'We All Failed You': Slain Israeli-American Hostage, Son Of Chicago Natives, Laid To Rest

CHICAGO — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the son of Chicago area natives, was laid to rest Monday in a Jerusalem cemetery, nearly 11 months after the 23-year-old was taken hostage during the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

“We failed you, we all failed you," his father, Jon Polin, told a crowd of tens of thousands of mourners. "Maybe your death is the stone, the fuel, that will bring home the 101 other hostages."

Rachel Goldberg said her son was finally free and no longer in danger — and that she no longer has to worry about him after enduring 330 days of “such torment that closed my throat and made my soul burn with third-degree burns.”

Goldberg-Polin, a Berkeley, California native, was attending the Tribe of Nova music festival in southern Israel when Hamas gunmen on pickup trucks, motorcycles and motorized paragliders attacked, killing more than 250 people and taking about a hundred more hostage.

About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed during a bloody day of cross-border Hamas attacks on Israeli border outposts and towns. The invaders took another approximately 250 people hostage. Nearly 11 months later, Israel officials believe nearly 100 people remain in Hamas captivity, although about a third of them are thought to already be dead.

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On Saturday, Israeli military officials announced the bodies of Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages had been found in a tunnel in Rafah that afternoon.

Forensic tests would later reveal that they had been shot multiple times from close range sometime between Thursday and Friday morning. Goldberg-Polin had been seen alive in a video released by his Hamas captors in April.

“I apologize on behalf of the state of Israel that we failed to protect you in the terrible disaster of Oct. 7, that we failed to bring you home safely,” President of Israel Isaac Herzog said Monday at the Israeli-American's funeral in Jerusalem.

Security officials told Israeli media that they worried Hamas executed the four men and two women due to concerns that a hostage rescued alive last week from a nearby tunnel would reveal where they were being held.

A military spokesperson told reporters that troops had understood there may be more hostages in the area and had been "given an emphasis on operating carefully even more than usual" but were not aware of the exact locations of the hostages.

Goldberg-Polin's parents last month addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Polin said they had met repeatedly with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who he said were "both working tirelessly for a hostage and ceasefire deal."

Both Biden and Harris called the couple Sunday following the discovery of their son's body.

Biden issued a statement saying he was "devastated and outraged." The president noted that Goldberg-Polin, who lost his arm in a grenade attack while helping fellow festivalgoers during the Oct. 7 attack, had just turned 23 and planned to travel the world.

"I have gotten to know his parents, Jon and Rachel. They have been courageous, wise, and steadfast, even as they have endured the unimaginable. They have been relentless and irrepressible champions of their son and of all the hostages held in unconscionable conditions," Biden said.

"I have worked tirelessly to bring their beloved Hersh safely to them and am heartbroken by the news of his death. It is as tragic as it is reprehensible," he said. "Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages."

In a statement, Harris said she and her husband had called Goldberg and Polin "to express our condolences following the brutal murder of their son by Hamas terrorists. My heart breaks for their pain and anguish. I told them: As they mourn this terrible loss, they are not alone. Our nation mourns with them."

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The Israeli military identified the five other slain hostages as 25-year-old Ori Danino, 24-year-old Eden Yerushalmi, 27-year-old Almog Sarusi, 33-year-old Alexander Lobanov and 40-year-old Carmel Gat.

A statement from Hamas's military wing indicated that it now has a policy of killing any hostages that Israeli forces attempt to rescue, and a senior spokesperson for the internationally designated terrorist group said its abductees would still be alive if Israel had agreed to a U.S.-backed ceasefire that it agreed to in July.

Hamas has offered to release its hostages in exchange for the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners and an end to the war in the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets Sunday in protest, and thousands more protested at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's home in Jerusalem the next day. The largest trade union in Israel called for a general strike Monday in response to the discovery of the bodies of the six hostages, but a judge ended it early by accepting a petition from Netanyahu's government that called it politically motivated.

Netanyahu has rejected any arrangement that would cede control of the Gaza-Egypt border. Last week, he reportedly got into a shouting match with his defense minister — who accused him of favoring border arrangements over the lives of hostages — at a security cabinet meeting.

“No one is more committed to freeing the hostages than me," Netanyahu said in a public address Monday. "No one will preach to me on this issue."

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Goldberg-Polin's father grew up in West Rogers Park and Skokie, while his mother grew up on the Near North Side, before they relocated to Jerusalem. One of his grandparents now lives in Evanston, another resides in downtown Chicago and his aunt lives in the Evanston-Skokie area.

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, the Evanston Democrat who represents the area in the House of Representatives, issued a statement in response to the discovery of the body of Goldberg-Polin, who she described as "a courageous ray of light with a bright future ahead of him."

"The human cost of this war is staggering, and it must end now. Hersh was slated for release in the framework that Israel and Hamas agreed to in early July," Schakowsky said.

"It is unconscionable that Israeli and Hamas leadership have delayed a final deal for so long," she said. "We must bring all the remaining hostages home immediately and end the violence once and for all."