Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Jeffy's Corner: Tales of Horror and Compassion in Syria with Beth Knott of The Nazarene Fund

Episode Date: December 12, 2015

Jeff Fisher is live from 6am to 8am ET, Saturday. Listen for free on The Blaze Radio Network: www.theblaze.com/radio & www.iheart.comFollow Jeffy on Twitter: @JeffyMRA &Like Jeffy's Facebook: www.facebook.com/JeffFisherRadio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Jeff Fisher Show. Hey, it's Glenn, and I want to remind you, peace of mind is tough to come by these days unless you have a Liberty Safe. With a Liberty Safe, you won't worry when you leave the house because you'll know your valuables are protected. And right now, you can get free delivery to your home on any Liberty Safe. Go to LibertySafe.com for factory direct pricing. LibertySafe.com made in the USA, lifetime warranty, and peace of mind. LibertySafe.com. I want to play just a little bit of a little bit of audio, Beth, the audio that we recorded in the hotel when we got back from the first, from the airport.

And you were telling the story of the credible threat, the very first credible threat that we were aware of that we got Intel on the ground. that ISIS Well, let me play this first And then I want to get your reaction to it Again, this is, for you listening, this is on off of my cell phone, so please forgive any audio quality issues But this was, it was so By the CD your pants reporting,

we did everything we could to record every moment that we could. So here's Beth, we're counting our first, well, let's call it speed bump. Yeah, tell me about the, camps having. They've gotten hold of their cell phones. So we've gotten into tell that ISIS has gotten hold of some of the cell phone numbers of the families that are in the refugee camp, and they have been calling them over the last few days and threatening them that if they are to evacuate if they're to leave this country, that they will take it out on their families or them, and they have

threatened ground attacks and IED. And so obviously some of the families are a little bit nervous, and it's made everybody just a little bit nervous on getting out of here. It's still on at this moment. The evacuation is still on as of right now. So we'll just kind of have to see how it goes. I'm going to pause that right there. I want, Beth, I want you to give me your, when we got that information,

what was going through your head? Well, when we first got some information was actually in Qatar. We were trying to get the rest between the 12-hour flight and the next flight, and then we talked to some security who gave us some information that there was some credible threats and almost called the whole trip off. Glenn considered calling everything off because he didn't want to put anybody in danger, but he asked us to make our own decisions, so everybody came together and said we were still going to move forward.

To be honest, I was scared. It was, you know, there were real threats. There were threats not only from ISIS, but also the Russians were threatening the Turkish army, and we were not very far from that border. They were threatening missile attacks there, so there was both of those things going on at the same time. But then when we found out that there were threats that were directly related to the evacuation, it got very serious, very quick.

Now, the vehicles that we were that we were traveling in security personnel that accompanied us, they were, was all a bit intimidating. Yes. When we got to the hotel, there were armed guards at the hotel. As, as I can obviously give the perspective from a man standpoint, but tell me as a woman, what it felt like because this is a country that does not look favorably or does not, certainly does not look at everyone equally. And as a woman, how do you feel?

Yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, I have been fortunate to be raised in the United States, you know, and in a family that has taught me that, you know, as long as you work hard, it doesn't matter whether you're male or female, you can do whatever you want, you know. and I have worked in industries over the years that are predominantly male, but have done fairly well in them and have never felt like I was discriminated against it all for being a woman. But you go to that country and you realize that it is a totally different thing, that, you know, you're not even considered human if you're a woman in that country.

And so therefore, you know, there are completely different safety risk. for men and there are women there. There are safety risks for everyone, but women in particular, you know, they will kidnap and sell into slavery because women are property and not people over there.

So it is interesting. You know, our security team was really good and they were very cordial and very nice, but they were very warning about, you know, proper behavior. Now, the area where we were in in particular was a little bit more western eyes so it was you know not like like I didn't feel the need to wear you know scarf on my

head and all that stuff but but still it's it's totally different than it is here and you know sticking together over there I don't believe it is all safe for a woman to travel without a man in that area and the one thing I noticed and I'd said this to several people on the trip was that if you looked around and you took the words off of the buildings you took the sign lines away from the buildings, you could be in a borough in New York. It looked... Well, and actually, one of our shooters said that. In a couple of places, it reminded him of areas in Brooklyn, but the run-down areas of Brooklyn.

Herbill was fascinating in the fact that it had been a very wealthy city. Their economy had been booming a couple of years ago, but in that area of the world, unlike the United States, if the capital city of the country decides it wants the money of another city, it just takes it, which is what happened there. And so this town that had been, you know, inventing itself or reinventing itself to be a travel destination, ironically. You wouldn't think of Iraq as a travel destination, but that's what they were trying to do. All these Americanized hotels were going up, and then Baghdad decided they wanted their money. and so they took it and so now there are empty buildings everywhere and ironically that is one of the reasons or feel became where a lot of the Christians fled to because there were empty buildings for them

to to seek shelter in until they found a place to go they would literally come to the city and they would find an empty building and there were plenty to find obviously the the closest thing that I can relate it to is Las Vegas right now if you are familiar or at all with Las Vegas in the way that there are buildings half constructed and left that way. They're concrete shells, steel shells. That is what Urbeil reminded me of. And these Christians would, in fact, simply go into these buildings, which they're not so much on the whole safety and the OSHA aspect over there. You don't find the same rules and restrictions. You don't find any rules. No, and one of the things I noticed it happened to rain and sleet a little bit while we were there,

I kind of laughed because, you know, in America, everybody's got the security stuff. You know, there's the, um, the texturized on all the steps. There's, you know, that handrails everywhere, not over there and everything was slick. It was like, you know, just, just, just, just you're responsible for your own actions. And if you fall down and go to the hospital, that's your problem. It's not, you know, it's totally different there. But yet, then again, you see a McDonald's, so it's kind of weird. That was the strange thing.

It felt, that's, I think, what made it so surreal is to see things that were familiar. And as the head of our security team told us on more than one occasion, awareness. Awareness is the key word of the day, he would say. And the fact is, it was very, very easy to let your guard down because something, seems so familiar. Yeah, and he said to me on more than one occasion, you know, do not get a false sense of security. You know, you are where we went, which in itself was kind of ironic, where we went was the

Christian area of town, because that's where they are seeking refuge. And to them, to the Christians in this particular area of town, they were safer. It's only 50 miles away from where they were run out of their homes by ISIS. a lot of them walked that whole distance to get to this area to safety because, you know, they were driven away without cars and everything else. And you would ask them, you know, do you feel safe? And they would answer that they did feel safe there. But yet they all knew the threat, you know, there was a fence around the church and the camp

where they were. There was, you know, barbed wire at the top of it. There were security guards that checked every car. that came in and out, not only checking them, you know, just asking who the driver was, but, you know, with the mirrors underneath to make sure there were no bombs and that sort of thing. So every day that they lived their lives here, they were safer than where they came from, but there was always a threat that somebody would walk in there with an explosive vest or with a car bomb or something to that nature. You don't think about that every day in the United States.

You couldn't trust your own eyes. That was the thing. And it was exhausting, quite honestly. And how these people handled it on a day-to-day basis is beyond me because I just, it was a very emotional, it was an emotional roller coaster. And we're going to take a break here in just a second. But when we come back, from the hotel, we traveled to a couple of the camps. They don't want to be called camps.

They're centers. Sister Dianas and also Father Douglas's center. And Beth, when we come back, I want you to tell the story of Rita. She's one of the refugees who was able to leave. And I want to talk about the story of her family. And the fact that they lived in a container that was maybe eight feet wide,

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