Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose 23-year-old son is currently being held in Hamas captivity, called on Diaspora Jews to take action and place pressure on Israeli leaders to arrange a hostage deal during a speech at the World Zionist Organization (WZO) Heschel Conference on Jewish Peoplehood on Wednesday.
Goldberg-Polin criticized the Israeli government for not doing enough to ensure a hostage deal.
"The leaders of this country are not thinking straight because they are still speaking from a place of continual, unending, throbbing, sharp, ongoing guilt-ridden trauma," said Goldberg-Polin.
Time to take action
She called on Jewish communities in the Diaspora to "speak resolutely and with conviction to the men in power who will be deciding the destiny and identity of the Jewish people going forward forever more."
Since Hersh Goldberg-Polin's abduction from the Supernova music festival at Re’im on October 7, his mother has been continuously calling on the government to arrange a hostage deal.
At the Jerusalem Post's Israel Summit in January, Goldberg-Polin reflected on the trauma of having her son held in Hamas captivity for such an extended amount of time. “We are still being torn open, and so the pain intensifies with each day," she said.
Now, as five months have passed since the kidnap date, Goldberg-Polin emphasized at the WZO conference the importance of taking action to ensure a hostage deal.
"This is the time to do something out of the ordinary, the likes of which have never been seen in any people's history. Now is the time to save 134 innocent souls for no other reason except that it is holy, and it is the most Jewish response to October 7th that can possibly be done," she concluded.