The mother of a US-Israeli citizen held captive by Hamas wants the world to see the stark images of her son’s amputated hand – saying that the world has forgotten that the hostages “are actual, real people.”
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, looked gaunt and unwell in the propaganda video released by Hamas last week, his mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, told the Telegraph.
“Before and after is very dramatic. He looks completely different,” she said in an interview published Tuesday, noting that the family was “very happy” to see proof that Hersh was alive over six months into his captivity.
In the troubling video, Hersh gestured repeatedly with the amputated stump of his left arm, which was blown off by a grenade when Hamas descended on the Supernova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Many of the hostage families have chosen not to share images of their loved ones in captivity, but Rachel thinks the world should see the image of her son and his mangled hand, she told the Telegraph.
“People have forgotten that (the hostages) are actual, real people,” she noted.
Nearly seven months after Hersh and over 200 others were kidnapped during the Hamas terror attack, Rachel and her husband, Jon, have taken to wearing pieces of tape that mark the number of days since their son vanished.
“At around 11pm, he kissed Jon and he kissed me. He turned around really casually in the doorway and said ‘Love you, see you tomorrow.’ That was 208 nights ago,” Rachel told the Telegraph of the last time she saw her eldest child and only son.
“You know how in America when you go to conferences they put stickers on you with your name on? This is my name. My name today is 207,” she added.
“I think it makes people uncomfortable, which people should be because we failed them: Every day is another day of failure,” the Chicago native added of the number count.
When Rachel and Jon spoke with The Post last month, they railed against the failure of politicians and negotiators to bring the hostages home.
“It’s unacceptable,” Jon said at the time.
“There’s a lot of posturing and game playing and theater – and we’re just extras in the movie we did not sign up for,” Rachel told the Telegraph of the ongoing political showdown involved in the Israel-Hamas war.
The family was keeping Shabbat when the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 started, but Rachel broke it in order to check in with Hersh, she said.
When she turned on her phone around 8:30 that morning, she saw two text messages from Hersh, which read “I love you” and “I’m sorry.”
“I already knew something horrible was happening,” Rachel recalled.
Around 260 people were murdered at the Supernova festival – and Hersh’s family assumed he was one of them until they saw video of him being loaded into the back of a truck driven by Hamas fighters.
“This is when you start to live on another planet because our first thought was ‘Oh, thank God, he was kidnapped’, which is not what normal people say,” Rachel told the Telegraph.
After almost seven months, the family is still unsure about if and when Hersh will be released.
The latest deal between Israel and Hamas supposedly calls for the release of around 33 vulnerable captives – including women, children, the elderly, and the wounded.
“They’re not asking the mom. I don’t know who’s going to make the list,” Rachel lamented.
