In recognition of 20 years since the Gaza pullout, JNS is featuring a series of articles reflecting Israel’s disengagement, speaking with an array of former Gush Katif residents to find out how they perceive the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Trump plan for the Gaza Strip and the prospect of returning.
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.”
Today, Bryna has no gun. Even in Gush Katif, it sat in the drawer most of the time. Just before the disengagement, she put it in storage at a shooting range in Beersheva. She left it with them in exchange for a waiver of the storage fees.
She now lives in a suburban house on a quiet street in the rebuilt Netzer Hazani in Yesodot, a moshav in the center of Israel, generally shielded from the more imminent threat of Arab terror that characterized life in Gush Katif.
Constant reminders of war sound overhead, not just in the occasional missile from Gaza or Yemen, but warplanes shooting over from the nearby Tel Nof military airbase. Bryna specifically chose this plot for its view of the Jerusalem Hills and the nearby train tracks, which prevent urban development in the area.
“I have four bedrooms and three bathrooms, and lots of land around me, and I have a wonderful regional council,” she said. Yesodot was among the few regional councils to heartily embrace the evacuees and provide them with a plot for the new community of “Netzer Hazani.”
The religious-Zionist community has doubled in size from the original 65 families and has re-established its cherished institutions, including the youth center in memory of Yochanan. “But it’s not my home.”
And neither is where her son is buried.
“You look around for a new house; you don’t look around for a new cemetery. Once you bury somebody, he’s buried forever,” she said. “I guess not.”
Ultimately, after being offered an array of options, including Mount Herzl and the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the Hilburgs chose to re-bury Yochanan in the military section of the Gush Katif cemetery in Nitzan because it had a glimpse of the Mediterranean that their son loved.
As a youth, Yochanan was determined to join the navy; eventually, he became a staff sergeant in a commando unit. He was killed in what is known as the 1997 “Ason HaShayetet” (“the Naval Disaster”) in which a roadside bomb killed Yochanan and 10 other members of his commando navy unit, as well as an air-force physician, as they carried out a secret mission in Lebanon.
‘What is broken is more interesting’
Just beyond her living room, a narrow corridor draped with a 30-year-old fishing net feels like a shrine to Yochanan. His Kalashnikov is on display in a glass case. The walls show portraits of the Hilburg family deep in the ocean. About a year after his death, they all learned to dive so that they could visit an underwater memorial consisting of 12 empty chairs affixed to a sunken Israeli naval vessel off Israel’s northern coast. The fishing net is adorned with a dried seahorse, starfish and purposely broken seashells.
“What is broken is much more interesting,” Bryna said. “You can see inside it.”
A theme for Bryna’s life since the Gaza pullout. Through speaking engagements, she’s invited people through her cracks in the hopes of putting the shards back together. Her heart-wrenching speeches at memorials for her son have made her a symbol for the bereaved families of Gush Katif. She’s the “star” of a Hebrew documentary about the reinterment of Gush Katif’s fallen, “Double Grave.”
“When I speak by Yochanan’s grave on Yom Hazikaron and on his yahrzeit, for me it’s very good because I feel like I’m with him,” she said. “When I speak about Gush Katif, also for me, it’s good because I really did like Gush Katif, and I really did like living there. And I can feel as if a part of me is there.”
For several years after the disengagement, Bryna couldn’t get herself to sing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, or celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day), though she said she would never consider leaving Israel. Some of her grandchildren are now in Gaza as part of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” fighting with the Zionist spirit that had infused her community—and Yochanan’s service.
Sammy, her husband, has joined every social-media group involved in organizing a hoped-for Jewish return to the Gaza Strip. Bryna gave her first real laugh during the interview at the mention of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to turn Gaza, colloquially, into “a Riviera.”
“My initial reaction was: if anybody could pull it off, it’s him. Will it be? No. Will it be? I can’t believe it. But God is big.”
More skeptical, Sammy chimed in to say that Trump, after all, is a politician: “We can’t trust him.”
“I always hoped, and still do, that someday I can go back,” Bryna said, “and it has nothing to do with Oct. 7. Oct. 7 maybe made it a bit more realistic.”
Would Bryna bring Yochanan’s bones back to his home sands?
“When we go to the cemetery and Yochanan’s grave, I always have a feeling that his soul is floating around where it used to be. Or where it should be. And when we buried him, we buried him in what’s called ‘al tnai‘ (conditionally), which means that if we go back to Gush Katif, we can take his grave back with us.”
Orit Arfa (www.oritarfa.net) is a journalist and author based in Berlin. At the time of the IDF’s 2005 pullout from Gaza, she was based in Gush Katif and covered it extensively. Her first novel, The Settler, follows its aftermath through the eyes of a young American-Israeli evacuee who “resettles” in Tel Aviv.