260 Americans Who Fled Israel After Attack Land in Florida on ‘DeSantis Airlines’

The first airlift of 260 Americans evacuated from Israel by Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration touched down Sunday night in Florida, showcasing the presidential candidate’s latest response to last week’s overseas terrorist attacks.

DeSantis, who meet them at Tampa International Airport with Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, has held up the flights as an example of his get-it-done style. The Republican accused President Joe Biden of being “devoid” of leadership by not arranging direct flights home for Americans trapped in Israel.

“The Biden administration was dragging its feet,” DeSantis said Saturday as the first flights left Tel Aviv following the sunset end of the Jewish Sabbath at sunset, according to a video clip posted on the social media website X by his campaign.

“They now say, ‘Well, maybe we'll get flights and dump people in Europe,’ DeSantis said, paraphrasing the posture of the U.S. State Department. “But people don't need to be dumped in Europe. They want to get home.”

The White House declined to comment.

In a video he posted Sunday on X, DeSantis said more than 260 Americans were aboard. A source briefed on the flight said 75 percent are from Florida.

The State Department has offered Americans flights out of the country, but insisted they sign waivers agreeing to pay the U.S. government back for the trips, which would leave them in some European cities, such as Greece or Germany, where they would have to find flights home. Some have been offered travel by boat to Cypress.

DeSantis's administration Sunday expanded its offer of help to Americans stuck overseas.

“If you are stranded in Athens and in need of safe transportation back to the United States, we may be able to assist you. Please complete our form at http://FloridaDisaster.org/Israel and share it with anyone who may need assistance,” Florida’s Division of Emergency Management wrote on X.

DeSantis announced the flights Oct. 12, the day after Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills arranged a private charter flight back for three dozen Floridians trapped in Israel, saying “hundreds” were still trapped there.

DeSantis’s announcement on the social media site X was instantly met with criticism from the left as well as the right. Supporters of the primary’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, accused him of just copying Mills, a Trump supporter. Democrats and other critics said DeSantis had no authority or was just engaging in performative politics.

“You’re a governor. You have no power here <eye roll>,” former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a critic of DeSantis and Trump, wrote on X in responding to DeSantis’s announcement Thursday.

A spokesman for DeSantis did not have details on the cost of the flights, which will be born by taxpayers. DeSantis issued an emergency declaration Thursday that gives the executive branch broad powers to spend money and implement a program swiftly.

This isn’t the first time DeSantis has made news involving international relations and air flights. Last year, his administration persuaded and allegedly tricked about 50 undocumented immigrants to board flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard so that the governor could make a point about illegal immigration. DeSantis went on to win Florida by a historic margin and won a majority of Hispanic voters, a majority of whom backed DeSantis as well as the Martha’s Vineyard flights.

This latest iteration of what his supporters call “DeSantis Airlines” is part of his broader response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Aside from bashing Biden, DeSantis has also criticized Trump by taking the former president to task for his comments last week in Florida where he attacked Israel’s prime minister as well as its intelligence officials and also called the terrorist group Hezbollah “very smart.”

At the same time, DeSantis also called on the Florida Legislature to expand state-based sanctions against Iran.

While he’s arranging flights home for Floridians, DeSantis also announced that the state would not take in any potential refugees from Gaza, from which the terrorist attacks were launched by the pro-Palestinian militant group Hamas.

“If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic,” DeSantis said at a speech over the weekend.

CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked DeSantis Sunday how he could “paint with such a broad brush to say 2.3 million people are antisemitic?” She also posited that not all Palestinians support Hamas, which has canceled elections in the Gaza Strip.

“Those Gaza refugees, Palestinian Arabs, should go to Arab countries. The US should not be absorbing any of those,” he said.

“There was a lot of celebrating of those attacks in the Gaza Strip, by a lot of those folks who were not Hamas,” DeSantis said, pointing to the “toxic” anti-Jewish and anti-Israel culture fostered by Hamas.

“I think if we were to import large numbers of those to the United States, I think it would increase antisemitism in this country. And I think it would increase anti-Americanism in this country. And that's something after seeing those demonstrations pop up in our country, just with bloods still flowing amongst Israeli citizens over the weekend -- you had people taking to the streets cheering on the barbarism of Hamas in our own country. That was a chilling thing to see. And I don't think that that's something that we should ever think is acceptable.”

Brennan pointed out that people in Gaza can’t even get out of Gaza right now anyway.

“I just put my stake in the ground,” DeSantis said. “I think that everyone running for president on the Republican side should follow suit.”