Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh, who was abducted by Hamas and has been held hostage in Gaza for 310 days, spoke to Arutz Sheva – Israel National News about her son's continued captivity.
Goldberg-Polin told of the specific incident where Aner Shapira, Hersh's friend and many others were killed, and where Hersh was taken from. She explained that, “We are a religious family and Hersh came to us a couple of years ago and said he's not going to be keeping Shabbat the way that we keep Shabbat for now. He's always been very respectful, and he had said on October 6th, ‘I'm going to come with you to beit knesset (synagogue), I'm going to come with you to Shabbat dinner.’ He came with us and he said, ‘but I'm bringing my backpack, because after dinner I'm going to go with Aner, who was his best friend, and we're going to go do something fun. We're going to go camp somewhere.” We said fine. I'm very happy that he still wants to do things like that, so he came with us to beit knesset. He danced with the Torah. He came with us to Shabbat dinner. At 11:00 pm he kissed John, he kissed me. He turned around in the doorway, and he looked at me and said, ‘I love you, see you tomorrow.’ That was 311 nights ago.”
She continues to tell that, “the next morning, Shabbat morning, John left for beit knesset at 7:30. At around 8:00, I heard the bomb sirens going off, so I woke my girls. We got into our safe room and waited ten minutes. We didn't hear anything, so we came out. Normally I don't use any sort of technology on Shabbat, but I knew somewhere in the country there are rockets falling and I knew the boys were sleeping outside. So I said to my girls, ‘I'm turning on my phone. It’s an emergency. I have to make sure Hersh is okay.’ I turned on my phone at 8:23. Two Whatsapps popped up that had come in simultaneously at 8:11 from Hersh to John and me. “The first text said, ‘I love you’ and the second one said ‘I'm sorry.’ We now know from the recording from the migunit [public bomb shelter] that was just released two weeks ago, that at 8:10 is when Hersh says, ‘Ein li yad’ [in Hebrew ‘I don’t have a hand’], he was texting us with his other hand, because I think he thought he was dying, so he was saying ‘goodbye, I love you and I'm sorry.’ He knew that we were going to be in a lot of pain and we know from the witnesses that shortly after that the gunman came in and ordered Hersh and three of the other young men to stand up and come outside. When he stood up everyone was able to see that his dominant arm, his left arm from the elbow down, had been blown off.”
“That,” says Goldberg-Polin, “is where we [moved to] this alternate universe that we live in now. Every single day I open my eyes from a very poor four hours of sleep, if I'm lucky. I say the morning prayers, I say ‘let today be the day,’ and I say ‘now pretend to be a human’ and I put on this costume of a person and I try to run to the ends of the earth to save my only son, Hersh. Every single day we try to educate and advocate, especially in the Foreign Press. My Hebrew is not very good, but my English is decent and we're constantly trying to explain to the world who are these hostages, what is this hostage situation, and we're constantly trying to speak to anyone who can move the needle and affect the situation that we all currently find ourselves under.”
She explains that this means that, “whether that's running to speak to different leaders of countries, out in the open or quietly, or speaking to the Pope, or speaking to very influential people with power in different countries, who aren't in governments. We do every single thing we can possibly think of, while keeping in mind that, ‘we obviously know that it will come from Hashem,’ but this is our effort and we're doing every single thing that we can possibly do to contribute to the effort. We are obviously also praying and saying Psalms, and doing good deeds constantly throughout the day.”
She feels that “the more that time goes on and the more that we explain the situation to people, the more support we are getting from the outside world, which is unusual. We get thousands and thousands of messages every single day, to the point where we have someone full-time who helps to answer those messages, because we have been so blessed with people around the world starting to understand that this is not a monolithic homogeneous group of people. This is an extremely diverse group of people. The 115 remaining hostages hail from over 20 different countries. They are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. The world doesn't know that. Once they find that out, they want to understand more.”
In terms of the deal to rescue the hostages, Goldberg-Polin says that, “We're not any more privy than most normal people. I think that we understand that we don't know all of the details of the deal, which is why it was surprising that we hear such voracious voices coming out to say, ‘we’re anti-deal.’ In general in life, my father always said, ‘listen to what someone's giving you and then decide what you think,’ so I think it's a little bit premature to shut down altogether an idea of a deal. Back in November, before the first deal that resulted in over a hundred people coming home, we were told very unequivocally Hersh will not be in this deal. We said, ‘Do it!’ Save who you can. What we do know about this deal is it is for everyone. I wish they would put 115 people on the border and they can do the deal all at once. But the option is, ‘this is the deal or there's no deal.’ I say this is our way to get our people home. It's been 310 days."
Goldberg-Polin says that she doesn't know, "how much longer Shlomo Mansour, who is 87 years old, has to wait for a deal or how much longer Ariel and Kfir Bibas have to wait for a deal, or how much longer this part of our population and again, this very diverse group of people, have to keep waiting for a deal. I think this is a deal that that Prime Minister Netanyahu presented at the very end of May, that President Biden elucidated for the world. I trust that if Prime Minister Netanyahu presented this and that we're hearing from all different voices in our security establishment that this is the deal to proceed with, so I trust those voices.”
Regarding the price of releasing terrorists or ending the war, she says that “first, Hersh and the other 114 hostages have paid the price. They've paid 310 days in a horrifying situation that none of us can imagine. Second, halachically (according to Jewish law) it has been explained that it's very clear that if you have a life and death situation right now, versus a possible situation in the future, you save the life right now. There is no dispute about that. Third, we have the whole security establishment telling us that we can handle this price. I feel that if we have the whole security establishment telling us that, and I'm not a military tactician, I'm just a mother, I trust them.”
Goldberg-Polin says that she doesn’t “really know what a total victory means. I know what a failure of victory is and that is having the hostages not come home. Everything that we do, we're trying very hard to create more unity, more ahavat chinam [baseless love]. We have such a surplus of pain and acrimony just among us and during these Nine Days before Tisha B’Av, we are trying so hard, we're trying so hard these last ten months, not to be a voice screaming, not to be a voice filled with hatred and acrimony. What we need now more than ever as a nation, as a people, as a nation is unity and that is hard and scary. It's hard when you're trying to have a conversation with someone who you don't agree with. We don't have to agree, we have to understand each other. We're one family. We have to work very hard and it's very hard to be one nation with different voices and different opinions.”