A team of American military veterans with the nonprofit Project Dynamo is on the ground in Israel with plans to start rescuing Americans trapped in the warzone.
Bryan Stern, a U.S. Army and Navy vet and international security consultant who formed the donor-funded rescue operation during the bungled American withdrawal from Afghanistan, said his case managers in the U.S. have “been awake for three days just fielding hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of requests from Americans who are stuck.”
“We are completely saturated with requests,” he said of the latest effort they’ve dubbed Operation: Promised Land.
Stern expressed frustration with the Biden administration, which he believes should be taking the lead on getting Americans out of harm’s way. “Project Dynamo shouldn’t be rescuing any American in any warzone, ever,” he said. But over the last few years, after engaging in rescue operations around the globe, including in Ukraine and in Sudan, Stern said, “We’ve learned that’s just not the case. It’s just not. That’s why we’re here.”
Stern said there are basically three “tranches” of Americans his team is looking at: hostages held by Hamas terrorists, which are the “most severe and hardest” cases; Americans trapped inside the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Palestinian-controlled territories; and Americans stuck in Israel between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which will likely be the easier cases.
The Americans stuck between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are in the least danger. “Many of them are just scared and can’t get out of here. It’s a lot of fear,” Stern said.
Americans stranded inside the Palestinian territories — many of them humanitarian workers — are hiding, he said. “There’s one family that we’re working with where the father does stuff with water purification, and the wife is a teacher,” he said.
People can request an evacuation from Israel at the Project Dynamo website, where they can also donate to the group. Stern called donor funding the “fuel of our operations.”
“These boats don’t pay for themselves. Flights don’t pay for themselves,” he said. “I don’t have my own private airplane. I wish I did.”
When Project Dynamo volunteers were rescuing Americans from Ukraine in the days after Russia attacked, they started with the easier cases — loading people onto buses to get them out of danger. They progressed to more complex and dangerous rescues, including extricating a former American paratrooper whose home was between the Ukrainian and Russian perimeters and saving a Michigan man who’d been captured by the Russians and accused of being a spy. In Israel, Stern expects to follow that same “crawl, walk, run” model.
“The first rule of hostage negotiations is to take what you can when you can, which is a nice way of saying, easier is good. A life is a life is a life,” Stern said. “So, if it takes five hours to rescue 100 people or 20 hours to rescue one person, as a donor-funded nonprofit, and we’re small, I’d rather do more people.”
“That said, our specialty is hard cases in hard places,” he added.
Stern said that, ideally, they’ll be able to fly the people they rescue out of Israel. The group has planes at its disposal if it can get the funding to pay for them — they believe they need to pay for at least three flights. They may also pull people out by boat or over the Jordan border.
“The catch is, the Jordanians are more or less allies of the United States,” he said, “but generally speaking don’t like Israel and generally speaking don’t like Jewish people.”
Project Dynamo’s operations will be adjusted based on what’s happening on the ground and based on Israel’s response to the brutal terrorist attacks on Saturday that left more than 1,000 people dead, including at least 14 U.S. citizens. Reports say that Hamas may be holding more than 150 people hostage. President Joe Biden confirmed on Tuesday that some of those hostages are Americans.
Stern said it is “naïve” to think that Hamas will keep those hostages in Gaza; they’ll likely be moved into Egypt or Lebanon, he said. While Hamas has threatened to kill hostages, Stern said they are valuable to the terrorists, noting the $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue the U.S. unfroze last month in exchange for Iran releasing five American prisoners.
“Let’s not forget, we just set the market rate for Americans to Iran, $1 billion a head,” Stern said. “And these are the same bad guys.”
Since its founding in 2021, Project Dynamo rescuers have operated in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Sudan. They’ve also rescued Americans who were trapped after wildfires ravaged Maui, Hawaii, earlier this year, and after Hurricane Ian enveloped Florida’s southwest coast last year.
Stern said he is still working on getting 22 Americans out of Afghanistan. But to get the Israel operations running, they had to switch gears.
“We’re not big enough where I can say, ‘Alright, first platoon, you stay here. Second platoon, you go to Israel,'” Stern said. “We’re volunteers. People have lives.”
They also needed to be sure their efforts were needed and to establish their role.
“Israel is not Ukraine, is not Sudan, is not Afghanistan,” Stern said. “Israel is a real country with a real army that is really kick-ass, and they’ve got toys and things and planes and tanks and special forces guys and drones, and they’ve got everything. So, is there a need [for Project Dynamo]?”
“The runways are open,” Stern added, noting that the State Department could, but hasn’t, organized rescue operations. “The government should do this.”