October 7th brought about a horrible terrorist attack against Israel with 1,400 Israelis dead, including 30 Americans. As it became quite clear that Israel was not going to just stand by and watch, Americans from all over Israel hurried to leave back to the States. However most major airlines canceled their routes out of the country, and U.S. bound flights remained unavailable after the Hamas attack. This effectively left many Americans stranded in Israel with no way of getting back home. 

With many Americans having traveled to Israel to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot, which has a span of many days, there were a lot of Americans in Israel. Specifically, there are an estimated 600,000 Americans in Israel both living and visiting prior to October 7th (Axios). To solve this problem and bring the trapped Americans home, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued Executive order 23-208 on Thursday, October 12. This order allows the state of Florida to carry out logistical, rescue, and evacuation operations with Israel. With this in place, hundreds of Americans flew home from Tel-Aviv on Sunday evening. Specifically, the flight was carrying 270 Americans and successfully landed at Tampa International Airport, with the help of Project Dynamo, a non-profit rescue group that partnered with DeSantis. What has been raising concern is that the State of Florida spent $4 million to charter that flight. 

That wasn’t the only flight though. There were four other flights paid for by the state carrying around a dozen people each. According to FDEM (Florida Division of Emergency Management), as of the 24th, around 700 Americans have been flown back to Florida in the span of four flights. Additionally, later on two cargo planes carrying 85 pallets of donated supplies arrived in Tel-Aviv, Israel. The average cost of each chartered flight from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport to Tampa International is roughly $2 million. As you can imagine all of this does cost a lot of money in taxpayer dollars. If there were five flights in total, and four cost $2 million each and one cost $4 million, you’re looking at about $12 million dollars spent. Do Floridians think it’s worth it? Sophomore Volga Ozturan rations that America needs to take care of itself before helping out other countries. “I would make sure America is at its maximum best, then help others. If we have no problems then sure let’s help out. Obviously America does though.”