A propaganda video released by Hamas on Thursday shows the American Hersh Goldberg-Paulinone Six Hamas hostages were killed Last weekend in Gaza, should be an “urgent wake-up call for the world” to focus on securing one Armistice AgreementHis parents said.
“We are in the midst of a seven-day period of Jewish mourning following the burial of our son Harsh,” Rachel Goldberg and John Pollin said in a statement shared Thursday by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, which represents the families of the hostages.
But the couple – outspoken advocates for a deal to end Israel’s nearly year-long assault on the Gaza Strip and the return of those still held captive – said they felt compelled to speak out once again after Hamas released a new video of Hersh.
About 11 months after taking hostages at the Supernova music festival, where he was killed by Hamas’s Oct. 7. He also lost a part of his hand in an explosion during the terrorist attack, it was taken before he was killed.
The video was one of a series released by Hamas this week showing six hostages killed by their captors before being rescued by Israeli forces. Hamas has said the militants are operating under new instructions on how to handle hostages if Israeli forces reach where they are being held.
The forum accused Hamas of waging “psychological terror” against the hostages’ families through the “calculated release of harrowing footage”.
In their statement, Goldberg and Pollin said they were still okay with the video being widely shared. They called on the international community to “take action today” to free the hostages held by Hamas “before it is too late”.
“No other family should have to go through what our family (and the families of other recently executed hostages) have endured,” they said.
About 100 people are believed to be in Hamas captivity, according to Israeli officials, while on October 7 about 250 people were captured and about 1,200 people were killed. At least a third of the hostages are believed to be dead.
Goldberg and Pollin have been outspoken in the need for a negotiated settlement to end the suffering not only for the hostages and their families, but also for the Palestinians in Gaza. More than 40,800 people have been killed in the enclave since Israel launched its deadly offensive after Hamas attacks, local officials said, marking a major escalation in the decades-long conflict.
At Harsh’s funeral on Monday, his mother said she prayed her son’s death would be “a turning point in this horrible situation we’re all caught up in.”
Yet with Israel’s prime minister, there have been few signs of progress in the talks in the days since Benjamin Netanyahu fending off intense pressure from all sides to drop their insistence on keeping Israeli troops in the area along the Gaza-Egypt border.
He maintained on Thursday that an agreement was far from “close”, even as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “90 per cent are agreed”.
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