A Message From Beyond the Planet of Pain: In a Land Without Sleep Rachel Goldberg Finds, During the Dread, a Sliver of Hope

Dressed in black, her bare face etched with determination and the indomitable will of a sleepless mother desperate to rescue her son, Rachel Goldberg spoke at the United Nations on Tuesday.Ms. Goldberg’s son, Hersh Goldberg Polin, 23, is one of the over 200 hostages in Gaza. Hersh and his friend Aner Shapira were together at the Supernova festival. When Hamas began shooting, Hersh, Aner, and a few dozen other festival goers sprinted to a shelter. As the terrorists approached, throwing grenades into the shelter, Aner managed to throw eight undetonated grenades back at the terrorists. Aner died a hero. He was my uncle’s cousin. Ms. Goldberg and her husband would later find out from a video that their son’s left arm had been blown out from his elbow. The video showed Hersh getting into a pickup truck with other hostages being thrown in after him. His last cell phone signal was found inside of Gaza at 10:25 AM on October 7. Rachel Goldberg’s son Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Courtesy of Rachel Goldberg via APAttempting to describe her state of being to the audience, Ms. Goldberg said, “We seem like we live in the same place, but I, like all of the mothers and fathers, and wives, and husbands, and brothers and sisters of the stolen… live on a different planet. And the very cruelest of questions each of us is asked every single day, without intended malice, is ‘how are you?’”“Well, picture your own mother, and then picture her being told, ‘there are only two options, you are either dead, or you had your arm blown off and were kidnapped by gunpoint into Gaza, and no one knows where you are, or if you bled to death in that pickup truck 18 days ago, or if you died yesterday, or if you died 5 minutes ago.”She added: “That is how all of us here on our planet feel. This planet of beyond pain. Our planet of no sleep, our planet of despair, our planet of tears.” Despite pressure on the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations, the hostages’ families, from 33 countries, have not received word from their loved ones. They have no idea if they are suffering or if they are already dead. The Israeli organization “Bring Them Home Now” is raising awareness with government officials and the public in an attempt to bring the hostages back. Shabbat tables set for 200 in Tel Aviv, Sydney, and Rome were on display Friday as a public statement. Volunteers have hung up thousands of hostage posters around the United States. But as videos across social media show, almost every poster that gets put up is soon ripped down or defaced, some with Hitler mustaches.Four hostages have been released to date, Nurit Cooper, Yocheved Lifshitz, and Judith and Natalie Raanan. They all still have family members in captivity. On the morning of October 7, Abbey Onn, who lives in Herzliya with her family, began receiving Whatsapps from her relatives in the South. “They could hear them in their houses screaming allahu akbar, they could hear gunfire and their neighbors being killed. They knew it was Hamas,” Ms. Onn said. She would later discover that five of her family members had been taken by Hamas. We know what happened from Hamas’ GoPro videos as well as first hand accounts and videos from survivors of the massacre. We know that it was not just Hamas Izz ad-Din al Qassam Brigades who came in to hunt down, torture, and rape Israelis but also Gazan civilians, men, women, and children. Amidst the terror, Carmela Dan, who was in Kibbutz Nir Oz, spoke with her daughter Hadas Calderon, whose two children were taken by Hamas. “This is a shoah,” said Hadas. Carmela responded “no, we are going to be okay.”Carmela’s other daughter Galit received a voice note from her daughter, Noya, 13, who had autism and was sensitive to light and noise. Noya was at Carmela’s house at the time of the massacre. She said, “Mommy, I’m scared. There are people in the house, help me.” On October 8, Ms. Onn saw a video on Instagram of her family members being taken captive by Hamas. It would be another nine days before they received official confirmation that a total of five family members, including Carmela and Noya, had been kidnapped.October 17 marked Carmela’s 80th birthday. The family asked the world to celebrate with them. News outlets requested that at 6 p.m. people go outside to sing “Happy Birthday” to Carmela. The following day the family found out Carmela and Noya had been murdered by Hamas. Their lifeless bodies were discovered near the border of Gaza. Carmela never got to turn 80. Abbey and her family are still praying for the safe return of Noya’s father and siblings: Ofer Kalderon,50, and his children Erez, 12, and Sahar, 16. Ms. Goldberg closed her speech with a story of hope in humanity. She tells how a dozen or so festival goers ran to a shelter near the festival and were joined by a Bedouin man who was working as a guard nearby. As Hamas was closing in on the shelter, the Bedouin man told them to stay quiet.He went outside and spoke in Arabic to the Hamas militants, “I am a muslim. Everyone inside is my family. We are all muslim. You don’t have to search there.” While he could have said “I’m muslim, the Jews are in there,” thereby potentially saving himself, he risked his own life to attempt to save the lives of others. For this, he was brutally beaten.“I take comfort for a fleeting moment, knowing that there was someone who was trying to do the right thing, even when everything in the universe had been turned upside down,” Ms. Goldberg said. She pleaded on behalf of all the hostages’ families, in what felt like a prophetic warning from Jeremiah, “The time is running out to save them. The time is running out to save all of us.”

A Message From Beyond the Planet of Pain: In a Land Without Sleep Rachel Goldberg Finds, During the Dread, a Sliver of Hope

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