‘We feel excruciating agony.’ Hamas hostage’s mother with Florida roots seeks help for son
Hersh Goldberg-Polin started dreaming about travel as a kid, perhaps because he moved around a lot at a young age. Before relocating to Israel at about 8, he lived in California and Virginia, and often visited family and vacationed in South Florida.
In the first grade, he told his parents he’d had enough of the National Geographic Junior edition, wanting to move up to the advanced version. He loved travel so much so that this year, the now-23-year-old Israeli-American planned a two-year trip across the world.
He was supposed to leave on Wednesday, but he couldn’t because, on Oct. 7, Hamas kidnapped him at the Supernova Music Festival. A few days later, his parents saw a video of him hiding in a bomb shelter and later losing his arm to a grenade. He has been held hostage ever since.
“My heart was torn out that day; it was stolen,” said Goldberg-Polin’s mom, Rachel Goldberg, who wears a number taped onto her shirt every day with the number of days her eldest son has been captured in Gaza. As of Friday, Dec. 29, it’s been 84 days.
READ MORE: These South Floridians were in the region when Israel was attacked.
This week, as many wrap up the holiday season with loved ones, Goldberg wants the world to remember that not all can do that, especially those related to the more than 100 people — including at least eight American citizens — still believed to be held hostage by Hamas, an armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic political party by the same name, according to the Associated Press.
Deputy Consul General Mike Driquez of the Israeli Consulate General’s office in Miami echoed that sentiment.
“Right now we are in a time that’s joyful because of the holidays, but it’s also very sad,” he said. “It’s very complicated.”
“It’s been almost three months, and we still don’t have any information on the abductees’ health condition or anything like that,” he added. “We don’t have much time left.”
A mother on a mission: ‘Painful would be a privilege’
On Oct. 7, Hamas-led militants attacked Israel and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians living in communities in southern Israel near the Gaza border, Israel has said. Hamas took about 250 people hostage.
During a ceasefire in late November, Hamas militants released about 110 hostages as part of an exchange for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel. Israeli’s counterattacks have killed more than 20,000 Palestinians and displaced almost all of the 2.3 million people living in Gaza, according to the AP.
Geopolitical conflicts are complex, Goldberg says, but what isn’t is a mother looking for her son.
Goldberg used to be a teacher. Now her full-time job is advocating for her son and the rest of the hostages, more so after some of the released hostages reported being kept in poor conditions, according to the AP, and after learning about her son’s injury.
She urges others to join her and her husband by calling their elected officials and requesting assistance to free the hostages.
READ MORE: US envoys work for a new hostage release deal and a scale-down of the Israel-Hamas war
“My husband and I work 18 to 20 hours per day. We go anywhere; we talk to anyone,” she said.
They’ve told their story to United Nations representatives in New York and Geneva. They’ve met with Pope Francis, Elon Musk, President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and 25 U.S. senators and seven governors. They’ve also talked to the War Cabinet in Israel and to different celebrities and influencers, even some they hadn’t ever heard of before like record executive Scooter Braun.
“We feel excruciating agony at all times, but we have to pretend to be human, and we have to pretend to be functioning,” Goldberg said. “Because if I’m hysterical in a fetal position in a puddle on the floor, then I can’t be trying to save him and them. It’s really challenging. And it’s painful. Although painful seems like a cheap word for what we’re experiencing. Painful would be a privilege, if I was in pain. It’s so much more than pain.”
Still, Goldberg and her husband, Jonathan Polin, manage to carry on with others’ grace.
READ MORE: ‘I can’t sleep.’ Families of Hamas hostages speak at Fort Lauderdale antisemitism summit
When she wakes up at 3 a.m., after about three hours of rest she gets every night thanks to prescribed sleeping pills, she reads psalms for times of trouble. Then she reads the thousands of messages of support she gets on social media every day.
And on Wednesday, as the flight their son would have been on to start his two-year trek around the world took off from Tel Aviv — El Al LY 83 to Bangkok — a flight attendant told passengers about Goldberg-Polin, about how he yearned to start his world travels in India. Later, when the plane flew over India, the pilots called Polin.
“We are here with you,” one of the pilots told the father, a video posted on an Instagram account called @bring.hersh.home showed.
South Florida connections to Israelis
Driquez at the Israeli Consulate General’s office in Miami said he hopes South Floridians realize that although the conflict and the issues in the Middle East may seem foreign, they’re directly connected to their community.
He pointed to personal connections like Goldberg-Polin’s: His aunts, uncles and grandparents have lived in Boca Raton and Boynton Beach, and he grew up going to Sugar Sand Park in Boca.
READ MORE: ‘It’s important that we bear witness.” Videos show horrors of Hamas attack on Israel
“My children still to this day get excited whenever someone mentions that park,” Goldberg said. “My God, they love it.”
Driquez said Israelis, in general, have a deep relationship to South Florida.
When Champlain Towers South, a 12-story beachfront condominium in Surfside partially collapsed in June 2021, killing 98, people, the Israeli Defense Forces sent a search-and-rescue team and helped families through the trauma.
READ MORE: Surfside tragedy survivors honor Israeli rescuers in an emotional Holy Land reunion
That collaboration during the Surfside tragedy is what led state Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Democrat who represents a district that includes Surfside, to travel to Israel earlier this month, and talk to Goldberg and Polin. He visited them at their home during a six-day trip there.
“It was very solemn, yet powerful,” he said. “Rachel was incredibly composed. She’s really holding it together.”
