Guests overnighting at Jerusalem’s Orient Hotel were surprised Saturday morning by the unmistakable wail of emergency air raid sirens, howling across the city shortly after 8 a.m.
Roughly two hours later — with those same emergency sirens roaring again across Jerusalem — we were hurrying into the luxury hotel’s bomb shelters, taking cover from an incoming Iranian ballistic missile attack.
All told, I made four visits to the Orient Hotel’s seventh-floor bomb shelter on Saturday, hoping to stay safe there from the retaliatory Iranian rocket or missile attacks targeting Jerusalem and other cities across the country after the joint military strike carried out earlier that day by Israeli and U.S. forces in Iran.
In a recorded address released Saturday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the aim of the joint campaign was “to put an end to the threat from the Ayatollah regime in Iran,” adding that “this operation will continue as long as necessary.”
By Sunday, numerous news outlets had reported that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed, but the airspace over Israel remained closed, stranding as many as 37,400 tourists within the country's borders, according to an update from the Israel Ministry of Tourism.
“All El Al and Sundor flights to and from Israel that were scheduled to depart through Tuesday [March 3] … are canceled, including the relevant return flights,” El Al officials said in a March 1 statement.
El Al said on its website that travelers booked on canceled flights “will be automatically registered for an alternative flight” and will be “proactively” contacted with status updates.
The carrier also encouraged impacted customers to update their details on the website’s Manage My Booking Page, "so that we can reach them directly" rather than phoning its customer service center.
Those not wishing to take an alternative flight may cancel and receive a refund or a travel voucher at any time, according to El Al's website.
The Israel Ministry of Tourism, meanwhile, issued an official emergency notice to tourists Saturday, saying the Israeli government is operating according to “established and predefined emergency procedures.”
"All relevant authorities are monitoring the situation closely and are acting in full coordination with tourism stakeholders: hotels, tour guides, inbound tour operators and travel agents,” the statement reads. “The State of Israel and the Ministry of Tourism view the safety, security and well-being of all those visiting Israel with the utmost importance, and are working to ensure that tourists receive assistance, information and support at all times.”
Mentioning the Home Front Command website as a trusted source of official information available to visitors in many different languages, the Ministry of Tourism encouraged travelers to reach out directly to its 24/7 virtual service center.
Israel Ministry of Tourism officials were also circulating a web-based form early Saturday, designed to help coordinate assistance for “tourists holding a B2 entry visa who wish to leave Israel due to the current security situation." The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem issued a statement on Sunday saying its not currently in the position to help Americans evacuate.
Indeed, alternative routes out of Israel were already very limited on Saturday evening — with the airspace above neighboring countries also closing rapidly. But Israel Ministry of Tourism officials — who had been hosting me on a six-day media visit originally scheduled to end Saturday in Jerusalem — somehow managed to arrange a seven-hour car ride from Jerusalem for myself and a fellow travel journalist to Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, where we later boarded separate March 1 Turkish Air flights to Istanbul. After a four-hour layover, I flew home from Istanbul to Los Angeles on Turkish Air.
And while I certainly would not recommend any time in an Israeli bomb shelter under the real threat of a rocket or missile attack, it's an experience I will never forget.
Yes, that's partly because there were times when I was legitimately afraid. But more so, I will remember it for the tremendous resiliency and genuine kindness I witnessed firsthand among the Israeli people during that time in the seventh-floor shelter.
By then it was already familiar, because I'd been witnessing that same brand of resilient joy and kindness everywhere I visited across the country during the five days prior.
