Chicago native Rachel Goldberg told thousands of mourners at her son’s Jerusalem funeral Monday that the 23-year-old killed in the captivity of Hamas was finally “free.”
Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who had been kidnapped from the Tribe of Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, was one of six Hamas hostages confirmed dead by the Israeli military Saturday.
“For 23 years, I was privileged to have the most stunning honor to be Hersh’s mama,” his mother said before her son was laid to rest. “I’ll take it and say thank you. I just wish it had been for longer. Hersh, for all these months I’ve been in such torment and worry about you for every single millisecond of every single day. It was such a specific type of misery that I have never experienced before.”
Mourners lined the street to the cemetery, some waving Israeli flags and others dressed in the colors of Goldberg-Polin’s favorite soccer team; some laid wreaths by the young man’s coffin and sang a prayer.
The funeral comes just a few months after Hamas issued an April video showing Goldberg-Polin alive. The Israeli military has said all six hostages were killed shortly before Israeli forces arrived.
“Amidst the inexplicable agony, terror, anguish, desperation and fear, we became absolutely certain you were coming home to us alive,” Goldberg said at the funeral. “But that was not to be. Now I no longer have to worry about you. I know you are no longer in danger.”
The other dead hostages were identified by the Israeli army as Ori Danino, 25; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Almog Sarusi, 27; and Alexander Lobanov, 33, who were also taken from the festival. Another hostage killed, 40-year-old Carmel Gat, had been abducted from the nearby farming community of Be’eri.
Their bodies were recovered from a tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza, according to Israeli authorities. The Israeli Health Ministry said autopsies showed the hostages were shot at close range and died Thursday or Friday.
“I send each of the families my deepest sympathies for what we are all going through and for the sickening feeling that we all could not save them. I think we all did every single thing we could,” Goldberg said at the funeral. “The hope that perhaps a deal was near was so authentic it was crunchy. It tasted close. But it was not to be so. Those beautiful six survived together and those beautiful six died together. And now they will be remembered together forever.”
Goldberg grew up in the Gold Coast neighborhood. Her husband and Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s father, Jon Polin, grew up in north suburban Skokie and the West Rogers Park neighborhood.
The couple lived in Chicago after college and then moved to Berkeley, California, where Hersh was born. In 2008, the family relocated to Jerusalem.
The mother and father visited Chicago last month to speak at the Democratic National Convention, where they appealed for the release of their son and dozens of other hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza. The couple had also met with President Joe Biden and the Pope.
At her son’s funeral, Goldberg recounted how she and her husband often used to wonder what Hersh Goldberg-Polin would be like be like into adulthood.
“What you would do. What you would look like. What kind of parent you would be,” she said. “But now you will forever be our beautiful boy. You will stay the energetic, kind, patient, curious, sunny, irreverent, pensive, forever handsome, forever young, forever my sweet boy.”
The parents said they hoped their son’s death might mark a turning point in the Israel-Hamas war and release of other hostages in captivity in Gaza.
“Maybe your death is the stone, the fuel, that will bring home the 101 other hostages,” Jon Polin said at the funeral.
During a eulogy, Israeli President Isaac Herzog apologized to Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s family.
“As a human being, as a father and as the president of the state of Israel, I want to say how sorry I am,” Herzog said. “How sorry I am that we didn’t protect Hersh on that dark day. How sorry I am that we failed to bring him home. In his life and in his death, Hersh has touched all of humanity deeply.”
Meanwhile, protests erupted across Israel on Monday, sparked by the failure to return the hostages. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in what appeared to be the biggest demonstration since start of the war, according to the Associated Press.
Roughly 250 hostages were taken during the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, which killed about 1,200 in Israel and thrust the region into a bloody war. Israel officials believe 101 remain in captivity, including 35 who are thought to be dead.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 92,000 wounded in the war as of last month, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Recent estimates indicate more than 9,000 Palestinians have been detained across the West Bank since the start of the war.
Israel’s largest labor union went on strike Monday, prompting widespread disruptions across the country, in an attempt pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a hostage deal.
Biden also accused Netanyahu of not doing enough to negotiate a cease-fire and hostage release, though the United States president insisted that negotiators remain “very close.”
Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out cease-fire negotiations by issuing new demands, including for lasting Israeli control over two strategic corridors in Gaza.
Netanyahu, however, blamed Hamas for the stalled hostage negotiations saying, “whoever murders hostages doesn’t want a deal.”
The Associated Press contributed.
eleventis@chicagotribune.com
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