The Daily - Hamas Took Her Son

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Warning: This episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence.When Hamas attacked Israel, they took two hundred hostages back with them into the Gaza Strip, including grandparents and children as young as nine months old. It was one of the largest mass abductions in recent history.Now, the fate of those hostages is at the center of a deepening crisis in the Middle East, and a looming ground invasion of Gaza. Today, we hear from the mother of one of these hostages.Guest: Rachel Goldberg, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is currently being held hostage by Hamas.Background reading: Hamas is believed to hold at least 199 people in Gaza, a dense territory descending into a chaotic crisis, where many officials believe a military rescue would be dangerous for soldiers and hostages alike.Relatives of those captured or missing express despair at the lack of information, and they are terrified of what an expected Israeli invasion of Gaza may mean for their loved ones.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. When Hamas attacked Israel two weeks ago, they took 200 hostages back with them into the Gaza Strip, including grandparents and children as young as nine months old. It was one of the largest mass abductions in recent history. It was one of the largest mass abductions in recent history. Now, the fate of those hostages is at the center of a deepening crisis in the Middle East and a looming ground invasion into Gaza. Today, a conversation with the mother of one of them. It's Friday, October 20th. I called Rachel Goldberg for the first time last Tuesday,

three days after the attack on October 7th. Hi. Hi, Rachel. How are you doing? Well, are you a mother? I'm not. Well, I'm sure you've had a mother. I have. So you can imagine what she would be going through if something happened to you?

Yeah. So that's how I'm doing. My name is Rachel Goldberg. I'm 53 and I am in Jerusalem. And I am in Jerusalem. So my son, Hirsch Goldberg-Polin, is currently missing. He's been missing since he attended the music festival that was in the southern part of Israel. And he was there Saturday morning when the terrorist event happened there. We received two text

messages from him at 8-11, and that's the last that we've heard of him. Can you tell me about your son? about your son? So Hirsch, well, he's the perfect son for me. There's a lot of him that it's the good parts of me. He just turned 23 last week on October 3rd. So he was born in Berkeley. And when he was going into second grade, our family moved to Jerusalem. He's super bright, very curious, a voracious reader, and in love with travel. He's had wanderlust since he was a little boy, to the point where he would read atlases and he'd get to the end and he'd start over and get to the end and start over. And he would memorize every country in the world, along with every capital, population, elevation, just obsessed with travel.

So for his bar mitzvah, he asked for only atlases, globes, and maps. Wow. And the other thing he's passionate about is music festivals specifically. And I think he just felt like he was going to a fun music festival here and it ended in the worst way anybody could imagine so friday night we had this nice meal with our family friends and we kissed him goodbye and he

was in a great mood and we had had a great time. And that's the last time we saw him. And he and Honor Shapira, his best friend, met up and they went down south where this festival was. And, you know, both of them are unaccounted for. And did you hear from him once he got there? What was the next thing that happened, Rachel? No was the next thing that happened, Rachel? No, the next thing that happened, so on the Jewish Sabbath, I actually don't use my phone. And so he left. And the next morning, my husband had left for synagogue at 7.30 in the morning, and I was sitting having a cup of tea. And sometime close to eight, we heard bomb sirens going off in Jerusalem. So I quickly came downstairs and woke up both of my

daughters who were still sleeping so that we could get into our bomb shelter, which we have in our apartment. So we went into our bomb shelter and then we waited for the all clear. You wait 10 minutes and if nothing else happens, you can come out. And even though I'm not, you know, I don't use my phone on Shabbat, in cases of emergency, of course, you use your phone. And I thought, well, my son is somewhere and I don't know where and I'm turning on my phone to make sure he's okay. And when I turned on my phone, two texts came in, both at 8.11. And the first text said, I love you. And the second text said,

I'm sorry. And immediately I knew something terrible happened. Because first of all, terrible happened because first of all he would never just randomly write at 8 11 in the morning I love you and the I'm sorry immediately to me I know him and he knows me so well and I my interpretation instantly was I'm sorry because whatever is happening is going to cause you tremendous pain and tremendous worry. That was my first thought. And as it turns out, he was right. God, Rachel. Yeah.

Immediately I called him and it rang and rang and rang and rang and he didn't answer. So I wrote a text, are you okay? And he didn't answer. And five minutes later text, are you okay? And he didn't answer. And five minutes later I said, let me know you're okay. And then 10 minutes later I wrote, I'm leaving my phone on, let me know you're okay. But those were three unanswered, they haven't been answered. So we started, one of my daughters, the older daughter and I started to

feverishly try to figure out, you figure out where exactly was he sending this from. And my daughter sent me a video that had been going around from this music festival with people screaming and shooting. And she said, is this the festival he's at? Like, is this where he is? And the truth is, I didn't know. So I took a screenshot of that and I sent it to their other friend. And I asked, I said,

the person on her here? And he wrote back, yes. So I immediately knew they were there. And we started watching the news. And then all of a sudden, it was pandemonium everywhere I mean complete massacres taking place in all these different kibbutzes that are right on the border I mean it was complete it was war and so we were frantic and we were in a panic, but his friend had already made a missing poster that was of hers in honor and saying, they were at the thing. Do you have any information? Did you see them? And he had already posted that on all these social media places that I, as a 53-year-old mother, know nothing about. So it was very, very helpful that Yanni, their third friend, was doing this. And it was through that, that a few hours later, probably around noon, that we got a picture from inside of a bomb shelter.

And we could see on the side, sort of midway on the left side, we could see Hirsch in profile. And where the door was, and it's just a normal sized door, we could see Honor. At first, we were like, oh my gosh, thank God, because this means they weren't killed at the festival. Because we already had heard there were scores, if not hundreds of people. We now know it's close to 300 people were killed at this festival. And what we now understand from eyewitnesses that we ended up talking to is that Hirsch and Honor and another boy named Yoad, and they had driven down together and they got in the car to drive away.

And then the sirens started going off, which meant there were more incoming rockets from Gaza and when rockets are are falling you get off the road and you get into the shelter so they had stopped the car to get into the shelter and there were you know five other cars that also pulled over And it was also people from the music festival. They all ran in together. They weren't friends, but I mean, they had all just been at this event together. So at first, we were so happy that we were like, oh, that's wonderful. They're in a bomb shelter.

They're safe. And in the picture, they don't look panicked. Like there's people who have sunglasses on their heads and someone's looking at their phone. They don't look like they're in panic. They look like they're Israeli young people who are hanging out in a bomb shelter because

yeah, yeah, maybe there's like some sort of siren going off because maybe something's happening outside. But then we realized when was this taken? And why haven't we heard from him? And we were making up all sorts of excuses. Oh, his phone must have died. Or when they were running away, he dropped his phone. So that's why he didn't answer me. What we subsequently found out is that around 8.30, the terrorists came to the door of the bomb shelter and apparently

started throwing grenades hand grenades into the shelter which is like fish in a barrel you know there's 30 people smashed in there apparently i don know, I think someone told me at some point, you know, you usually have 10 to 15 people in those. So you had this massive pack group of people and On Air was closest to the door. He apparently, from all accounts, was the complete hero. He quickly,

because you only, from the time a pin on a grenade is cold, you have four and a half seconds until it explodes. And he was quickly picking them up and throwing them back. And they were spraying machine gun fire into there. So it was craziness and horrible. And what we know now is many of those young people were killed many were severely extremely wounded and a few were wounded but you know not horribly and some of them pretended to be dead get eyewitness accounts of is that Hirsch's arm below the elbow was blown off.

And I think he must have been in complete shock because we heard that he made a tourniquet. He didn't cry out. He didn't lose consciousness. Then the terrorists came in and at gunpoint said, everyone who can stand up, stand up and walk out.

And six of them walked out, including Hirsch. It was four young men and two young women. They were put on a pickup truck and they were driven off by these terrorists. And that was around nine o'clock. And the police actually let us know that the last time that her phone was, you know, how they can trace phones where they were last seen

was on the border with Gaza. Now, we have no proof that, you know, maybe someone stole his phone. Maybe, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. The assumption is that they are all, all six of those kids are kidnapped. And none of the parents that we've spoken to of those six kids, none of us have had any sort of word from our children.

Sadly, we do have, there was a girl who played dead who was next to her. And there was a young man who shared a lot of information and there was another young woman who was much more able to share with us. The girl who was right next to her, she's so horribly traumatized that it's even hard for her still today.

She can't really speak. So we don't have confirmation, you know, a lot, because there's such a pandemonium still here. So that's, you know, where we are. And what we want now is first of all, we want to really make

sure that Hirsch has his arm tended to. He really needs medical treatment immediately, urgently and obviously what we really want is we want him to be sitting next to me right now so you're

basically just waiting patiently for now yeah i mean you know making noise we're making noise because at this point we feel like you know there was a decision in the beginning in those first 48 hours where we could hardly function because it was so shocking and new. And press was calling. And I was like, why would we go to the press? We need to get our son back. Why are we going to the press? Let's talk to the police. Let's talk to the government.

And then we heard that his arm was blown off. And we realized he's probably bleeding to death. So you know what? Let's talk to everybody. And that's still where we are because, you know, no matter how this ends, we need to know that we ran to the end of the earth for him. Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. I know this is really painful for you, and I really appreciate you taking the time to help us understand just what happened. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Sabrina. Take care.

Bye. Bye. Bye. After the break, I check back in with Rachel. We'll be right back. Hello? I called Rachel back on Thursday to see what she'd learned about her son in the nine days since we'd spoken. The only real proof of life had been a video released last week of one of the hostages, a young woman receiving medical treatment. As for their whereabouts, Hamas had put out a statement saying it was holding them in, quote, safe places, including in tunnels underneath Gaza.

Rachel, hi, it's Sabrina from The Daily. Hi, how are you? I'm okay. How are you? Shitty. Yeah. That's my new answer. It's shorter. Where am I catching you right now? I am just walking downstairs so that I can hear you without the whole team upstairs working.

Who's the team? wonderful group of people who from Saturday, October 7th, have been here working to help find Hirsch and find strategists to figure out ideas and how to get the word out around the world that this thing happened. So we work about 20 hours a day and sleep is for the week. a day and sleep is for the weak. Rachel, I'm talking to you on Thursday evening. Catch me up on what they've been able to piece together. We talked shortly after Hirsch was taken. What's surfaced since the last time we spoke? Actually, there's a couple things. The first thing is that we got a more specific time on his phone and location. It was deeper in Gaza. We had been told it was on the border. It was actually in Gaza.

And the first signal from within Gaza was at 1025. So he got there earlier than we had thought. I don't know what that tells us, but it's just new information. The other thing that I thought was really interesting is that the young woman who was next to Hirsch, she was able to come to my house and actually talk to me. And she told us something that we hadn't known, which was that when everyone was running into this bomb shelter, that there was also a Bedouin man who, I guess, we think he was a guard for the fields across the road at the kibbutz across the road. This Bedouin man ran in with them. And as Hamas

was coming closer and they could hear them screaming and shouting, he said to the kids inside, stay in here, don't make any noise. And he went outside and in Arabic, he said to them like, hello, how are you? Assalamu alaikum or something. And he said, oh, don't worry. We're all Muslim here. It's just my family. We're hiding from the rockets, but we're all Muslim. He was trying to save them and they beat him. They may have killed him. She didn't know. them and they beat him. They may have killed him. She didn't know. You know, she just knew she could hear them beating him. But there was something about that story that made me so happy. Why did that make you happy? Because it's humanity being humane. You know, this is this problem we have, right? It's us versus them or it's black and white or

whatever it is it's not he could have come out and said i'm a muslim there are jews in there right but he didn't i mean i hope he's alive but just the fact that like this man tried to save them and may have paid with his life we don't. It just gave me hope that maybe there's still, you know, a shred of, you know, hope in the world that people will do the right thing, even when it's scary. What do you know about some of the other people Hirsch was with that day? You mentioned someone named Honor. Oh, Honor. Beautiful Honor. We buried Honor on Friday. They identified his body. And we know for a fact, and his parents know as well,

that the eight kids who are now home are home because of honor. The woman who came the other day to tell the story about the Muslim man, she also said, we were counting the grenades, hand grenades, as they were throwing them in. And she said, and he threw eight out. She said, but three got in. And she said, the damage that three did, she said, even if four had come in, no one would have walked out of there alive. And, you know, we had stood in the back. We didn't want to take away from this boy's funeral, but we felt we needed to pay our respects. So we came and we went toward the back. We didn't sit, you know, up where everybody else was. But when the funeral was over, we wanted to go by and just extend our condolences just to the mom and dad to let them know that we were there. And as we got closer to them, his mom had just swooned and they had gotten her a chair and there was a medic there trying to give her some sort of oxygen or something. And then the father saw us coming

and he said to her, it's Hersh's parents. And she jumped out of her chair and the four of us were hugging and sobbing. You know, in Israel, we're not afraid to let it out. Like there's no holding back. And we were sobbing and sobbing and everyone around us was screaming out. It wasn't this like demure tears. And she started screaming out, he's coming home, he's coming home. And she screamed to everybody, everyone has to pray for Hirsch to come home. And part of it is that she loves us and Hirsch and she wants Hirsch to come home. And part of it is that, you know, she loves us and Hirsch, and she wants Hirsch to come home. And part of it is that she has to feel like her honor saved another life. The only condolence, the only comfort that she can get is that these people So that was an awful funeral to attend

and also to see all of these graves of these young people, all of them. You know, it looks like beds, like it just was like heaps, heaps of dirt and flowers on all these heaps of dirt, fresh dirt. And it was just sickening. What did it feel like to come home after the funeral, Rachel? Was any part of you worried that you could be in those shoes as well? Was any part of you worried that you could be in those shoes as well? Oh, there's not been one day.

I don't think there's been one hour that I haven't thought he's dead. We have to keep going forward until we know that's not true. But Hirsch may have died 13 days ago, and I don't know about it. He may have died an hour ago. He may have died 13 days ago and I don't know about it. He may have died an hour ago. He may have died five days ago. He may have died on my birthday last week. I don't know. Right. So it's just a twilight zone of an existence that is so unfamiliar. It's like walking on another planet. What is that planet?

unfamiliar. It's like walking on another planet. What is that planet? It's like living in a completely parallel universe because I feel so close in proximity to this place I knew, you know, and I see these people and these friends and I'm, you know, hugging people and I'm very, very close to them and I can smell them and I can see their pores and their skin. But I'm different. There's like a film between us because I'm not in their world. Like I'm super close, but I'm not in their world. that I'm in a world that's familiar to me is when I'm with, you know, last night I went to an event that a few different families of American hostages were meeting at. And when I'm with those people, we all know that parallel universe. We're all in that place. And this one woman and I,

every time we see each other, we hug each other and we feel such a closeness, which is this like sick, grotesque, perverse closeness. But it's that we're both in this same devastating and unknown and unfamiliar universe. Rachel, has the Israeli government been helpful to you? Has it met with you and other loved ones of hostages? What's it been doing? They have assigned us two different people to be resources for us, and they've been checking in each day. But I think right now, you know, it's a very emotional time in the country. And I don't know, you know, you just have to kind of keep busy, keep trying to do whatever you can do to save the person you're trying to save and keep

going forward. Do you feel satisfied with their help? I do in that I don't know what they could do. Rachel, since we last talked, Israel has taken steps to retaliate against Hamas. It's stepped up airstrikes on Gaza and there've been civilian casualties, knowing how much your son and you and thousands of other families have suffered because of this Hamas attack, how are you viewing the retaliation on Gaza and what the government of Israel is doing right now? You know, is it the right thing to do knowing that there might be so many civilian casualties, knowing that your son is there, how are you seeing this? Right. I mean, I know that there are plenty of innocent civilians in Gaza. I know that.

I know that the people who were killed on October 7th also were innocent civilians. also were innocent civilians. And I understand that Israel is saying, we can't allow that to ever happen again. And I am hopeful that the innocent people, and I'm not talking only about the hostages, but there are innocent, you know, 2 million Palestinian people who are not in Hamas, who are also trapped in Gaza. And I hope that it's to a minimum, the agony and suffering is spoke to a 23-year-old in Gaza over the weekend who was very worried about being killed in the airstrikes. And it struck me he was about Hirsch's age. And I wonder, as a mother, how you see the civilian casualties in Gaza. Is that upsetting to you? Is that something that comes into your mind? Where do you put that? It does. It does. It absolutely does. And what I would say to that 23-year-old, if he's listening now, is try to go find Hirsch. Let him use your phone, and let's get you both out of there. Because I care for anyone who is an innocent civilian who swept up and being held hostage.

And it might be the Palestinian Gazan kid that you spoke to. Rachel, this is maybe kind of a painful question, but I wanted to ask it. Hamas is committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. You know, it's non-negotiable to them. Right. What would you want Hamas, if I may ask it like this, what would you want Hamas to understand about you as a Jewish person, as an Israeli in this moment? What do you want them to understand about who you are? Well, I'm not really sure that there's anything that I want them to understand about what I am. I would really like to understand more about who they are. I want to understand them more. Now, if the understanding is they're saying, I want you dead, it's very hard for me to meet them halfway on that. Obviously, there's a tremendous amount of pain and agony behind a group of people who want the destruction completely of another people.

And I'm not sure how you work through that or how you try to talk to that. So I don't know that there's anything that I can really say to Hamas. I don't think Hamas has any interest in hearing anything I have to say. But I am really interested in hearing what they have to say. I really am. And what would you want to understand about them, Rachel? You mentioned the pain and the agony, potentially somewhere behind everything. What would you want to know? Well, I just want to know, first of all, what's this method? How does the world

what, first of all, what's this method? How does the world become sympathetic when you have elderly women and nine-month-old babies with you? Like, I want to understand, I really want them to say to me, like, what is it exactly that they want to happen? Is it simply that they don't want any Jews living in Israel? Is it that they don't want any Jews living? You know, like, I want to really understand what's the goal and what, you know, are there options? I don't get it. I would like to get it. Rachel, to the point of you being curious and wanting to listen, you know, there's a very emotional debate playing out in Israel and here in the United States as well about history and context in this attack. And I think to many people, you know, it's kind of an outrageous thing to even think about. People feel, you know,

that atrocity can never be explained. And somehow, you know, bringing in the context is offensive to people. But I guess I'm wondering how you think about it. You know, you're in the context is offensive to people. But I guess I'm wondering how you think about it. You're in the middle of this in such a personal way. Do you see there being context here that is important to understand? How do you see that? Well, this idea that anyone could be standing up to try to justify what was happening in these kibbutzes that were in any way, if you're trying to justify that, you have to honestly say to yourself, you know, maybe I need to take my compass in to be fixed because you can't, you cannot, if people are truly okay or saying, well, they deserved it because then we have big, big problems, big, big problems as the human race. And when I see footage of Palestinian children getting killed, I am crying. I am not saying they deserve that.

Never, never in my life have I said that. And I pray to God, never in my life will I say that. And so when I hear people saying that, it's concerning. We're in a frightening place. place. And I would love to see some light on the horizon. But right now, at least where I am, it's very, very dark. And I'm just running out of time and hoping that I will see my son again alive. we're looking for a teeny tiny molecule in a universe of haystacks and that molecule is named Hirsch Goldberg-Polman and I want him home with me Rachel thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

On Friday, a spokesman for Hamas said in a statement on Telegram that the group had released two U.S. nationals, a mother and her daughter, for, quote, humanitarian reasons, after mediation by the country of Qatar. Israeli and American officials did not immediately confirm or deny the claim. We'll be right back. for 16 straight days, engaged in bitter infighting on Thursday about how to move forward. During an emotional private meeting, they rejected a plan to empower an interim speaker to lead the chamber until the end of the year. That left them with few options. The Republican nominee for speaker, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, has failed to win two rounds of voting and appears unlikely to win in a third round. Nevertheless, Jordan said that he would push for another vote. And Sidney Powell, a prominent member of Donald Trump's legal team, pleaded guilty on Thursday to trying to overturn Trump's

2020 election loss in Georgia. The guilty plea, which allows Powell to avoid jail time and a criminal trial, requires her to testify against her co-defendants in the case, including, potentially, Trump himself. Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison, Claire Tedeschetter, and Shannon Lin, with help from Ricky Nowetzki. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lin, with help from Michael Benoit. Contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, and Rowan Nemisto, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Jeffrey Gettleman. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you on Monday.