Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old Berkeley native whose parents had tirelessly championed his cause during his months in captivity at the hands of Hamas, was among six hostages whose bodies were recovered from the Gaza Strip, Israeli authorities said early Sunday.
Goldberg-Polin, whose parents addressed the Democratic National Convention last month in a powerful plea for freedom for her and the other captives, was the best-known internationally among the roughly 250 men, women and children who were seized on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led fighters stormed from the coastal enclave and attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people.
The catastrophic war that followed left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead, according to Gaza health officials, and left the tiny territory in ruins, displacing virtually all of its inhabitants.
President Biden, speaking shortly after Goldberg-Polin's family confirmed they had been told he was among the dead, said in a statement that he was “devastated and outraged.”
“Hersh was among the innocent people who were brutally attacked while attending a peace music festival in Israel,” Biden said. “He lost his arm helping friends and strangers during the savage Hamas massacre. He had just turned 23.”
The Los Angeles Times spoke to Goldberg-Polin's parents three days after the Oct. 7 attack, as they were just beginning to process the shock of her capture. At the time, they expressed determination to win her release.
Since then, the two have helped spearhead a global campaign that included meetings with Biden and Pope Francis.
An undated photograph of Hersh Goldberg-Polin
(Polin-Goldberg family)
Israel was on edge all day Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, after it was announced that Israeli troops had recovered the bodies of several hostages. On Sunday, the country woke up to the news of the confirmed deaths of the six hostages, most of them between 20 and 30 years old; the oldest of them was 40.
As the war with Hamas drags on, Israel has periodically confirmed the deaths of hostages, but these latest deaths have come as an especially devastating national shock, in part because of the victims' youth and because of mounting political anger against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli leader has been accused by senior members of his government of failing to prioritise a hostage deal as he presses ahead with the goal — unattainable, in the view of many military analysts — of destroying Hamas.
Demonstrations took place in Israeli cities just hours before news of the latest deaths broke, and organizers promised mass protests on Sunday.
The six captives were killed shortly before a planned rescue attempt by Israeli forces, the army said.
Goldberg-Polin and four of the five others were taken prisoner at a music festival in the desert outside Gaza, where attackers hunted down, killed and captured hundreds of festival-goers who made frantic calls to relatives and the military demanding ransom.
The circumstances of Goldberg-Polin's capture were particularly harrowing: a grenade blew off his left arm below the elbow as he and a group tried to take refuge in a roadside bomb shelter. In April, a video released by Hamas showed him wounded but alive.
The other dead hostages were identified by the Israeli military as Ori Danino, 25; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Almog Sarusi, 27; and Alexander Lobanov, 33 — also kidnapped at the music festival — and Carmel Gat, 40, who was kidnapped in nearby Kibbutz Beeri.
The army said in a statement that the bodies were recovered from a tunnel in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, less than a mile from where hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi, a 52-year-old from Israel's Bedouin minority, was rescued last week.
Army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said preliminary information indicated the six were “cruelly murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them.” More details emerged on Sunday.
Hamas, in a statement, did not directly confirm the deaths but suggested the Israeli military was to blame.
Just days before the deaths were announced, senior Israeli security officials had called on Netanyahu to reach a deal with Hamas to release the remaining hostages and repatriate the remains of others who died or were killed in captivity. But the prime minister has said that continuing to wage war against Hamas is the way to bring them home, and he imposed conditions that Hamas has refused to meet.
A forum for hostage families angrily blamed government officials for failing to reach a deal.
“An agreement for the return of the hostages has been on the table for more than two months,” he said in a statement. “If it were not for the delays, the sabotage and the excuses, those whose deaths we learned of this morning would probably still be alive.”
The Goldberg-Polin family issued a statement Sunday morning, Israel time, confirming his death, thanking his supporters and asking for privacy. His American-born parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, immigrated to Israel when he was 8 years old.
On August 21, both addressed the Democratic National Convention and called for the release of the remaining hostages and an end to the massive humanitarian suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you, stay strong, survive,” his mother told the somber convention audience, which then erupted in chants of “Bring them home!”
Before Sunday's announcement, Israel said about a third of the 108 captives still missing in Gaza were believed to be dead.
Anger and grief were already roiling Israel even before the full sequence of events became public. Previous rescue attempts had been largely unsuccessful, although a few hostages were freed during military operations in which dozens of Palestinians were killed.
On June 8, Israeli commandos raided the apartment where hostage Noa Argamani was being held in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Three male hostages were freed in a separate but almost simultaneous raid.
In December, Israeli troops mistakenly killed three Israelis who had escaped their captors, and Hamas announced the killing of several others, blaming Israeli airstrikes and failed rescue efforts.
