There is nothing worse than feeling that a lifeline is being dangled in front of you, sensing it even if you don’t see it, hoping that your nightmare will soon end and you will be home with your family, and then have it all be obliterated in a bloody moment.
There is nothing worse than knowing that your loved one, someone you have been longing to hold and whose name you have yelled from mountaintops and in the presence of powerful people, someone who has become the center of your existence and the purpose of your life, was almost able to grasp that lifeline, but is now forever lost.
That is what happened last weekend when six of the remaining Hamas hostages, who had been held in inhuman conditions in a subterranean tunnel were murdered hours before they might have been rescued by Israel’s IDF. Those people had survived in hell for almost a year, surviving on whatever reserves of hope and faith they had and which they shared with each other, only to have it end in a shattering moment of vengeance.
I cannot comprehend what those hostages went through, including the one I had come to think of as one of our own, American-born Hersh Goldberg-Polin. I cannot fathom what their families went through as they buried their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, lovers and friends, with the honor and devotion they had been denied since Oct. 7th.
I cannot even understand the mindset of those Israelis who filled the streets to scream out their anger and frustration at Binyamin Netanyahu and his government, who they seem to blame even more than Hamas for the massacre and murder of their fellow citizens (and our own).
But I do understand, through tears, that this cannot go on. I wrote this on Facebook in the moments after I learned of the six most recent murders: “I think back on the recent history of Jewish persecution, when Jews have been targeted for death.
“There are so many examples, but I think of these: Of course, the Holocaust. Millions were murdered by Germany’s Hitler. The West, including the U.S. under FDR, looked the other way. Munich, 1972. Israeli athletes kidnapped and murdered by Hamas’ progenitor, the PLO-Black September. The West was castrated by doubt and incompetence.
The Achille Lauro. Again, the PLO. Murdered a wheelchair-bound American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, by pushing him overboard. This happened, eerily, on Oct. 7, 1985. The hijacker mastermind, Abu Abbas, was captured, and ultimately released by Italy despite desperate attempts by the Reagan administration to get him extradited to the U.S.
The Nova Music festival. Thirty-eight years to the day after Palestinian terrorists murdered an American citizen, Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israelis, including Hersh Goldberg, who was one of several U.S. citizens, and murdered many others. All civilians. They ultimately murdered Hersh as well. And Americans and other westerners have filled the streets with protests in support of Hamas’ actions.
This is only a snapshot of a sordid history. But each time a Jewish person, and in some cases an American citizen, has been murdered, there are calls for a ceasefire. In other times it was called appeasement.
That’s over. No more calls for a ceasefire. No more Anne Franks and St. Maximilian Kolbes. No more athletes shot dead in an Olympic village. No more 69 year old men drowning in the ocean, paralyzed and petrified. No more young men and women, come to dance, murdered in cold blood.
RELEASE them NOW. Then we worry about peace. “No release, no peace.”
I would not be screaming for a ceasefire. I would not be seeking appeasement of mad terrorists in Gaza. My empathy for the destruction in the land ruled by Hamas has now been surpassed by my anger at the continued and relentless crusade against Jews, and the way that the West makes excuses and looks away.
No release, no peace. That is the only way to honor Hersh and his tragic companions.
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