Students Flee Middle East

As the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah forces continues along the Israel-Lebanon border, Harvard has largely completed its efforts to evacuate affiliates from Lebanon, and many students have left Israel as well.

Since July 14, Harvard has recommended that affiliates leave Lebanon, and it has offered the services of International SOS (ISOS)—a large worldwide emergency logistics company—to those wishing to evacuate via Beirut.

Nineteen affiliates were evacuated from Lebanon through ISOS and the efforts of the Harvard evacuation planning team, which was led by Vice Provost of International Affairs Jorge I. Domínguez. and Assistant Dean of the College John L. Ellison. Another 12 have been evacuated “in other ways,” Domínguez said.

In all, Harvard has been in contact with 37 people in Lebanon, including a family of four. Domínguez said that “very few” affiliates remain in Lebanon, and that ISOS and Harvard are working to bringing out the rest who still wish to evacuate.

Domínguez said Harvard will cover all evacuation costs for those affiliates using ISOS.

E. Roger Owen, the director of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, said that one Harvard student injured in Lebanon last week is thought to have since left the country.

Michael J. Esdaile, a Canadian second-year Ph.D. student in Middle Eastern History, was mildly wounded when he cab was hit by fire in Beirut, Owen said.

But Owen said that Esdaile has not contacted Harvard since Sunday.

Meanwhile, with Hezbollah rockets continuing to fall in northern Israel, some Harvard students in the area have decided to leave the country.

Susan E. Maya ’08, a biochemistry concentrator, was enrolled in two programs at the University of Haifa when the conflict began. When rockets began to fall on Haifa, she was returning from a weekend out of the city.

“Probably the scariest moment of the whole ordeal for me was when I called my friend, who like many of the international students was still at the University, and over the phone heard the emergency loudspeaker system in the dorms announcing that everyone should stay in the shelters,” Maya wrote in an e-mail.

“Various people within the Harvard administration contacted me directly to share their concern and offer assistance in leaving the country if I needed any (I did not, luckily),” she wrote. “I appreciated that Harvard was ready to help me out and was aware of my whereabouts.”

When the University of Haifa moved all of its students to Jerusalem, Maya said she decided to leave the country, and has since returned home to Boston.

“Even though I don’t believe that rockets will hit Jerusalem...I still didn’t feel safe because of the threat of suicide bombers,” she wrote.

Miriam R. Hinman ’08, a chemistry and anthropology joint concentrator, was doing archeological work in northern Israel when Hezbollah’s rockets began to fall.

“When the rockets hit Haifa, I was working at the Tel Dor excavation just south of Haifa. Everyone was totally shocked, because no one believed that anything could happen to Haifa,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Hinman, a Pforzheimer House resident, wrote: “I am leaving Israel in a few days, because Harvard requested that I do so. I had planned to leave within the next couple of weeks in any case, and my family and friends are very eager to see me home.”

Security has been significantly tightened in Jerusalem, according to Ariana Kroshinsky ’08, who is studying in the Israeli capital.

“There are guards posted outside every restaurant, bar, major bus stop, café, movie theater, swimming pool, large office—anything where there are clustered groups of people,” Kroshinsky wrote.

“Last week, the police arrested a Palestinian man with 5 kilos of explosives in his bag around the block from my apartment,” she added.

And while no rockets have fallen on Jerusalem, Kroshinsky experienced Hezbollah’s attacks during a weekend trip with friends to Tiberias, a large city in northern Israel.

“There were tremendous booms, one right after the other. It was unlike anything I’d heard before; the ground seemed to vibrate,” she wrote. “People began running in the streets, seeking cover, pointing in the direction of where the rockets hit, yelling in Hebrew. All I could understand was ‘katyusha, katyusha!’”

“We ducked into a store front where we waited for quiet before running to the bus station...we spent the next half hour trying to convince a sherut driver (a minibus taxi) to drive us out of the city,” she added.

Kroshinsky said she has no plans to leave Israel at this time.

—Staff writer Pierpaolo Barbieri can be reached at barbier@fas.harvard.edu.