For 11 months, the family of Hersh Goldberg-Polin tapped into reserves of strength that most people never need to find. We watched it firsthand, as parents of a hostage ourselves. Our 20-year-old son Edan, an American citizen who graduated from high school in Tenafly, N.J., was serving in the Israel Defense Forces near Gaza when Hamas took him captive on Oct. 7.
For 331 days, the world has failed our son and his fellow hostages: The Israeli government has abandoned them, too many countries have turned a blind eye, and while we’re grateful for the U.S. government’s steadfast support, its efforts have yet to yield results.
Last month, the world watched as Hersh’s parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, told the story of their 23-year-old son at the Democratic National Convention. Ms. Goldberg, looking small next to the podium, and Mr. Polin, hunched over the microphone, spoke with emotion and clarity. With heavy hearts, we rewatched their speech on Sunday, hours after the world learned that the bodies of Hersh and five other hostages were recovered by the Israeli military in Gaza.
The result of Hamas’s cruelty and Israel’s indifference have now come to bear, and two people who have become family to us have paid the ultimate price. Hersh’s brutal killing has us racked with pain for the Goldberg-Polins and fear that our own son Edan will soon meet the same fate.
None of this had to happen.
Since October, we — along with Jon, Rachel, and other hostage families — have warned that our loved ones could be killed in captivity without a deal to bring them home. Every day as captives puts their lives more at risk.
And yet, after one hopeful but temporary cease-fire agreement that released more than 100 hostages, we have only experienced delay after delay.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly prioritizing keeping Israeli forces deployed on the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land on the border of Gaza and Egypt, a condition many say threatens the chance to bring home the remaining hostages. The killing of Hersh, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Ori Danino proves that Mr. Netanyahu can no longer hold up this deal. Our window to rescue the hostages is closing, and the prime minister is fastening the latch.
Our depths of devastation have had moments of light. Just a little over four months ago, Hamas released a video of Hersh, the first proof of life his family has received since his kidnapping from the Nova music festival. He gestured at the camera with an arm blown off during Hamas’s attack that day, his face gaunt. Despite the shock of his appearance, this video was a sign of hope for the Goldberg-Polins, for our family, and for the families of all those lost in the dungeons of Hamas captivity. Hersh was alive, and other hostages might be, too.
But on Saturday night, Israeli forces announced that Hamas terrorists had executed Hersh and the five other hostages. Their bodies were found less than a mile from where the Bedouin-Israeli hostage Farhan al-Qadi was rescued last week. According to the Israeli military, they were killed by their captors not long before Israeli forces recovered their bodies. Who knows how close Hersh was to coming home alive?
We live in agony each day that passes without our son. We have grieved the loss of every hostage, including the Americans Judih Weinstein, Gadi Haggai and Itay Chen, who were killed on Oct. 7 and dragged back to Gaza. But until yesterday, we hung on to the hope that the other hostages were alive. We knew that hope was not a guarantee. We knew we were closer to losing it every time another round of negotiations failed. As Rachel Goldberg has said: “Hope is mandatory.”
We still believe that today, but our hope is running out.
It’s not just the fear of losing our son that now keeps us up at night. It’s the fact that his murder is becoming the more probable outcome, and we have no faith in Mr. Netanyahu’s will to change that. We met with him in Washington, D.C., in July and he promised he would get a deal done to secure a cease-fire and the hostages’ release. We struggle to see that any holdup could ever be worth these lives.
Mr. Prime Minister, we demand you uphold our shared Jewish values and prioritize the hostages, whose lives remain in your hands. Tikkun olam means “repair the world” in Hebrew and is the core of what it means to be Jewish. We’re counting on you to help repair the world, bring the hostages home and end all the suffering that this war has caused once and for all.
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