In raw speech, Rachel Goldberg-Polin tells foreign envoys they can get hostages freed
As president and FM listen, mother of slain captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin reveals new details of his captivity and murder, says he was found with his face resting on the face of Eden Yerushalmi, ‘a girl named after paradise’
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
With President Isaac Herzog, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and US Ambassador Mike Huckabee in attendance, the mother of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin told foreign diplomats on Thursday that they have the ability to secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
“It is absolutely doable, as long as people with power decide it is an interest and an equity for them,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin said in an emotional address at Herzog’s annual Independence Day reception for the foreign diplomatic corps in Israel. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that “victory” over Hamas, not the return of the hostages, was the supreme objective of the war in Gaza, provoking anger from captives’ families.
The controversy came as hostages’ families in recent days accused Netanyahu of sabotaging a potential truce-hostage deal and withholding information about the remaining 59 captives.
“I am simply a regular person,” Goldberg-Polin continued, “but I know that every single one of you here has the ability to help make this happen. You were not put here by chance. Oh no.”
“It may be that the only reason you do it is because it is righteous, it is holy, and it may be the singular most godly thing you do in your lives.”
“And one day,” she said, “when you are called home to meet your maker, you will be able to say that you did the right thing. You helped save these divinely kissed souls who are languishing in Gaza at this very moment.”
Goldberg-Polin also revealed new details of her son’s captivity, and the way she and her husband found out about his death.
“My name is Rachel, and I will always be the mother of Hersh Goldberg Polin,” she began her address. (Video above.)
“Hersh will always be my first-born child,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin continued, as her husband Jonathan sat alongside Huckabee and UAE Ambassador Mohamed Al Khaja. “Hersh will always be my only son. And Hersh will always be 23 years old.”
Goldberg-Polin was abducted to Gaza during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught while hiding in a bomb shelter after running from terrorists who raided the Nova rave near Kibbutz Re’im.
He and five other hostages were executed by their Hamas captors in August. Their bodies were recovered and brought back to Israel by the IDF.
Goldberg-Polin said that hostage Or Levy asked for Jonathan and Rachel to meet him in the hospital after he was released in February.
Levy and Hersh were kidnapped from the same bomb shelter on October 7, spirited into Gaza on the same pickup truck, and temporarily reunited 52 days later in a Hamas tunnel.
Levy told the Polins that every day, Hersh would go to every hostage in the tunnel and repeat to them a slightly altered Friedrich Nietzsche quote he had read from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”– “He who has a why can bear any how.”
“Hersh kept saying this quote over and over and over to himself and to each of the hostages who were held with him,” Rachel told the assembled ambassadors, religious leaders, and military attachés. “Hersh was encouraging each of them to hone in on what would be the motivation to keep inhaling and exhaling. To keep living within the depths of the literal hell on earth.”
After Hersh was moved to a different tunnel, she said, “every single hostage, several times a day, for the next 437 days, those remaining hostages in Or’s tunnel would turn and ask each other, What is your why?”
“It became, he said, like a prayer.”
On the night of August 31, 2024 — the 330th day of Hersh’s captivity — Jon called her into their bedroom, said Rachel. He told her he had seen rumors online that the bodies of six hostages had been found in a Gaza tunnel, and that Hersh was one of them.
Jon handed her the book of Psalms she keeps on her bedside table, and told his wife, “Now it is time to pray.”
They said Psalms for the next seven hours, Rachel recalled, until IDF officers, an FBI agent, and US ambassador Jack Lew came to their home at 4 a.m. to tell them the bitter news that Hersh had been murdered.
He and the five other hostages had been held in a tunnel 20 meters underground, 1.6 meters tall, and just 60 centimeters wide. It had no electricity or plumbing.
Hersh, who was 6’1”, only weighed 117 pounds, Rachel said. He was found on his knees, his face resting on the face of Eden Yerushalmi, said Rachel, “a girl named after paradise.”
“Getting back the hostages,” Rachel exhorted listeners, “This is your why, Israel.”
At the end of her address, First Lady Michal Herzog strode over to Rachel and gave her an embrace, while Al Khaja shook Jon’s hand and offered his condolences.
The Times of Israel Community.