After an eventful journey to East Jerusalem last night, Glenn chose to visit Gaza this morning. Though it might not have been the safest trip for a pro-Israel American media personality, it proved to be an incredible experience that also resulted in a special gift, as Glenn described on radio.
“I got up bright and early [this morning] and nobody surprisingly wanted to go with me to Gaza,” Glenn said. “So we go to Gaza, and it was nice. It was beautiful, especially this time of year.”
The small town Glenn visited has had about 8,000 rockets hit it in the past few years, and Glenn was gifted one to take with him.
GLENN: I was given a rocket. It was nice. Not everybody gets a rocket.
PAT: So you got a Kasam rocket that was shot yesterday.
GLENN: Yesterday. Yeah, it landed yesterday.
The situation is in this town requires that bomb shelters be located no more than 15 seconds away from any location.
A local basketball court has a bomb shelter in each corner “because you only have 15 seconds to get into a bomb shelter. When they see an RPG go off or a Kasam missile go off you only have 15 seconds for survival. So nobody can be any farther away than 15 seconds,” Glenn said. “What look like bus stops are not bus stops… It’s crazy.”
Glenn was also able to tour a local school with the town’s mayor, which he described as “a bunker.”
“The school is a bunker. The school is completely bomb proof. It has ballistic windows in it. You can hit it with a five — what five kilogram bomb or something. A rocket can hit the windows and not go through it. And the alarms, the sirens go off. Sometimes during a school — average school day, average is about two times a day and as many as 50 times a day.”
The mayor described to Glenn how a recent UN inspection resulted in very little for the ravaged town.
“I’m talking to the mayor of this town, who is an amazingly brave man,” Glenn recounted. “And he says: We just had a UN human rights inspector come to see the human rights. I don’t know who this person, how they were even thinking, but they thought everything was fine. Now, I’m telling you that when you see this town… you won’t believe it.”
The mayor shared with Glenn the story of when the inspector visited the school and unable to grasp the situation. After walking into one of the classrooms that looks more like a bomb shelter than anything else, the mayor followed her in and slammed the door behind him. Half of the children broke out in tears in fear that it was a bomb.
“Now, you want to talk about courage. People said to me originally: Why are you doing Restoring Courage, what are you planning on restoring to the Israelis, I don’t plan on restoring anything to the Israelis, they get it,” Glenn said.
“Enough is enough,” he continued. “If somebody was launching missiles into our country, we wouldn’t be silent. Enough is enough.”
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After Glenn’s speech at the Knesset, he went with Pat, Joe, Dan and others over to a reception in East Jerusalem – an area filled with a number of angry, pro-Palestinian radicals. What could go wrong?
Glenn described as he pulled up to the house that there was a huge gate, and razor wire fence all around the complex. As they entered, they noticed multiple security guards before heading up to a gorgeous balcony filled with about a hundred people, according to Glenn and Pat.
“They’re making a presentation. And I’m trying to listen, but as I’m trying to listen to what they’re saying, I’m hearing the shouts in Arabic,” Glenn described. “It sounded more like: Let’s kill all those people on the roof.”
“It did sound like that only they’re saying it in Arabic so we couldn’t really tell exactly what they were shouting, but they were shouting at us because at the reception, as they’re introducing you, they’re on a loud speaker,” Pat explained.
While Glenn said the view was beautiful on the balcony and he felt very safe, he said he saw Joe, his Chief of Staff, looking over the ledge with a very concerned and worried look. Joe told Glenn that it appeared that Arab youths were gathering in the streets and throwing chairs in their direction.
And in the distance, Glenn heard gunshots – but at first thought they were fireworks. And while people at the reception suggested it might be part of a wedding celebration, Glenn was not convinced when he went on radio this morning.
“You’ve heard of shotgun weddings, this is a little different. This is a machine gun wedding,” Glenn joked.
That night, they went home and slept – but after those events the rest of the crew were a little wary of heading into some of the controversial areas Glenn had planned to visit. While they stayed behind, Glenn was undeterred and headed to Gaza the next morning.
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