Chants of “Bring Them Home” echoed throughout the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday night as Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin took to the stage with strips of masking tape placed over their hearts bearing the number 320, the number of days their 23-year-old son Hersh has been held in Gaza.
The arena rose to its feet as the Polins stood silently, and then spoke.
Photos of their son and the seven other American hostages shone overhead on the main screens.
“Like [Vice President] Kamala Harris, Hersh was born in Oakland, California,” Rachel said. “Hersh is a happy-go-lucky, laid-back, good-humored, respectful, and curious person. He is a civilian.”
Her son was kidnapped from the Nova music festival where he went with his best friend to celebrate his birthday.
Polin said that her son’s left forearm, his dominant arm, was blown off before he was loaded onto a pickup truck and “stolen from his life, and me and John, into Gaza.”
A call to bring them home
“And that was 320 days ago,” she punctuated.
“This is a political convention,” Jon said. “But needing our son, and all the hostages home, is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue.”
The families of the eight American hostages meet every few weeks in Washington and are heartened by the bipartisan support in Congress for the hostages’ release.
These families have met with US President Biden and Harris numerous times at the White House, and with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan over a dozen times.
Jon said Biden and Harris were both working tirelessly for a ceasefire deal that would “bring home our precious mothers, fathers, spouses and grandparents and grandchildren home and will stop the despair in Gaza.”
The crowd inside the arena erupted into applause at both lines.
“There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East,” Jon said. “And in a competition of pain, there are no winners.”
In an inflamed Middle East, Jon said the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring calm to the entire region is a deal that brings this diverse group of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of innocent civilians in Gaza.
His wife, ending her speech as she’s ended many over the past 320 days, called out directly to her son.
A message to her son held in Hamas captivity
“Hersh, Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you,” she said. “Stay strong, survive.”
Liz Hirsh Naftali, the great aunt of four-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, who was taken hostage on October 7 and released 50 days later, stood behind the stage in tears as the Polins addressed the crowd.
“The room was silent. It was like you could hear a needle drop as they spoke,” Naftali told The Jerusalem Post from the DNC. “It was stunning.”
Cameras panned across the arena, and Naftali said there was a man listening to the Polins with his hands in prayer and a tear in his eye.
“It was just beautiful,” she added. “I think that what we learned about ourselves was that there’s a lot of people who really love and care, and this touched their hearts.”
She said Rachel and Jon got off stage feeling the love of the 20,000 crowd of people in the arena.
Naftali said the American hostage families were initially concerned the crowd would not understand “the love and the humanity.”
An audience in awe
“The entire arena was so beautiful and so taking in every word that [the Polins] had crafted. It was heartwarming, and it reminded us all that this is a humanitarian crisis,” she noted. “These are eight Americans, and 111 people whose lives were just taken to Gaza. People understand the cruelty, and they understand they need to come home.”
After Ronen and Orna Neutra, parents of 22-year-old hostage Omer Neutra, addressed the Republican National Convention last month, Naftali described the Polins’ remarks as a completion of the American families’ bipartisan efforts.
“The goal is for people, and I’m going to say this very clearly, to make a deal to bring these hostages home,” Naftali said. “This is something that the American people, both the Republicans and the Democrats, all agree must happen.”