JTA – One man fresh out of the army said “I love you” and “I’m sorry” to his father and then fell silent. One who has just joined the army has no family nearby, so a stranger keeps him company in the hospital. One was a peace activist.
These are some of the stories coming to light as Israel tries to identify the hundreds dead and dozens missing after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Saturday. There are no figures yet on the number of North Americans killed or kidnapped in the invasion, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Americans were reportedly killed, wounded and taken hostage.
Tom Nides, who left his role as ambassador to Israel in June, said crises like the current one put the U.S. Embassy into overdrive.
“You have a large number of people responsible for this and it is one of the biggest, it is one of the most important things an embassy can do,” Nides said in an interview.
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Nearly two days after the invasion began, Jon Polin waits for news about his 23-year-old son Hersh Goldberg-Polin and hopes he’s still alive. Goldberg-Polin left her home at 11 p.m. Friday night for a late-night outdoor party near the Gaza border, where Hamas terrorists carried out a raid Saturday morning that killed about 250 young adults and kidnapped more.
The party was intended to be the kind of celebration that recently discharged soldiers enjoy. Goldberg-Polin, who was born in Berkeley, California, moved to Israel with his parents when he was seven and completed his military service in April.
An undated photo by Hersh Goldberg-Polin. (Jon Polin via JTA)
Goldberg-Polin’s father said his son loved festivals, music and travel, and like many discharged soldiers, he was saving up for a trip to India in a few months. He now worked as a paramedic and waiter. But they haven’t heard from him since Saturday.
“He sent us two short WhatsApps on Saturday morning at 8:11 a.m.,” Polin said, sharing the messages with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“I love you,” was the first sentence. “I’m sorry,” was the second sentence.
Another U.S.-born soldier from Houston lay in a hospital in Israel with no family nearby after he was shot in the face in the attack. Rhoda Smolow, president of the Zionist women’s group Hadassah, keeps the soldier company at Hadassah Medical Center until his family can be at his side.
“He has to undergo a tracheostomy, so we couldn’t talk, and apparently from the caregivers, nurses and doctors there, they felt he was very traumatized,” she said, declining to give his name for privacy reasons. “We felt so terrible that he was alone with no one in the room.”
Smolow said she told Private Hadassah he would make sure he received the best possible care. “He gave me a thumbs up,” she said.
The Zionist group’s executive director, Naomi Adler, spoke about the soldier in a briefing by the Jewish Federations of North America and the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. The hospital and the Army have had difficulty tracking down his family, but Smolow said Adler’s appearance on the webinar may have led to a lead.
Other North American Jews are also missing. Peace activist Vivian Silver, 75, was kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri near the border on Saturday.
Born in Winnipeg, Canada, she was the longtime director of the Arab Jewish Center For Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation, which organized projects that brought together communities in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. In 2014, after the last major war between Israel and Hamas, she helped found Women Wage Peace, which promotes peacebuilding actions among women from all communities and across the political spectrum.
Speaking to Forbes in 2021 for a series about women helping vulnerable people, Silver said she remembered a feeling of relief after the government built bomb shelters on Kibbutz Be’eri, which had been subject to rocket fire for more than a decade was released from Gaza.
“In 2009 the [Israeli] The government only built housing for communities four kilometers from the border. The community I live in is four and a half kilometers from the border, so we didn’t have shelter at the time,” Silver told Forbes. “Now we do this, so psychologically we feel better and safer, and in fact we are safer, we are much safer than the people of Gaza.”
At a 2018 Women Wage Peace event on the Gaza border, she said the Israeli government needed to change its approach to bring peace to the region. “Show the necessary courage that leads to political changes that bring us peace and security,” she said to the government at the time. “Returning to routine is not an option.”
She appealed to women across the border, saying: “Terror doesn’t make anything better for anyone, you too deserve peace and quiet.”
“She’s amazing,” her longtime friend and fellow activist Ariella Giniger told JTA on Sunday. “She’s smart. She’s funny and does great things. She’s been a real peace activist for years and to struggle in a situation like this…” Her voice trailed off.
Some families searched for news about their loved ones and learned about the tragedy. On Facebook, a mother wrote two shocking Facebook posts nine hours apart.
In the first post, published at midnight on Saturday, she wrote that her son was “abducted by terrorists from his home in Kibbutz Holit today.” If anyone has relevant information, please contact us.”
She had an update after 9 a.m. on Sunday. “Unfortunately, we were informed last night that our beautiful, generous and talented son… was murdered by terrorists at his home in Holit.”
She did not respond to an interview request.
Nides said he is getting calls from Americans worried about their Israeli family members. He said he would direct them to the embassy in Israel.
“You need information, right?” he said. “They want to know what’s going on. They want to know what’s happening, know who they’re communicating with [their loved ones] Because it’s so unbelievable how scary it is when someone wakes up in the morning and something like that happens to them.”