Posted on November 24, 2023
British-Israeli law student Kinneret Hamburger was on holiday with her family in Israel on October 7 when she was woken up by an air raid siren.
She received a message calling her “to base” — just a day before she was due to move into a new flat.
Kinneret, a reserve officer in the IDF, jumped into her car and sped to her army post without even packing her bag.
It was a self-defining moment. “When terrorists declare war upon your people, you have no other choice than fight for your life and everyone else’s,” she tells the JC.
Kinneret’s urge to protect her homeland is deeply intertwined with her own family past.
Her grandfather, John Horn, was an 11-year-old Kindertransport refugee to Britain from Berlin, and that story — a family member rescued from monsters by a free, democratic society — is key in her drive to protect the Jewish state.