Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s heartbreak when she buried her son Hersh was palpable.
Her grief was the end result of an 11-month “odyssey of torture” by which she and her husband Jon pleaded with each world chief to carry her son dwelling. Alive.
In each speech and assembly, she humanized Hersh.
By her efforts, Hersh got here to embody the hope of the Jewish people who the hostages would survive; that they might come dwelling, damaged however alive.
After 329 days in Hamas captivity, Hersh was murdered by the terrorists holding him captive — for no different purpose than they would favor to see a Jewish man lifeless than residing free.
However not like lots of the different 250 Israelis kidnapped to Gaza on that darkish day whose names have been forgotten, in the event that they have been ever identified around the globe, Hersh’s title will dwell on.
He is not going to solely stay the 23-year-old his household described of their painful eulogies, however a paradigm of the younger Israeli lives reduce brief on the state of Israel’s worst day, the Jewish individuals’s deadliest day because the Holocaust.
Evaluating the Holocaust to any earlier or subsequent occasion in human historical past is improper, in fact. It minimizes the unprecedented tragedy of the 6 million Jews whose murders the world didn’t cease.
However simply as Anne Frank emerged from that horror because the embodiment of youthful goals stamped out for the crime of being born Jewish, so too does Hersh symbolize that for the victims of Oct. 7.
Anne Frank believed “individuals are actually good at coronary heart.” Hersh’s bed room displayed {a photograph} proclaiming “Jerusalem is everybody’s.”
Historical past doesn’t repeat itself, nevertheless it rhymes.
Hersh’s story was acquainted to so many.
Considered one of us (Gil) met him when Hersh was 7 years outdated.
When his household moved to Jerusalem, Hersh usually accompanied his father to the identical Saturday morning prayer service Gil attended each week.
Coincidentally, their households’ connections return a long time in Chicago and its suburbs.
The truth that he was a California-born American citizen who beloved music, sports activities and journey made Hersh simple to narrate to for atypical People.
He offered a really completely different picture of Israelis than is commonly perceived, particularly in the course of the present warfare.
Israelis are too typically dehumanized within the worldwide mainstream and social media.
The Israelis the world sees are troopers, and even worse . . . politicians.
Hersh did his obligatory navy service, too, however he was kidnapped as a dancer, not a soldier.
But it’s his captors who’re portrayed because the victims by the media.
Regardless of final week’s revelation by the IDF that 6,000 Gazans infiltrated Israel in the course of the bloodbath, it’s the Gazans who for essentially the most half are seen as atypical individuals, not as terrorists or invaders who went from dwelling to dwelling in Israeli agricultural communities, raping, pillaging, murdering and kidnapping.
Movies revealed final week confirmed Carmel Gat, who was murdered alongside Hersh, as she was taken into captivity.
Darkish, cloudy skies are full of terrorist silhouettes who stroll her by her mom being executed on the facet of the street.
These pictures are harking back to the darkest days of Jewish historical past, repeating themselves once more within the Jewish state.
Pictures are highly effective.
They evoke visceral feelings. And Hamas understands this.
Realizing its lack of ability to defeat Israel militarily, Hamas has adopted a long-term technique of exploiting international media to shift public opinion and impression worldwide coverage.
Its military of content-creators publish pictures of destroyed buildings with a lone, pristine teddy bear atop the rubble.
Israel made a controversial resolution to bar reporters from getting into Gaza, partly to attenuate the variety of journalists harmed.
However when a journalist was killed, Hamas photographers made a degree of inserting a clear “press” vest on prime of the shroud once they took their photos.
This warfare is being fought on the media battlefield, in addition to the navy battlefield: Hamas is fast to spin propaganda (keep in mind when the fear group falsely blamed Israel for bombing Al-Ahli hospital and the press purchased it?) that the media is all too keen to endorse.
There is no such thing as a time for details.
And that’s what makes Hersh so vital: His story, the hope he represented and the evil of his homicide transcends the propaganda.
Like Anne Frank, his story will ceaselessly stand because the illustration of lives reduce brief by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Gil Hoffman is the manager director and Jacki Alexander the chief govt officer of the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting
