‘We are resilient’: Australian reservists called up in Israel join fight

At an Israeli army base in Tel Aviv, Australian Gabrielle Briner is working 12-hour shifts, struggling to comprehend the violence that has erupted since the weekend.

Australian-born Gabrielle Briner was working as a journalist in Israel before she was called up to its military as a reservist.Credit:

She moved to Israel seven years ago as a journalist but has now been called up to her military reserve unit – one of more than 300,000 reservists called up in 48 hours across Israel and the world.

“It’s the largest draft in Israel’s history,” says Briner, who is serving in a non-combat communications role.

“I use words every day, but I don’t have the words for the shock and the trauma of the last few days. The mood on the street is desolate. The country has been ripped to shreds.”

Another Australian-Israeli, who cannot be named because of the nature of the unit he belongs to, was among the first wave of soldiers sent into southern Israel to defend civilians when Hamas breached its high-tech wall on Saturday morning.

He was shot in the stomach while sweeping houses where Hamas had massacred civilians, but is already recovering and eager to return to his unit. He says the horror that awaited them in those Israeli towns was “unlike anything [he’d] seen before” on duty.

“A rocket woke me up at about 7am, then they called us up. There were bodies everywhere in the houses, some on fire. Terrorists shooting at us, throwing grenades at us. They were well armed.”

While he was shot, he also got lucky. “The doctors said the bullet went right through me without hitting anything important. Another guy I was with died on the spot.

“But then later, when the sun started to rise, my unit found heaps of civilians hiding, in bunkers, up trees, so it wasn’t for nothing. He helped save them.”

Briner’s family are also back home in Australia and “worried sick”, she says, and many of her relatives and friends in Israel have also been called up.

Raised with stories of her grandparents surviving Nazi Germany, Briner says all Jews know horror but “we didn’t think we’d ever see this again. We are heartbroken. But we are resilient. We have thousands of volunteers taking people into their homes, packing supplies.”

Among them are Australian couple Andrew and Haya Davis, who were on a holiday in Israel with their children when Hamas attacked. Now their 23-year-old son, only recently married, has been called up as a reservist soldier for Israel.

The Davis family at their son’s wedding in Israel in December 2022.

The couple said they were worried for their son, and “everyone else’s children”, and are “shocked by the gravity and the depravity” of the attacks.

But rather than cutting their trip short, they have chosen to stay even longer to help, volunteering in food distribution and a project handing out phone chargers to Israeli soldiers.

“So far we have been able to talk to our son each day on the phone,” they said.

Meanwhile, some Israelis in Australia have been packing their bags, ready to return to fight, including 22-year-old soldier Moran Susan of the Israeli Defence Forces.

The Department of Home Affairs said anyone travelling to fight in the conflict from Australia must be part of a nation’s official army, or risk breaking the law, but did not provide a number on those returning.

Sheltering from rockets in Tel Aviv, Israel’s former ambassador to Australia Mark Sofer said the Netanyahu government needed to bring in the considerable military experience of its opposition under a newly-announced “unity government” to help steer its war effort.

Before Saturday’s attack, Sofer had been among senior ex-diplomats opposing Netanyahu’s judicial crackdowns, but now said all division was forgotten.

“Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, they may have thought Israel was weak and divided and now was the moment to attack, but they don’t understand Israel,” he said.

“The country is entirely unified now. The divisions, the intelligence failure, all that will come out after this is over. But for now, this is war.”

The Israeli government has vowed vengeance on Hamas, which controls Gaza, and has “lifted all restraint” from its military as it plans a ground offensive on the densely populated enclave, where some two million Palestinians live barricaded inside.

The United States is speaking to Israel and Egypt about setting up an evacuation and aid corridor for Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza between the two countries, but so far, both Israel and Egypt have sealed off their borders even further, cutting off food, water, power and other supplies to Gaza.

For the Australian soldier recovering in Israel from his gunshot wound, it is clear that “Hamas can’t exist any more as the rulers of Gaza”. But he doesn’t see Palestinians as his enemy. “They just want to look after their families [in Gaza]. We need to give those people opportunity again.”

Still, he and Briner both say they were disturbed to see antisemitism flare at a Sydney protest earlier this week back home.

“You can care about kids in Gaza and still condemn [these attacks] by the terrorist group [Hamas],” Briner says.

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