David and Hazel Brief, parents of Staff Sergeant Yona Brief, OBM, spoke to Arutz Sheva – Israel National, about their son's bravery and heroism, and the attack on October 7th, in which he was severely injured and fought a brave battle of survival for just over one year, until he succumbed to his wounds.
Hazel, Yona’s mother tells that, “Yona's story actually starts in May 2023. He was first injured in Tulkarm when a pipe bomb exploded on his legs. We got a call in the middle of the night to meet him at Beilinson Hospital. He was hospitalized, had operations and when he was released, he took himself through a whole rehab program and did not actually need to go back to the army at that point. But Yona is a really good boy and a good soldier and his team very much wanted him back. After a lot of thought he decided to go back and returned to his unit just before October 7th."
David, Yona’s father, says, “His first Shabbat on high alert was on that Simchat Torah. He was in the base in Mishor Adumim and they got the call at seven in the morning and they quickly got dressed and headed down in the armored jeep towards Sderot, not knowing exactly what they were getting into.”
Hazel continues to describe that day, “He didn't stay in Sderot very long and they went to Kfar Aza. A member of his team has family in Kfar Aza, so they were getting updates very early on about the terrorists that had infiltrated the village. Nobody knew numbers, but they went house to house to help release the families, who had already at that point spent several hours in their safe rooms. They went between the houses and his commanding officer and his best friend were in front of him. They were immediately shot and his commanding officer, Ben Bronshtein, of blessed memory, and his best friend, Amir Fisher, of blessed memory, were killed.”
“Ben called out on the communication device and said he’d been injured and Yona, who is a combat medic, ran to save him. He began to drag Ben's body and then was hit with thirteen bullets all over his body; in his head, his arms, back and his legs,” she describes.
Hazel says that despite the roller coaster of emotions throughout a year of their son being in hospital, “we were always hopeful. Yona proved from day one that he was a fighter. Before he made it to Sheba Hospital, he was actually placed on the list of the dead with Ben and Amir. The army thought he had no chance of survival, but Yona is a survivor and he survived a four-hour evacuation and was able to get to Sheba Hospital awake and actually spoke to the doctors before they started to operate on him.”
David continues to describe that, “the evacuation itself was under fire, so when the first vehicle came to rescue him from the home in Kfar Aza, they shot an RPG and a friend of his was also injured. They were able to take him to Sa’ad Junction and there they thought they were going to meet a helicopter, but there was an ambush and the helicopter was not able to land. He survived that ambush, sitting there on the side of the road. He had put a tourniquet on both legs and on his arm, while helping other soldiers with their wounds.”
“Hoping to survive this ambush,” David continues, “they were able to take him on the hood of a Hummer to the next stop, where he met an ambulance that took him to yet another place, and there he met up with a helicopter that was going to take him to Soroka. But it was already very crowded there, so they made the decision to go straight to Sheba. He got there at around two in the afternoon and they took him directly into the operating room.”
It was indeed a year of miracles. Hazel says that, “Yona had endless miracles and we were there to see them all. So many times doctors would say, ‘This is it, Yona is not going to make it.’ As parents we didn't really have a lot to do other than to pray, so we sent out Tehillim [Psalms] to anybody we knew and this happened countless times throughout the course of the year. Yona would be at the edge of almost death and miraculously he would just get out of it. Whether it was MRI and brain scans, liver and kidneys, and endless bleeding, and eleven pneumonias. So there was a tremendous amount of miracles.”
She continues to say that, “We saw that Yona was so strong and so determined to live. The ICU unit is a place where unfortunately a lot of people die and for 417 days Yona brought life there. He was alive. We had sushi nights, karaoke nights, his friends came and we had pizza and hamburgers. He did drawing and physical therapy, occupational therapy, Netflix and movies. We would go out to a deck for pre-Shabbat singing.”
Hazel admits that, “we were not prepared for this tragic end and neither were the doctors; nobody. All the top doctors got together the day before Yona passed away and they went over his entire file and said, ‘Let's see if we've missed anything. What have we missed? Is there anything we need to do?’ According to his blood test and what they were seeing, Yona should not have been alive. These were not the blood tests of someone being humanly alive. They realized there was nothing that they could add to his treatment, they were doing everything they could, with antibiotics and different medications and machines, but not one doctor was willing to say that Yona is not going to get through this.”
“Everyone believed in him; totally believed in him. We did and Yona believed in himself, so it was really a shock. We talked about it all the time, that in just a bit you're going to rehab, in just a bit you're going to go to America and get your legs, in just a bit you're going to be swimming. It was very real for all of us,” adds Hazel.
David says that the special feature about Yona is that, “He just loved life. He lived life to the fullest all the time. He didn't waste any time. He was always looking forward to the next adventure, the next challenge and with his engaging smile all of his friends and all the people that he touched understood who he was to so many people.”
“Yona was one of these great looking guys. He worked out a lot. He was super fit and he could have been one of those really snobby kids in junior high and high school that did not want to be friends with anybody and just hang out with the popular crowd. It was so not Yona. We just hear countless stories about how he was everybody's friend, nobody was ever angry with him, he would bring people into his circles and he loved them. Every person felt that they were Yona's best friend. So, I think he gave a lot of devotion to friendships,” says Hazel.
“But, with all of the severe pain and anguish that he was in, he taught people to value life and to value every little thing that we do, like sitting down and standing up, eating and swallowing, hearing and talking. These were all of the things that were taken away from him at some point and he showed us how you could still live without those things. He also showed us that there's a lot of things that we just take for granted and we need to be thankful for all of those things,” concluded David.