Both parents were wearing stickers with \u201c374\u201d written on them to mark the number of days that have passed since the hostages were taken captive to Gaza by Hamas. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was certain that we were going to see a global demand for action and I\u2019m still waiting for it. The world failed us \u2026 the world failed so many of these hostages, including Hersh,\u201d Polin said. <\/p>\n
Goldberg-Polin was one of six hostages whose bodies were discovered by the Israeli military in tunnels under Gaza shortly after they had been killed by Hamas. <\/p>\n
Polin said when he and his wife had voiced concerns that Hamas might execute the hostages as military pressure mounted, Israeli officials had reassured them such an outcome was highly unlikely. <\/p>\n
Along with two of the other murdered hostages, Goldberg-Polin had been expected to be released during the first phase of an eventual ceasefire agreement. The hostage deaths led to widespread anger and nationwide protests in Israel over the failure by Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government to strike a hostages-for-ceasefire deal. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe worried a little bit about that all along. Within all our optimism that we were going to get Hersh home, there was some doubt in the back of our minds that it could end this way,\u201d he said. \u201cI worry that if we don\u2019t save others soon, there are going to be other families getting the horrific news that we\u2019ve received.\u201d <\/p>\n
Goldberg urged \u201cpeople in power\u201d to \u201cgo save the 101\u201d hostages remaining in Gaza. \u201cThere are thousands and thousands of people suffering in Gaza. Some of them have lived there for many years and some of them have lived there for 374 days and it\u2019s time to bring them home,\u201d she told Cooper. <\/p>\n
Goldberg-Polin\u2019s parents have been among the most vocal of the hostage families pushing Netanyahu to seek a deal securing their relatives\u2019 return. They\u2019ve also regularly met top US officials in Washington to press the case of the hostages. <\/p>\n
Goldberg-Polin was among the hundreds of young people who attended the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7, the day Hamas launched its surprise attacks in which more than 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage. <\/p>\n
He and some of his friends hid in a bomb shelter but became trapped by militants who began to lob grenades into the bunker. Goldberg-Polin helped to throw some of those grenades back out of the shelter before his left arm was blown off from the elbow down, according to a firsthand account from one of his friends. <\/p>\n
Footage taken on the day of that attack showed Goldberg-Polin being marched out of the shelter \u2013 with his hand blown off and bone protruding from his wrist \u2013 and thrown along with four others into the back of a truck. <\/p>\n
His parents told Cooper that Goldberg-Polin and the others had later been held in a tunnel 65 feet (20 meters) underground that was just 2 feet wide and 5-and-a-half feet high \u2013 too small for the 6ft tall Goldberg-Polin to stand in. They were also severely malnourished. By the time of his death, Goldberg-Polin weighed just 115 pounds (52 kilograms), his father said. <\/p>\n
They also shared details of his final moments, saying it appeared he had used his remaining hand in an attempt to shield himself. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems that when he was being shot he had put up as a defense both of his arms, so a bullet went through his right hand through his shoulder actually then into his neck then out the side of his head,\u201d Goldberg said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSupposedly he was standing crouched up \u2026 they think that then he dropped to his knees and then he was shot with the gun on his head, the back of his head \u2026 and he was found on his knees two days later.\u201d <\/p>\n
Receiving the news on August 31 that their son was among the six dead hostages found by the Israeli military was \u201ca crushing blow and we are still grappling with it,\u201d Polin said. <\/p>\n
He said the couple had spent \u201cso much time beyond our public campaign in our apartment with our two daughters literally planning what it was going to be when we brought him home. What would the family look like? What would the celebration look like?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crushing to spend those days so optimistic, so hopeful, so focused to have it end like this,\u201d Polin said, adding they had wondered if their hope had worked against them. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe our optimism was something that drove influencers to lack urgency, to feel like, he\u2019s going to come home at some point somehow and \u2026 maybe it was too infectious,\u201d Polin said. <\/p>\n
Goldberg added: \u201cI\u2019m just trying to get through each day. We are in the first centimeter in a million-mile journey of how do we get through the rest of our lives yearning and missing our son.\u201d <\/p>\n
Born in Oakland, California, Goldberg-Polin immigrated to Israel with his family at age 7. An elder brother to two sisters, he was a \u201chappy-go-lucky, laid back, good humored, respectful and curious person\u201d who loved soccer and music, according to his mother. <\/p>\n
She later said the family was determined to \u201clive\u201d and \u201cnot just exist\u201d following his death. <\/p>\n
\u201cI want to live the life that Hersh should\u2019ve lived and that\u2019s a life filled with love and happiness and light. We will always have this deep void but I think that it\u2019s still possible to have that void and to be happy and choose life.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Both parents were wearing stickers with \u201c374\u201d written on them to mark the number of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9028,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}