CHICAGO — In an address that brought some attendees of the Democratic National Convention to tears, the parents of one of the eight American citizens held hostage in Gaza addressed the gathering — and their absent son — on Wednesday evening.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, closed out her remarks with an appeal not to negotiators or convention-goers but to her beleaguered son.
“Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you,” Goldberg-Polin said. “Stay strong. Survive.”
Jon Polin, Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s father, also addressed U.S. leaders. “The time is now,” he said, for an agreement to secure the release of the captives and “stop the despair in Gaza.”
The pair were speaking as part of an effort to keep attention on the hostages still being held in Gaza by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group whose Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked the latest episode of outright fighting in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of those the group captured in the shocking attack, some 109 are still in captivity; some are dead.
The hostages include Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, and represent 23 different nationalities, Polin noted, calling them all “treasured human beings.”
The U.S., along with Qatar and Egypt, is serving as a mediator in negotiations between Hamas and the Israeli government for a deal that would free the captives and end Israel’s devastating months-long offensive in Gaza. Last year, a brief bargain between the two sides led to more than 80 women and children being freed. The hostages still being held include a 1-year-old.
The talks faltered this week, despite the Biden administration promising just days ago that they were, per a senior administration official on Friday, in the “end game.”
In addition to the capture of more than 250 hostages, the Hamas-led attack inside Israel killed some 1,200 civilians, according to Israeli statistics. Israel’s retaliation in Gaza since has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian authorities.
“There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East,” Polin told the DNC. “In a competition of pain, there are no winners.”
The remarks by the couple also come amid intense activism over the Gaza war, and the U.S. role in it, at the convention.
Earlier in the day, advocates for a ceasefire and an end to U.S. military support for Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian region held a press conference urging the DNC’s organizers to grant a speaking slot to a Palestinian American who can describe the effect of the war on their community.
Abbas Alawieh — a leader of the “Uncommitted” movement, which seeks to deny support for the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s support for the Israeli offensive in Gaza — said that in addition to having the parents of a hostage speak, it was vital to have a Palestinian voice at the convention as well.
As of Wednesday evening, no Palestinian speaker has been announced.
Critics of the war, among both the families of hostages and advocates for Palestinian rights, have been urging leaders in the U.S., Israel and Hamas to reach a bargain for months, arguing their political considerations pale in comparison to the humanitarian imperative for a deal.