For family of Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin “hope is mandatory”

this week marks six months since the October 7th attack on Israel by the terrorist organization Hamas more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered thousands were injured and 240 people were taken hostage 23-year-old hsh Goldberg Poland was one of the hostages taken by Hamas and he remains in captivity today his parents John Poland and Rachel Goldberg have spent every waking minute since trying to bring her home John and Rachel it's so nice to be with you I'm so sorry it's under such difficult excruciating circumstances I know it's been about six months since hirh was kidnapped I think it's hard to imagine honestly what you all have been going through tell me what life looks like for you right now well exactly as you said so many people say to us we can't imagine what you're going through and frankly we always say we can't imagine what we're going through um as you mentioned I mean every day we change the number it's been 181 days since October 7th um and we kissed hsh goodbye on the evening of October 6th before he left to go to the Nova music festival with his best friend and um he turned around in the doorway very casually as he was leaving and he said to me love you see you tomorrow and that was 182 nights ago um so we when you ask you know what this is like and we live on a different planet truly we wake up every morning and we put on I always say I put on this costume of a human so that I can and John can run to the ends of the Earth and turn over every possible Stone to try to save hsh's life and the other 133 hostages who are still being held to save anyone who is who is still alive and to bring back those who we know already are confirmed dead and it is an unimaginable excruciating ongoing slow motion trauma John I even hate to ask you this because I hate to have you relive that horrible day the chaos the horror the confusion but I think it speaks to what you all had to endure and what you continue to endure all these days later can you take us back to trying to figure out what had happened on that day sure so on the morning of October 7th Saturday morning so The Jewish Sabbath and it also coincided with the holiday I was up early and left the house by 7:30 for synagogue in Jerusalem where we live um the perspective that I went through at synagogue is probably shortly after 8 o'clock the first aid siren went off which is super rare in Jerusalem and the group the group of us who was there at that time went into the bomb shelter of the building um we were in there for 10 minutes or so we came out few minutes later the next siren went and this cycle continued for a little while um ultimately after about an hour we canceled services and everybody went home and when I got home Rachel said we have a problem there was obviously a big problem in the country but she had turned on her phone which we normally don't use on The Jewish Sabbath and seen two text messages that we came in from Hersh at 8:11 in the morning to a group that the three of us have together the first message Saidi love you and the second message immediately afterwards said I'm sorry so when you get messages like that from a son who had just turned 23 years old it's unusual and you know that something is wrong we then spent the next number of hours trying to figure out where was he because we just knew that he was camping we pretty quickly determined that he was at the music festival in the south and her was there with his close friend anire shapira and there's a third friend they're like a trio who was out of the country but when we heard about the festival we asked the third friend if this is where they were and he confirmed yes and there was chaos that all over the country um we had friends come over immediately to spring into action not to not to just say hello and show support but we went into action mode and action mode on that first day was trying to figure out where H might be um ultimately uh we were not able to locate him anywhere and that includes having sent two friends down to different hospitals in the South to go through unidentified bodies um fast forward a day we had received a picture on the internet my daughter had seen it from inside of a bomb shelter in the South and our friends quickly identified people who were in the picture and family members of theirs and we ultimately sometime on Sunday day two spoke to some witnesses who had been in the same bomb shelter as H and his friend onir and what we learned is they were at the music festival as chaos broke out in the morning they got in a car and started to escape to to the north the direction where we live from the festival the car came under gunfire on the road like so many other cars on the road they made a u-turn and went back south Rockets were flying overhead so they got out of the car and went into an above ground Bomb shot shelter we learned from witnesses that there were 29 people in this 5tx 8T bomb shelter we learned that the shelter came under attack With Grenades and that her's close friend anir shapira who was standing in the doorway was able to intercept seven grenades in a row and toss them back out grenades have a 4 and a half second timeline before they detonate um the eighth grenade we subsequently learned actually killed una air um at which point three more grenades were thrown in and then gunmen came in and started to just shoot the room with bullets we now know from these witnesses that of the 29 18 were killed that morning four including hirs were taken hostage at gunpoint and what the witnesses who were under dead bodies but watching what happened told us is that when HS stood up at gunpoint to be taken out is when they saw that his left arm had been blown off around the elbow um so hers and three other boys were taken hostage we subsequently received a video of it after a strange set of circumstances in an interview a week later with Anderson Cooper on CNN who had received a video because he was working on a documentary of the music festival and in the process of interviewing us and seeing pictures of hirs he recognized him said to us at the end of the interview I'm calling you and he did which we thought was strange and he said now that I recognize H and the story I I can tell you that I have video of the abduction and I'm sending it to you that's how we got the video that we have um and we know that hersh's last cell phone signal was inside of Gaza at 10:25 in the morning since that time we have had no interaction with hsh no sightings of H and basically no information I was going to ask Rachel how have you been it sounds like you have you haven't been getting any information about your son how frustrating I how frustrating is it that you Rachel and John have not gotten any word any information about hersh's well-being or his whereabouts and why is that well first of all I think that um part of what is involved when someone wants to terrorize you and traumatize you is they don't give you information so um when hirs and these you know initially it was 252 people who were taken hostage on October 7th um they were such an interesting and varied compilation of human beings these were people from 39 different countries they ranged in age on the seventh from nine months old a baby cfir bibas who was nine months old who was kidnapped and the oldest person was an 87y old grandmother and they were from all different walks of life and they were Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and so all these people just disappeared and no one was able to get information about any of their loved ones and we desperately in the beginning were calling out to the Red Cross begging begging for anyone to give us information to go in and and find out what they could but to this day day 181 I mean with extreme exception nobody knows anything about their loved ones at the end of November there was a release of thankfully many of the women and children and babies were released but there are still people being held from 25 different nations still representing those five different religions now kir Bas is 14 months old and the oldest person is now 86 because the 87 year-old grandmother thankfully was released in November when 105 people were released but we have 134 people that are still being held there and when you're asking you know how frustrating is it I don't even experience frustration I am in the midst of an ongoing trauma there's it is you know most people in life have experienced normative trauma you know where you have a death of a loved one a sudden death of a loved one someone coming home and saying honey I want a divorce and you weren't expecting it a child telling you something that's very hard for you to reconcile with a you know some something that you you feel strongly about that's normative trauma and it's horrible it's a metaphorical truck hitting you in the back you didn't see it coming and you're now laying broken on the side of the road and the truck has driven away and everyone has to decide how do you begin to recover from this trauma how do you begin to integrate it how do you begin to sit up when do you take your first step forward and it's different for everyone what we are experiencing all of the hostage families is what's called ambiguous trauma and the difference is the truck is still on our chest so there's no moving forward there's no integrating it we are laying and trying desperately not to move the wrong way so that the truck doesn't Crush our rib cage and kill us and so we are living on a different planet and I say every morning that we're putting on these costumes of humans and trying to run to the ends of the Earth to save hers and to save the other hostages and in order to do that we can't do what we want to do when I wake up in the morning what I want to do is lay on the floor in a ball weeping because my only son who I know because I've seen the video is grievously injured you know hirh and I are both left-handed and it's his left arm that was spontaneously amputated by an explosive I know he's in pain I know he's suffering and the only information that we do have is from the people who were released at the end of November they did say that the hostages who were taken especially early in the morning and we know for a fact that hirs was taken in the hour of that they were taken for medical treatment when they first arrived in Gaza and the working Assumption of the intelligence Community is that Hirsch did get some form of treatment on that first day and I don't know if you've seen the video of him but he is very composed in the video I'm sure it's that he's dazed and in shock and in trauma but he walks himself to the truck he gets himself up on the truck he doesn't lose consciousness and the witnesses did say that he had fashioned some sort of bandage around his arm and you can see in the truck he is you see the jagged Bon sticking out but he's not bleeding bleeding has stopped so our working assumption and the Assumption of of all the officials is that he is alive um tragically we know that there are 36 hostages who are conf firm dead and their bodies are being held by Hamas and we know that there are more hostages that there is a suspicion a high suspicion that they are no longer alive and those families have been notified so our um intelligence officer has said to us no news is good news every day that there's no news it's actually considered good news so we say hope is mandatory and we remain optimistic and we keep running and every day it's a marathon and as our friend Ruby Ken said it's a marathon that you're sprinting through and Ruby tragically got the confirmation that his 18-year-old son itai was uh one of the hostages the US citizens like H who's a US citizen who was being held and they only got the confirmation that he is is dead about three weeks ago so you are communicating with some government official uh in terms of getting at least no information being good news and and tell me about that relationship the hostage families have with people within the Israeli government sure so it it took some time because the was in such trauma on the 7th and for well still but trauma plus chaos for the first few weeks but we were ultimately assigned a communication officer and what she does is check in regularly makes sure that whatever needs we have that the government can step in and help with are being tended to um and she is a conduit between us and the intelligence sources here as Rachel said unfortunately there isn't a lot of intelligence but we have this open channel of communication um and like Rachel said the days that we don't get notified by her are the comforting days because we have been told that no news is good news um I will say we are also blessed to be citizens of the United States we are Israeli American citizens and on the American side we have gotten tremendous support in community communication we have open channels of communication with the Biden Administration with dozens of Congress people um and that support has been really really uh tremendous I will say in all of this that it's day 181 and as nice as it is to feel supported and hugged and to feel empathy we want one result and with every day that passes it's more and more frustrating that we're not getting that one result that's what we need right now no more empathy no more support we want a result and Rachel how do do you achieve that result because I know the latest round of talks negotiating a temporary ceasefire and release of the hostages stalled once again in late March when you all think of the path forward the the road to getting her home what does it look like well it looks very concerning because what we've had in these past 181 days is a crash course in geopolitics and sort of how the world works on a deeper level you know we had been blessed and privileged for all these years on this planet thinking that things worked one way and now we understand that they work a different way and in many ways we feel that certainly the hostages and the hostage families are Pawns in a game um that a few leaders are figuring out what interests are of the most value to them and they're worried about those interests and we would love for the leaders to actually be leading and leaning in and being courageous and being flexible and thinking about normal people um and it is very frightening that there is leverage to be used I am not certain in fact I would say I am certain that full Leverage is not being used both in ways that are very seen and in ways that are unseen and um I know that sounds very you know Su sneaky and and um not so specific but I I think that you know there are five parties at the table at the negotiating table I don't know what happens in that closed room but I think that we really are at a point where we know these hostages are dying by the day we don't have time there is a complete lack of perceived urgency we think by those negotiators the fact that they go home at night shows that there's a lack of urgency I I get a feeling that if it was their daughter being held or their father or their spouse or brother or sister or son that they might be putting some more energy into it and um we're very scared we're very very concerned and um and we think that time is really running out there have been protests I know in Israel and some of the hostage families have taken part where they are demanding the release of their loved ones but also expressing anger and dissatisfaction with Benjamin Netanyahu and the way he is executing this War uh I'm curious your feelings about that and do you sympathize with those families are you aligned with what they're saying so I would say a couple things here number one is the experience of being a hostage family and having your loved one held somewhere for six months is such a frustrating unimaginable experience that I don't judge any of the other families however ever any family reacts to this traumatic experience it's their right to react that way so I don't fault people who are pro protesting I don't fa people who are staying away from the protests I will say that our standpoint is right now we're not in the mode of saying we're pro BB we're against BB we want our loved ones to come home and if BB could do it today great that would be the best outcome if it's determined that he's not able to bring a deal and we need a new leader a new government to get our loved ones home we're for that we're we're staying out of the political Fray and we are staying focused on whoever can help us bring home hirs and the 133 other hostages that's who we are supporting but John at some point will there be a Tipping Point you know you say if he can bring kers and the other hostages home great but at some point as time moves on and as you all have said time is of the essence and you worry that time is running out at some point will you say he's not getting the job done we might but I'll also point this out we've been critical of the Israeli government at many points in the last 181 days for not bringing the results that we're looking for but I'm going to be an equal opportunity critic here and say there are five parties who have been at the negotiating table for most of the last six months and it's clear to me that none of the five is doing enough what does that mean doing enough I'm going to call out a few Qatar has an ability to influence Hamas they fund them they house their leadership and they could do more to bring the result we want Egypt is at the the table they have an ability to do more and the United States has an ability to influence the other parties at the table they've been pressuring Israel that's okay it's their prerogative they could apply more pressure on these other parties as well there are carrots and sticks that they could use diplomatically in all of these cases and we want to see more of that because as I said day 181 it's time for our loved ones to come home right now we feel like our loved ones the hostage families and so many other Innocents in this region our pawns and our victims and are all losing to use the language of Victory and loss and we are not seeing any of the five parties doing enough and the answer is going to be they are not doing enough until all the hostages come home and in fact you mention what's happening in Gaza and the other people who are suffering and I don't think sadly so many people all over the world are seeing this in a binary way and not observing it with you know dialectically yes and and I'm curious for both of you because so much attention of course has I don't want to say shifted but has focused in recent months really on the in people in Gaza who have been killed by this military action and I I'm just wondering how you square all of this suffering in your minds at the same time Rachel well you know it's a great question that from early on every single interview I did when I would say I'm so worried about these hostages and I'm so worried about these innocent civilians in Gaza and every single person who would be interviewing me would say that's so interesting that you're saying that and I kept thinking why is it interesting like that is a very human response that I don't want to see people suffering and um you know Nick Kristoff wrote a great article at the very beginning of this conflict saying that if you only cry when one side's babies are pulled out of the rubble then it means that you're moral compass is broken and therefore your humanity is broken and I believe that that was written on October 13th if I'm not mistaken and to this day six months later I am happy that my humanity is not broken I am traumatized I am filled with anxiety and angst and horror and trauma but when I see innocent Gaz civilian suffering it breaks my heart still and when I think of my own son who is also an innocent civilian now in Gaza it also breaks my heart and I don't have a problem it's not it for me it's it's not in Conflict I think that in any War currently all over the world or in world history we know that the people who suffer the most are always the innocent civilians who are caught up in a conflict and that is exactly what's happening here and I think that we have to be much more creative and insightful as people as you know the human species in figuring out how do we solve our problems so that it doesn't become this competition of pain and competition of tears I just want to add one thing to that which is I agree with everything Rachel just said and I think that that balance is important as time passes and the world focuses more on Israel's execution of this War I do also want to make sure that what doesn't get lost here is that on the morning of October 7th things were quiet in this region and that quiet was broken with a Massac with a massacre of unprecedented in Israel itions which is over 1200 people killed by the way over 40 of them are Americans um 252 people taken again from the 39 countries and all the diversity that Rachel talked about and I don't think it's fair that it get lost in the shuffle that Israel had and still has some rights to respond and I just want to make sure that you know Americans understand that if the equivalent in America happened 40,000 Americans killed and 8,000 taken hostage into Omaha Nebraska America would respond so I just I I I don't like when that point gets lost within all the talk about how things have been executed I mean the irony you should know is that you know John and I have worked for 35 years in a coexistence paradigm framework in in that community in our lives hch grew up in that kind of environment he has been involved for the last six years in a youth group program that brings together Arabs and Jews to try to demystify the other and he is he's so pro peace and and involved in all these peace movements and he has friends who are Palestinians and well so many of the Rachel were right I mean all the communities On the Border there those those kibuts communities I mean that is the coexistence proace composition of Israel and now they're all either dead or being held hostage it's such it was very much and I want to get us I want to let you get us back on to topic but I just want to say one more thing which is there I don't even if they're still if they're still big but in the first couple of months there were the kidnapped posters all over including in New York City and early on a few weeks into the conflict we were walking down the street of Manhattan and watched as somebody was pulling kidnapped posters hostage posters off of a sign in Manhattan and as we got close to it we saw what they were pulling down was the picture of Joshua Mel a 22-year-old African Christian graduate student who was studying AG agriculture in Israel and they were tearing down his poster and we thought if you want to pull down posters of Jewish Israelis that's overly simplified but okay but you are so misguided if you're pulling down a picture of a poor black African Christian student who was caught up innocently in the midst of all this and taken hostage and by the way we now subsequently learned that he was killed and you should know that of the 134 hostages that are being held you don't really hear anyone talking about the eight Muslim Arabs who are comprising part of the 134 you don't hear about the seven young men from Thailand who are Buddhists who are being held you don't hear about the nepales you don't hear about the Mexican you don't you know there are they're Catholic they're Buddhist they're Hindu they're Muslim you don't hear about that what you hear about these 134 is you hear Jewish you hear Israeli and I think there's so much anti-israel and anti-semitic rhetoric going around that people have so little sympathy for that cohort and it's such an injustice for so many reasons but also I feel so badly for those families that they're not Israeli and they're not Jewish and their loved ones are there their children their husband BS their fathers are there how have you all felt as you've seen some of the anti-Semitism bubble up to the surface I think that it is possible to criticize Israeli policy and not necessarily be anti-semitic that's what we do no but having said that having said that there has been an undeniable increase in just blatant out andout anti-Semitism and as you all are enduring these horrific six months I'm curious to hear your take on just witnessing this it's just incredibly disturbing and for 53 years I have resisted using the anti-Semitism label I just think that sometimes it gets overused and unfortunately based on what we're seeing now on University campuses in America and some of the advocacy that we're seeing um it's just shocking I mean there is a terror organization recognized as such by the United States and most of the Free World and to see people not just being sensitive to the Palestinian cause which we are also sensitive to and think that's fine but to see that there are actually people who are walking around with signs favoring an identified Terror organization in America I don't know what to make of that but it's a disturbing Trend John you were talking about the negotiating parties have you expressed your frustration to the Biden Administration about more that US representatives could be doing to secure the release of the hostages we have pushed them a little bit on their approach um we are going to be back in Washington next week and we'll push them even more um yes we're going to continue to to to to question the path that they have been on we don't question for a second their support their empathy their availability again all that is exemplary incredible um but we're going to continue to push them on their thinking their strategy their tactics and we're going to do that until we get the result that we're looking for we're in a world where there's no 50% success 70% success we're in a binary World either the mission that we're on succeeds and we bring home her and the other hostages soon or we fail and they just continue to die there one by one and there's no scenario for anybody that 134 coffins coming back at some point in the future can be success and that includes the Biden Administration they don't want that one of the things that we've appreciated is we meet with people across the political Spectrum both sides of the aisle and what they always say to us is this is not an issue of Republican Or democrats left or right we don't like when innocent people are being held especially when they're holding Americans and this is not a political issue this is a human issue and we're not going to stop until we get them home which is great that's the right way to talk about it now do it you all are from Chicago originally you lived in Richmond Virginia I'm from Virginia and I know you moved your family to Israel when hirs was seven years old why did you want to move to Israel so at some point I had said to John he had saidyou know we're living in a time in Jewish history where there's a Jewish State wouldn't it be great to get on that ride and see what that is like if we're living in this moment in history where we have that option and I came around to realizing if we don't try it now when are we going to try it and uh actually hirs had been born in Berkeley California and uh that's where he gets his hippie crunchy granola roots from and then we moved when he was almost four to Virginia and it was the summer before he turned eight that we moved we said okay let's try it let's get on the ride of of seeing what it's like to live in a Jewish country and uh we moved and uh we've been there for the last 15 years and we're part of that uh adventure and now you know we're living in a time where it's a very dark chapter for this Jewish country and our people and obviously for our family personally and John what has it been like prior to October 7th living in Israel for you and your family yeah I'd say it's been really good for us when we moved there our three kids were almost eight five and it's basically where they've grown up there's never a dull moment there every day there is interesting we've got an amazing group of friends very diverse people from all over the world who have gravitated to Israel um life there is not easy it certainly doesn't lack complexity but uh we have had a really fulfilling 15 and a half years and even in the midst of this hard time that we're going through right now people say do you regret moving there we say we don't we live a really rich life there given what is transpired in the last six months and given your philosophy of uh caring about Palestinians and caring about the people of Israel do you think it's possible to have a two-state solution or have you given up on that dream I'll jump in I I think that right now is a challenging time to be talking about it even though we have favored it for years and the reason I say that is because there was this atrocity committed on October 7th and I'm struggling with connecting that atrocity to what could be perceived as a reward for it being a two-state solution that being said I don't think that Israelis are going anywhere I don't think that Palestinians are going anywhere so we could either choose the path of endless ongoing conflict where everybody loses or we can choose a path that includes how do we live together and I don't know if together is a two-state solution or it's something else but we will not advocating stop advocating for a path that recognizes that we're all living there we all have to figure it out together and that everyone deserves dignity and respect and freedom of movement and freedom of choice and as John said and we always say no one's going anywhere let's figure it out let's figure it out we have no other choice because this endless cycle of Revenge violence pain suffering it doesn't doesn't serve either side at all is it going to be a two-state solution or something else I don't know but what I know is it can be different it was not that long ago that Israel was regularly Waring with Egypt we now have a nearly 50-year enduring pretty good peace agreement with them we did something similar subsequently with Jordan more recently through the Abraham Accords we have relationships now productive ones that involve business dealings tourism with other countries in the region we have shown that it can be done we just need to figure this out I want to end this by bringing it back to H if if you were able to communicate with him somehow some way Rachel what would you say to your only son well what I say all day long WR all the time my Mantra to him is I love you stay strong survive I love you stay strong survive and I mean it really just boils down to that I any parent listening to this or if someone's not a parent they can picture their own parent going through what we've been going through and you know I live for the day that he will come home to us and I know that it will will be the best day of Our Lives for the rest of our lives no matter whatever happens the best day of our life will be when hirh comes home to us so if he could be hearing this stay strong and survive you're coming home we're never stopping we're running to the ends of the Earth and we will do whatever we have to do to get you back

Channel: Katie Couric

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Id: 8V4GyFsU9So

Length: 41min 21sec (2481 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024