JNS.org/June 11, 2025
Bryna Hilburg’s first emotion upon hearing about the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was anger—anger at whoever authorized the Nova Music Festival.
“There was unrest along the fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip for several days before,” she told JNS in a recent interview in her living room. “And they should never have let that party happen there at that time because of the unrest. These people in charge of giving the OK to have it … did they think that the Palestinians, that the Arabs, were joking with us?”
This anger is related to an older anger–now muted, a bit resigned—that came through 20 years ago in dozens of interviews that the New York native gave to international media, like Time magazine and The New York Times, in the days leading up to her forced evacuation from the agricultural village of Netzer Hazani in Gush Katif where she and her husband built a family farm over the course of 26 years. She warned whoever would listen that the “disengagement” should never happen.
With her perfect English and raw honesty, Bryna was a sought-after profile by international journalists covering the 2005 pullout from Gaza. Back then, she had too much at stake to be silent or polite or correct—not just the security of Israel but the sanctity of the remains of her second son, Yochanan, a fallen soldier in the Israel Defense Forces.
“I believe—and I don’t care what anybody else says to me—I believe entirely and with my whole heart: Had we still been in Gush Katif, this would’ve never happened because there were always soldiers in every single settlement. And everybody had a gun. I had a gun, believe it or not. I had a gun. And I was a regular Annie Oakley.”
Read the rest in JNS.org.
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| NOVELS BY ORIT | |
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