‘Everyone says the right thing’: Mother of Hamas hostage calls for action from leaders
The mother of an American-Israeli held captive by Hamas has said she fears the plight of hostages has been forgotten as the war in Gaza continues.
Rachel Goldberg’s son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was taken by militants who stormed the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7.
The 23-year-old’s hand was blown off when Hamas fighters threw grenades into a bomb shelter in which 29 people were hiding.
Most inside were killed. Ms Goldberg, an American who lives in Jerusalem, was told he was taken to Gaza.
She has taken the story of her son and other hostages to the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, where she hopes to keep their plight in the public consciousness.
“Everyone says the right thing. I’ve been all over the world and talked to very important people and everyone assured me ‘of course we want Hersh home, of course we want all the hostages home’.
“Wanting and doing something are two very different things. If you don’t put together action with that, nothing
happens,” she said. About 240 hostages were taken on October 7, with about 130 still in Gaza.
“These hostages were taken back to Gaza and hidden among this population of people, these Gazans, so many of whom are innocent and caught in the crossfire of this horrible situation,” she told
The National, emphasising the compassion that she has for victims on both sides.
“It’s a really messy, tangled situation.
“We really can’t forget that this is a microcosm of a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Ms Goldberg, who wears a sticker each day counting the number of days since he was taken, described her son Hersh and the music fans attending Nova as “young, hippie, granola-crunching music lovers”.
She received two short messages from him before he was taken, saying: “I’m sorry.”
“Since then we’ve lived in a different universe to people,” she said.
Ms Goldberg wants to see the hostage issue dealt with separately from the conflict, however difficult that may be.
“It is its own issue but it’s been conflated into this horrible situation that’s now happening in Gaza, where you have hundreds of thousands of people suffering terribly and mass, mass, mass casualties. It’s really painful.”
Hostage families have been given updates by the Israeli and US governments on their relatives’ plight, although many have grown frustrated with the lack of a second exchange.
About 1,200 Israelis were killed in the October 7 attack, with retaliatory air strikes killing more than 24,600 in Gaza.