Nova Scotians scrambling to escape bloodshed in Israel after wedding

They flew to Israel for a wedding, never expecting to experience the terror of mass murder.

Clancy McDaniel, from Brook Village, near Mabou, woke up Saturday morning to the sound of air raid sirens.

She hasn’t slept much since.

“Everyone’s adrenaline just kicks in,” McDaniel said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Victoria, B.C.

“We had no clue the exact scale of what was happening. I had never heard an air raid siren before. We thought that it was a fire truck until someone came and banged on our door and said, ‘Get up. You have 15 seconds. We all have to go into the shelter.’”

They were staying at an Airbnb in Jerusalem.

“There was no official bomb shelter,” McDaniel said.

“We hid in the central room of the Airbnb because it has four foundational walls (and) no windows … and it had space for all of us.”

Terrified, they spent the day on their phones, reading about the Hamas-organized attack out of Gaza that killed more than 1,000 people over the weekend.

“We’re starting to realize the magnitude of what is going on,” she said. “Hamas … had broken through the border wall and had unceremoniously began murdering people. Murdering people at a music festival full of young people. Murdering people in their homes in the southern kibbutzim.”

‘A small country’

McDaniel and her friends were about 80 kilometres from the worst of the bloodshed.

“You have to keep in mind Israel is a small country,” she said.

“So being far really isn’t that far. It was closer than what I’m used to in terms of being near active warfare.”

McDaniel was one of eight Nova Scotians who went to Israel for the wedding. One of the brides, Jess Burke, now lives in Toronto, but is from the Halifax area, as are three of her family members, Courtney, Kiersten and Todd. River Williamson and Breagh Sampson are both Bluenoses who also flew to Israel for the festivities.

“We all had to hunker down together,” McDaniel said.

No answer

On Saturday morning, they tried calling the Canadian Embassy in Israel.

“We didn’t get any answer, so it sends you back to the emergency response office in Ottawa.”

McDaniel managed to reach a civil servant, who informed her there was no plan to get Canadians out.

They were asked to register on a website and wait for more information.

“I personally did put my information in, and I didn’t hear anything,” she said. “So, we call again the next day, and for whatever reason, our information didn’t register in the system. And the embassy still had not opened.”

They registered again, prompting automated emails reiterating to register with the embassy and to avoid Gaza the West Bank and Syria.

Met at St. FX

McDaniel, who studied at St. Francis Xavier University before heading west for law school in Victoria, met Jess Burke during her time in student government in Antigonish five years ago.

“I met all of these folks through her,” McDaniel said.

The couple had roots in Israel and wanted to get married there.

“One of them is Israeli; they’re both Jewish. So, they decided to get married in Israel because a lot of her family is there and a bunch of us who traveled – many of us who are not Jewish and have never been to Israel – we traveled to attend, including (eight) Nova Scotians because one of the brides is from Nova Scotia.”

They spent some time in Tel Aviv last week, enjoying the beaches.

‘Beautiful wedding’

The wedding was held just outside the city.

“We had an amazing time, McDaniel said.

“It was such a beautiful wedding. It was a queer wedding. It was officiated by a female rabbi. We brought together families from both sides of the world to come together to celebrate our friends’ love.”

After the wedding, they visited the Dead Sea before heading to Jerusalem. “And then the following day we woke up to air raid sirens.”

McDaniel and another woman who lives in Victoria had an Air Canada flight booked out of Tel Aviv for Monday. But then they heard the airline was suspending all service to the city.

‘Death count’

“So, in that moment, and seeing the death count rise, and seeing the fact that they were taking hostages, that there were plans to execute these hostages on live television,” they decided it was time to get out of Israel.

“Things were already unprecedented how much they had escalated. We didn’t want to stick around and find out if anything else was going to happen.”

McDaniel and her friend Sean Patterson, who’s also from Nova Scotia, booked a flight to Italy. When that got cancelled, they tried Greece, with the same result.

She then checked the airport website to see what airlines were getting planes off the tarmac. El Al – which claims to meet the gold standard for airline security – was booked solid.

‘Thousands of dollars’

“So, we ended up booking a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul,” McDaniel said.

“We had already spent thousands of dollars.”

Taking off from Ben Gurion International Airport was scary.

“The first 45 minutes of that flight was probably the most terrifying moment in my life,” she said.

“There was active missile fire going on.”

They had seen white trails of smoke from Israel’s iron dome defence system designed to intercept incoming rockets and missiles.

‘It was terrifying’

“It was terrifying to think, ‘OK, now we’re going to be in a moving object in the air over an active war zone where bombs and missiles are used,’” McDaniel said.

Six of the Nova Scotians who attended the wedding were still there Wednesday.

“They have been unable to successfully get a flight,” McDaniel said.

“They have been contacted by the embassy, that said, ‘Be prepared to travel on short notice.’ That’s it.”

Still, she’s confident they’ll get out of Israel safely.

“I don’t think the government would announce these plans and contact people if there weren’t serious plans in place. I am just hopeful that it happens as soon as possible.”

They’re still waiting, she said. “I understand that for security reasons, they’re not going to share a ton of information in advance,” McDaniel said, noting they’re now scrambling to find drives to the airport who can show up with little warning.

Military flights

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly announced Wednesday that Canadian Armed Forces aircraft will shuttle those looking to leave the region from the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv to Athens starting later this week.

“I understand it was the weekend followed by a statutory holiday,” McDaniel said.

“Wars are not going to happen in a 9-5 business model. There has to be some sort of a contingency plan for if and when these things happen: how do we get Canadians help? And how do we do it as quickly as possible?”

McDaniel made it back to Victoria late Tuesday.

“We landed in Vancouver last night and took the ferry,” she said.

This story has been corrected to remove references to a double wedding.