Goldberg-Polins: Leaders dismissed us when we warned hostages could be executed
Parents of slain American-Israeli hostage say son’s body was found underweight, bullet ridden, in ‘horrifying conditions’; reveal they rebuffed PM’s offer to speak after funeral
The parents of slain American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin have said they were repeatedly dismissed when they warned the country’s leadership that their son and other captives of Hamas in Gaza could be executed by the terror group.
In an interview that aired Thursday evening, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin also said they had rebuffed an offer from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak following the funeral of their son, and had sought distance from other officials as well, accusing them of lacking the necessary sense of urgency or political will to save Israelis kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
“There were political decision-makers who, for whatever reasons, did not seize that opportunity, and we missed it,” Polin told Channel 12 news.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was one of six hostages whose bodies were found in a tunnel in late August — along with Carmel Gat, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, and Alexander Lobanov — shortly after being executed by their captors, apparently as a result of Israeli troops closing in on the location. The discovery sparked intense anger at the government over its inability to seal a ceasefire agreement that would see at least some hostages freed, and its insistence that only military action will advance a deal.
Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin: Full Channel 12 interview
The hostages were among 251 people abducted from Israel on October 7 in a massive cross-border attack on southern Israel led by the Palestinian terror group Hamas that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Speaking alongside his wife for the first time since their son was killed, Jon Polin said that over the many months of the war he had “challenged decision-makers” during meetings about what he viewed as a lacking sense of urgency, as they and other families pressed for a deal that would see the release of their loved ones.
He recounted demanding: “Why are you confident that we have time and that this isn’t going to lead to a situation where too much military pressure [will] lead to captors lining up hostages, shooting them one by one in the head?”
“And we were told by people all over the place, ‘No, no, it’s not going to end like that.’ We asked that very question: ‘Why won’t it end this way?’ We were immediately told each time… ‘They’re an asset; there are reasons why it’s not going to go that way,'” he added.
‘A horrifying scene’
Rachel Goldberg-Polin detailed the conditions under which Hersh and the other five hostages were held, as relayed to the family: an “airless, completely pitch-black tunnel with no plumbing.”
She said that throughout the tunnel were bottles filled with very dark urine, indicating how dehydrated the hostages were. A plastic bucket was placed at the end of the tunnel so the hostages could have a degree of privacy when they used the bathroom.
Hersh, 23, was nearly six feet tall, but only weighed 117 pounds when he was buried. Hersh’s left hand had been blasted off by a grenade during the Oct. 7 attack. When he was found, a bullet had gone through his remaining right hand, apparently as he tried to shield himself during the execution. He had further bullet wounds to his shoulder, neck and back of the head. He was found collapsed on his knees, with 24-year-old hostage Eden Yerushalmi leaning on his lap.
“It was a horrifying scene. All of them were so thin, all of them were shot multiple times at close range,” Goldberg-Polin said.
‘Don’t ask for forgiveness’
Asked if Israel’s leaders had chosen not to save the hostages, Jon Polin said there were various moments throughout the past year where the government had missed opportunities to bring about their release.
“The rationale for not doing it changed every time, whether it was something about the Netzarim Corridor or Philadelphi, or how to move Gazan citizens back from the south to the north [of Gaza], or the length of a pause,” he said.
He noted that Israel’s entire security establishment had backed compromises for a deal, but that there was also “political pressure” in the other direction. Polin cited a letter against a deal signed in July by prominent national religious rabbis “who I think never even understood the content of a deal that could be done, and in principle were rejecting a deal.”
Many of those same rabbis in recent days signaled a change in their position in a new letter backing a “responsible deal.”
He revealed that they declined an offer by Netanyahu’s office to speak to them after Hersh’s funeral. “We elected at the time not to [speak with him]. I don’t really know what we would say to political decision-makers, to certain rabbis, to other people in positions of leadership who we think failed us,” Jon said.
“I found it very interesting that people of power tried to come to us during shiva. We actually said, ‘Please, we don’t want those people here,’” Rachel shared, while noting that this was done “in a kind way.”
“When you make a choice to do something that you know is wrong, you can’t — at least according to Jewish law — Leviticus [says] when you do a sin intentionally, you bear the punishment for that sin,” she continued. “Don’t come and ask me to forgive you for that sin. I’m not the right address. Real repentance is when you find yourself in the exact same situation where you did the thing that you know was wrong, and you choose differently.
“What I would challenge those people who wanted to come to us after they chose not to save the six: You have 101 chances now. Do it, and that’s the repentance. You don’t have to come to me and ask for forgiveness,” she said, referring to the number of hostages still held in Gaza.
Detrimental hope
Goldberg-Polin expressed her fear that the hope that the hostage families had tried to exude that their loved ones could be returned might have lulled decision-makers into complacency.
“Maybe part of our hope was too infectious, too positive during a dark time, that it even made the people at the table and the people with power believe everyone’s coming home: ‘Everybody just calm down, they’re coming home. It’s just going to take some time,’” she told Channel 12.
“Now that we know how they were found, it is so vastly obvious that there is not one second to waste. We need to move now. There are people today, as we’re sitting here talking, who are in those same conditions, and it’s probably gotten worse.”
What the future holds
Asked during the interview about this next unknown chapter of their lives, the Goldberg-Polins admitted to still being uncertain.
Jon indicated that they have received encouragement to enter public life in some capacity.
“We talk about, ‘Do we go back to our former selves? Do we slip back into the jobs that we were in on October 5 last year, or should we be doing something else?”
“One of the things that we’ve seen clearly is Israelis and even the world are hungry for something. And I’m not saying it’s Jon and Rachel, but we have people who come to us and say, ‘We need voices of clarity, of sanity. And we say to ourselves, ‘Well, we’re just bereaved parents. I’m not sure that we’re those voices.’ But we do talk a lot about what we do from here. We don’t know yet,” he said.
Rachel admitted having a hard time no longer being anonymous and of being “the trigger for someone to be in emotional pain.”
“I know everyone’s coming from a good place. No one would ever, ever do anything to intentionally cause us pain. But it’s painful,” she said.
“We are going to heal,” Goldberg-Polin vowed towards the end of the interview.
“There are people who walked out of Auschwitz and went on to have a good life. They never forgot their parents and their siblings and their spouses and their children who they lost there. But they went out and they decided — and it took tremendous effort — and they had good lives.”
“And there are people who walked out of Auschwitz and never left Auschwitz,” she added.
“We’re in mourning. We’re suffering, but we are making a choice personally that we are going to live life. We need to do it for ourselves. We need to do it for our daughters, and we need to do it because Hersh would want us to, so we will live life,” Polin said.
