or roughly $14,000 a passenger, Florida Division of Emergency Management Kevin Gutrie told one news outlet. There were even specially catered platters of kosher food — meals prepared according to Jewish dietary guidelines — waiting for religious and non-religious Israelis alike.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a presidential contender who stood on the tarmac in Tampa to personally welcome those arriving in Florida, used taxpayer dollars to fund at least five flights contracted to fly Americans out of Israel, Project Dynamo officials confirmed.

“We saw our folks needed help, we of course have a very close relationship between Florida and Israel,” DeSantis told news crews after the flight arrived.

Americans, Floridians, trapped in Gaza

But for those Americans trapped in the Gaza Strip — the densely populated territory nestled along the Mediterranean Sea and the Egyptian border — the prospect of being evacuated is proving to be more difficult, according to officials with the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The group held a news conference Thursday in Tampa to draw awareness to the plight of Florida residents with family members struggling to find safe passage back to the U.S. There are, by some U.S. estimates, between 400 to 500 Americans living in Gaza.

In Brevard County, those with ties to Palestine have opted not to talk publicly about family connections to the besieged territory and share worries about those they haven’t heard from since the war's start.

Some fear political retaliation. Others, recrimination. All, however, hope their relatives can escape before the war escalates.

Egypt, through coordination with the U.S., has agreed to open its border crossing with Gaza to allow in humanitarian aid but it was not immediately clear if Americans would be granted passage out of the war-torn territory into the north African nation.

Israel issued a warning to Gaza residents to move south as its military continues to pound away at suspected Hamas locations. Nearly 4,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, Gaza health officials reported.

“American citizens in Gaza deserve equal treatment from the State Department,” CAIR-Florida Executive Director, Imam Abdullah Jaber said in a statement.  “We expect their swift intervention to ensure that every American is safe. We are horrified to hear our governor accusing all civilians of Gaza of being antiSemitic instead of pleading for their safety and making sure that every American is safe everywhere in the world.”

From Israel, a personal exodus to Brevard

For years, the Neumanns, two of a number of Space Coast residents with links to the Holy Land, lived in Melbourne.

Then nearly 18 months ago the pair, married seven years, decided to leave behind their two-story Melbourne home to settle in an apartment in Rehovot, a growing enclave with a population of about 150,000 people south of the cosmopolitan city of Tel-Aviv.

“It sort of reminded me of Queens,” Neumann said, recalling his childhood growing up in the New York borough.

“But I feel that this is where God wants us; it’s the land of my forefathers and being there, I felt total shalom,” Neumann said, using the Hebrew word for peace and wholeness.

The two want to leave the antisemitism they've faced in Brevard County behind, he said. The couple even had a court date set to go over efforts to immigrate to Israel. In the meantime, they relished the simpler, quaint lifestyle where neighbors hung laundry out to dry and chatted without hesitation about their days.

Then came Oct. 7, the sabbath.

Linda Neumann said she began to figure something was wrong early on.

“I had gotten up to read my devotions when I heard what sounded like thunder way off in the distance,” she said.

“Then it got louder. Then the sirens went off and I thought, ‘Oh, no.'"

By that time, Hamas militants had made their way to Israeli communities in the south, shooting motorists to death, killng families in their homes and kidnapping men, women and children and taking them back to Gaza. They also targeted a holiday music festival, where more than 250 teens and young adults were shot to death, Israeli officials reported.

“I grabbed my Bible and we went into the safe room. We spent hours there,” Linda Neumann said. One of the rockets fired from Gaza slammed into the gym where Ron Neumann worked out from time to time, killing one person and wounding up to 10 people.

“I just thought this was very serious,” Ron Neumann said. At one point he initially booked his wife a flight back to Orlando on Delta, but that departure, like other commercial flights, was canceled.

“I was just going to stay behind,” he said. He tried a Turkish airliner but even that was impacted as Hamas lobbed thousands of rockets from Gaza while others were fired from the north.

Then he heard about DeSantis’ emergency declarations. He was sent a link to a Project Dynamo portal and applied to be evacuated.

“We got a spot on the plane; got our passports. It was incredible. We were going to try to fly out that night but left the next day. The people with Project Dynamo are just amazing heroes,” he said.

The feeling of leaving the ground as the plane lifted into the air reminded him immediately of the last time he was in a war zone, back in Vietnam. At one point as the plane’s inertia settled, there was clapping and cheering.

“'We made it,' I thought,” he said. “Back then we called these freedom flights."

The reception in Tampa, the Neumanns said, was extraordinary, with DeSantis and his wife, Casey, greeting everyone stepping off the plane. “We were worn out,” he said.

Now, the couple worries about their adopted homeland in Israel as they sit in their Melbourne residence. In the living room, there are menorahs and artifacts from Jerusalem.

On the mantel, there's a Torah scroll that Neumann said was pulled out of a burning Berlin synagogue during the reign of Nazi Germany.

“You can still smell the smoke,” he said of the scroll, which like others is typically carried around synagogues on holidays like Simchat Torah or read from during bar mitzvahs.

Ron Neumann talks about his family, Jews who once lived in Austria and owned a small house and a nearby coffee shop. When the Nazis came through, family members told him, Jews were shot to death on the street and taken away. Those who could, fled. Some, including his grandmother, went to Paris. She was later captured and killed in the Holocaust, he said, holding a certificate that he received from the Israeli-based Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.

“She thought she was safe. But the Nazis put her in a cattle car and they took her to Auschwitz, where she was murdered and cremated,” he recalled.

He paused, then talked about the war that the Jewish state now finds itself in. He and Linda hope to return to Israel soon but do have worries.

“I can’t say where this is all going. It’s like a mini-Holocaust what happened. But I do believe God is going to protect Israel. Israel has been attacked so many times,” he said.

“I hate to see anyone suffer, especially the children. It’s always tragic.”

J.D. Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641 or jdgallop@floridatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Space Coast couple describes life in war zone and exodus from Israel