Hersh

“Evil” is precisely the right language to use for those who killed him

Hersh Goldberg-Polin

Of the hostages being held by terrorists in Gaza, the one I’ve been on a first-name basis with is Hersh. Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American citizen whose parents spoke movingly and memorably at the recent Democratic National Convention. He was a counselor on the 2023 trip to Israel at a school that one of my children attends. His mother spoke a few months ago, by Zoom, about her hostage son to one of my own child’s classes at a different school. There’s a practice of using the names of the hostages to order drinks or food so that, at a cafe, when they call out the name to say the order is ready, it raises awareness, and though I’m not that frequent a customer at places like that, I have at least once given the name “Hersh” for an order.

So it’s crushing to learn that Hersh, who was 23 years old and was kidnapped while attending a music festival, is dead, “murdered by the Hamas terrorist organization while in captivity in Gaza,” as the Israel Defense Forces put it in announcing the news. As are Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Ori Danino. 

Vice President Harris put out a statement late last night noting that “His body was recovered today in the tunnels under Rafah, along with five other hostages.” She didn’t mention that she and President Biden had been publicly warning Israel for months not to go into Rafah. Maybe if Israel had ignored the warnings and gone in sooner it could have saved him. Or maybe Hamas would have just killed him sooner.

“Hamas is an evil terrorist organization,” Harris said. “Evil” is precisely the right language to use because it is not merely legal but moral. Understanding that there is such a thing as good and evil, and having the ability to distinguish between the two, is a requirement for victory, just as surely as are the arms supplies that the Biden-Harris administration has been alternating between supplying and slow-walking or withholding or partially embargoing from Israel.

“With these murders, Hamas has even more American blood on its hands. I strongly condemn Hamas’ continued brutality, and so must the entire world. From its massacre of 1,200 people to sexual violence, taking of hostages, and these murders, Hamas’ depravity is evident and horrifying. The threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel—and American citizens in Israel—must be eliminated and Hamas cannot control Gaza. The Palestinian people too have suffered under Hamas’ rule for nearly two decades,” Harris said. It’s not just Hamas that has American blood on its hands but its sponsors in Iran and its enablers in Qatar and Turkey and yes, Egypt, too. And it’s not just “American citizens in Israel” who are threatened by Hamas but American citizens in America and all over the world who are threatened by the radical Islamist anti-capitalist and anti-American terrorist ideology of which Hamas is just one variety. Hamas is ISIS, as Prime Minister Netanyahu explained immediately after October 7, 2023. Hamas is Al Qaeda. Hamas is the Iranians who seized the American embassy in Tehran in 1979.

And so add Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s name to the long list. The list includes Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old hostage in a wheelchair who was shot, killed, and thrown overboard in 1985 by Palestinian terrorists who had hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea. It includes Theodora (Theo) Cohen, a 20-year-old junior at Syracuse University; the only child of Dan and Susan Cohen, she was killed in Libya’s 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. It includes Alisa Flatow, a 20-year-old Brandeis student from New Jersey studying in Israel, killed in a 1995 bus bombing by Iran-sponsored terrorists.

The long duration of the war and the great number of casualties might suggest that victory over the evil is unattainable. Yet remember, the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, is thinking on a timeline that goes back to the battle of Karbala in the year 680. In the big picture, the Emir of Granada capitulated to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1491. The Holy Roman Empire routed the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683. Great Britain took Jerusalem from the Ottomans in 1917. Israel is the military and economic superpower of the modern Middle East. And America is the military and economic superpower of the 21st century world, though it sometimes, alas, seems reluctant to act that way.

All this may be little consolation to the friends and family of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. It may not do much to cheer those Israelis who have been under attack or fighting bravely. It may not allay the concerns of those all over the world justifiably concerned about Iran seeking nuclear weapons and its proxies violently advancing in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza, the West Bank, the Red Sea, and on American college campuses and the streets of European cities. Yet if the murder of Hersh Goldberg-Polin reminds America that there is evil and that the consequences of letting it go unchecked are devastating, perhaps he will have a legacy in summoning, from all who believe in peace and freedom and human dignity, the qualities that his mother Rachel has shown over these past months: resolve and relentlessness, strength and determination, clarity and courage. 

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