My friend Hersh Goldberg-Polin was shot in the head by terrorists the other week, and it feels like no one cares. At least no one around me now. I was in Tel Aviv the morning the IDF found his body along with the bodies of five other hostages. The city woke up to rain, coinciding with the news that Hersh, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Carmel Gat were dead. I’m not much of a believer; but it never rains during the summer in Tel Aviv, and even I felt like the world was crying with the Jewish People. Their deaths carried a cosmic weight, and now the universe was in mourning. That night half-a-million people took to the streets in Tel Aviv alone, with 200,000 more across the country, to demand government action on a hostage deal.
I marched with protestors waving Israeli flags and holding signs that said “Bring them Home Now,” “End the war,” and “They were murdered because of you” – the last featuring a picture of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. My mind went to the anti-Israel protests in my community back home, how people really want the same thing but will never acknowledge it. Everyone wants peace. But the people waving Palestinian flags and chanting for an end to the “occupation,” (Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2005, when they removed all army bases and settlements from the territory), will only ever see an Israeli flag as representing genocide, oppression, and historic crimes against humanity. Meanwhile across the ocean, hundreds of thousands of people are using it to represent peace, prosperity, and self-determination. The morning after the protest, I got on a flight back to Boston, and I felt alone.
I knew what I was coming back to. I’d had people tell me the hostages don’t matter, that they deserve what’s happening to them. I’d had friends use every method to either minimize or outright deny the violence against Israelis on October 7th. One former high school classmate told me that reports of Hamas mass rape on October 7th are fabricated U.S.-Israeli propaganda meant to justify the murder of Palestinians. I try to tell people that Israelis just want safety and security like anyone else, that they’re also marching through the streets demanding an end to the war in Gaza. But that doesn’t matter. I’m usually met with an accusation of supporting fascism and genocide, or of being Islamophobic.
I even had a falling out with one of my best friends, centered around his statement that “No matter what happens or what the truth is, [his] opinion on Israel will never change. Because any accusations against Israel that aren’t true now will be in the future.” I know I’m not being dramatic when I feel that no matter what I do or say, no matter what Israelis do or say, no matter what Jews as a whole do or say, people will always despise us. We try to advocate for ourselves, but no one takes us seriously.
No one cared while Hersh was a hostage in Gaza for 11 months; while his captors starved him, neglected him, and tormented him. No one cared when was abducted from the Nova music festival, where Hamas murdered over 260 people, but where Hersh saved lives, throwing grenades back at terrorists from inside a bomb shelter. No one cared that he lost his arm and his best friend, who died also helping throw grenades out of the bunker. No one called Hersh a hero, and no one called him a victim. They called him an occupier, an oppressor, a prisoner — as if he were facing the expected consequences of a legitimate crime. They found ways to minimize the tragedy, to spin it into an act of justice. The classic anti-Jewish doublethink emerged: “It didn’t happen, and it’s good that it did.” I watched normal, intelligent, well-meaning people jump through mental hoops to avoid the reality that a kid, an American, with ties to their own communities, was abducted, brutalized, and eventually murdered by truly evil people with purely malicious intentions. This should be a national tragedy; but Hersh was Jewish, he was Israeli, and because of that he doesn’t matter. The global Jewish community is still in mourning. Hersh’s death is a trauma that will last a lifetime for most of us, and generations for Israeli society. The earth is literally crying out for us. Please, I’m begging you, listen to us. Listen to our experience without gaslighting or belittling us. Have an open mind and be willing to realize that you might have inaccurate stereotypes, that you might have fallen for misinformation, that your knowledge may be incomplete. Step up. Be an adult. Take us seriously.
Thank you Ben for speaking out