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Hersh Goldberg-Polin Became the Face of the Israeli Hostages Trapped in Gaza. His Death Has Outraged a Nation

Just 13 days ago, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin stood up at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago and delivered both a message and a plea to their missing son.

WARNING: Readers might find some of the details in this story distressing.

“Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you,” Rachel said. “Stay strong, survive.”

The 23-year-old had already overcome astounding odds to stay alive.

All logic told his parents he suffered horrific injuries on October 7 last year, when Hamas-led militants streamed across the Gazan border into southern Israel in a terror attack and shot up the dance music festival he was attending with his friends.

A gruesome video taken amid the chaos revealed that Hersh’s left arm was blown off by a grenade before he was put into a truck and taken into Gaza.

“There’s not been one day — I don’t think there’s been one hour that I haven’t thought he’s dead,” Rachel told the New York Times’ Daily podcast two weeks after the attack.

But 201 days after he vanished, as Rachel gave up her job to advocate for the hostages, ignoring the quiet voice inside her that wondered if he was already gone, something astounding happened.

Hamas released a video featuring a thin young man with dark shadows under his eyes, and his left forearm missing.

Somehow, improbably, Hersh had not only survived the journey into Gaza, he had spent more than six months trapped in a complex web of underground tunnels, with a serious injury that was vulnerable to infection.

It’s safe to assume that many of Hersh’s words were forced on him by his captors, but at the end of the video, he addressed his mum directly.

“I know you’re doing everything possible to bring me home,” he said.

For months, Rachel said she had been living on another planet — “our planet of no sleep, our planet of despair, our planet of tears” — but suddenly, she had reason to hope back on Earth.

As she and her husband walked off the stage at the DNC, Rachel was still fuelled by the determination that had kept her going for 11 months.

It’s hard to overstate how often you see the faces of the roughly 250 hostages first taken around Israel, their posters plastered on every street corner and every bus stop, a nation desperate for their return.

But there has always been something about Hersh — a beautiful, young man at the start of his life who almost died trying to save his friends, whose mother would simply not stop fighting for him.

For many Israelis, he was a symbol of hope.

And his story became the face of a global campaign to “bring them home”.

But on September 1, 331 days after he was kidnapped, Hersh became a symbol of heartbreak.

He and five other hostages were discovered dead by the Israeli military in a tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza — the military estimates they had been killed in the previous 48 hours.

Rachel and Jon said the devastating news left them with “broken hearts” and asked for privacy as they mourn.

But within Israel, there has been an explosion of anger — not just at their Hamas captors, but at the country’s prime minister.

Thousands of people rallied across Israel, and the country shuttered to a stop overnight as a major labour union called a strike.

They say Benjamin Netanyahu has failed them for almost 11 months, focusing his efforts on pummelling Gaza with air strikes, rather than prioritising the Israeli hostages trapped underground — a claim the prime minister has denied.

How Hersh became the face of Israel’s hostages

On October 7, 2023, Rachel had her phone switched off for Shabbat, the traditional Jewish day of rest.

But then she began hearing from concerned friends about something terrible unfolding in southern Israel.

Her son Hersh and his best mate Aner were at a music festival near kibbutz Re’im, so she turned on her phone.

She found two messages from Hersh. “I love you,” the first read. The next one said: “I’m sorry.”

It would take days to find out exactly what happened, and it was worse than Rachel and Jon could have imagined.

Hersh and Aner fled the festival in a car as Hamas-led militants opened fire on the crowd, but when they heard an air raid siren, they hid in a field shelter along with about a dozen others.

“The terrorists came to the door of the bomb shelter and apparently started throwing grenades into the shelter, which is like fish in a barrel,” Rachel told The Daily, based on eyewitness accounts.

“From the time a pin on a grenade is out, you have 4.5 seconds until it explodes. And [Aner] was quickly picking them up and throwing them back. And they were spraying machine gun fire into there. So it was crazy and horrible.”

Aner was killed in the attack, and Hersh later said that his left arm was blown apart when he tried “using my body as a shield to protect myself and other fearful civilians”.

A grisly video later seen by Rachel and Jon showed Hersh had fashioned a tourniquet around the wound, but he was still covered in blood and the bone was exposed as Hamas militants hustled him into a waiting truck.

Even when they were almost certain he would be unable to survive without emergency surgery, Rachel and Jon became fierce advocates for the hostages held captive in Gaza, travelling repeatedly to lobby the US government, and to Qatar to push for a ceasefire and release deal.

When proof of life emerged in the form of a hostage video in April, Rachel was both elated and panicked.

“As soon as I heard his voice I started to cry … to see him moving, and to see that he is clearly medically compromised, and that he’s fragile,” she told the BBC.

Like many other hostage families, Rachel and Jon begged the Israeli government to stop its full-scale invasion of Gaza and focus its efforts on a ceasefire instead.

According to Israel, 251 Israelis and foreigners were taken on October 7, though dozens were freed in a short-lived ceasefire last year.

By last month, it was estimated that 109 hostages remained captive somewhere in Gaza, including Hersh.

“In our Jewish tradition, we say … every person is an entire universe. We must save all these universes,” Jon said at the DNC.

“In an inflamed Middle East, we know the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring calm to the entire region is a deal that brings this diverse group of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza.

“The time is now.”

Less than two weeks after his father spoke at the DNC, Hersh was dead.

The Hostages Families Forum said six hostages whose bodies were recovered by Israeli military, were “murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, torture and starvation in Hamas captivity”.

“The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages.”

Israelis take to the streets — and walk off the job

Israelis reacted to the slaying of six hostages, most of whom were in their 20s, with shock and fury.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took part in nationwide demonstrations as the news came through, most of them directing their ire at Netanyahu.

“Hamas might have pulled the trigger, but our government is the murderer,” one protester told the ABC.

Another cried through tears “the government abandoned them, they could have saved them, they were alive”.

Israel’s opposition also labelled the Netanyahu cabinet, the “cabinet of death”.

There was a prevailing feeling among the masses that Hersh and his co-captives could have returned home alive, instead of in body bags, if Netanyahu had made a deal, and agreed to Hamas’ demands, no matter the price.

The prime minister said he remains committed to securing a deal to release the remaining captives, of which there are estimated to be about 100 still somewhere in Gaza — although about a third are known to have already died.

“Whoever murders hostages does not want a deal,” he said.

But when Histadrut — the most powerful workers union, containing about 800,000 members — announced plans for a strike, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the union “chooses to represent the interests of Hamas”.

The union said it wanted to bring Israel’s economy to a standstill and cause nationwide disruption, in an attempt to force Netanyahu to make a deal.

From 6am, the chaos began.

Planes did not take off from the country’s main airport, Ben-Gurion, where check-in counters were closed.

Public transport came to a standstill in several areas. A raft of universities and schools cancelled classes. The country’s biggest banks also closed their doors.

Large swathes of the public sector, including all government offices, municipalities, museums, and formal associations went on strike.

Even some hospitals were reduced to minimal capacity.

The chaos continued until 2:30pm when the High Court ordered workers back to their jobs after the government sought an urgent injunction.

It was a move that provided a logistic win but fuelled the anger on the ground even further.

For a second night in a row, protesters gathered in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in large numbers to make their voices heard.

The latest developments have also coincided with more political pressure being put on Israel by its allies.

On Monday, local time, US President Joe Biden said Netanyahu was not doing enough to get a ceasefire deal done, while the United Kingdom’s new Labour government suspended 30 of roughly 350 arms export licences to Israel.

In Hersh’s home in Jerusalem, thousands of people lined the streets to create a farewell convoy, along the route to his funeral.

Tens of thousands more watched via an online stream as Hersh’s family recounted tales of a curious, kind, funny, and above all, peaceful man.

Through tears, his parents told the mourners they hoped their son’s death would be a “turning point” in the fight to get the remaining hostages out of Gaza.

“For 330 days, Mama and I have searched for the proverbial stone that would bring you home,” said his father, Jon.

“Maybe your death will be the stone that will bring the other hostages home.”

Israel’s President Isaac Hertzog also issued an apology to Hersh and his family.

“I apologise on behalf of the State of Israel, that we failed to protect you in the terrible disaster of October 7, that we failed to bring you home safely,” he said, adding a hostage deal was needed immediately.

But despite overwhelming internal pressure within Israel, a deal appears unlikely, at least for now.

After almost 11 months of conflict in the region, the numbers are grim.

More than 40,530 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel says about 100 captives remain in the tunnels or hidden elsewhere in Gaza, and there’s been a renewed push by Israelis, to get their government to save their lives through diplomatic channels — not military might.

As Jon said, every life is a universe.

In the Middle East, entire worlds are being shattered every day.

Article link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-03/the-israeli-hostage-who-became-a-symbol/104298860
Article source: ABC |Allyson Horn, Haidarr Jones and Rebecca Armitage | 3 September 2024

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