‘An unspeakable tragedy’: Rep. Auchincloss says of death of Israeli-American hostage with Mass. ties
Two days after an Israeli-American slain by Hamas was laid to rest in a Jerusalem cemetery, calls for justice an ocean away continued to reverberate.
The death of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, who had family in Newton, is an “unspeakable tragedy,” U.S Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District, said Wednesday.
“Hersh had connections to Massachusetts, and indeed to my hometown of Newton,” Auchincloss said after an unrelated event in Brookline.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was one of six hostages killed by Hamas last week. His body was found in Rafah in Gaza, according to published reports.
Goldberg-Polin’s parents, Rachel and Jon, made national headlines with their emotional plea for their son’s release, along with others still held in captivity in Gaza, during last month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Speaking to reporters after an unrelated event in Brookline on Wednesday, Auchincloss, who is Jewish, said he was able to meet with the couple and Goldberg-Polin’s aunt.
“ ... Their courage in the face of the worst nightmare imaginable should harden Americans’ resolve to seek the return of all hostages, including the four American living hostages who remain in these terror tunnels.”
Rachel Goldberg-Polin is a Brandeis University graduate. Friends of the family also live in Brookline, where there is a growing memorial, News 7 in Boston reported.
His aunt is a Newton resident, according to The Boston Globe.
Auchincloss said Wednesday that it’s important to “clearly, unequivocally state where culpability lies for this atrocity.”
“Hamas had these six young hostages film videos to their family members,” he said. “They then executed them. This is an organization that exists on the other side of the line that separates civilization from barbarity. And they can have no place in post-war governance in Gaza.”
“... The fact that Hamas is executing Americans while it continues to hold four Americans hostage, underscores that this is not Israel’s fight alone,” he continued. “This is Israel and the free world together, against the barbarism of Hamas and its patron, Iran.”
Israel’s military announced Sunday that the bodies of Goldberg-Polin and the five others had been discovered in an underground tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israeli forensics experts said they had been shot at close range and died on Thursday or Friday, shortly before Israeli troops reached the tunnel in southern Gaza where they were held, The Associated Press reported.
Their deaths sparked protests by hundreds of thousands of people in Israel, with many saying the hostages could have been returned alive if a cease-fire deal had been reached.
Three of the six hostages, including Goldberg-Polin, were reportedly scheduled to be released in the first phase of a cease-fire proposal discussed in July.
On Wednesday, Auchincloss said work toward a ceasefire must continue. But any deal must both “get the hostages home and ensure that Hamas can have no role in postwar governance” in the region.
“Because if Hamas is part of governance in Gaza, going forward, there will be more hostages, and this cycle of depravity will not end,” he said. “Because they will violate further ceasefires, as they have in the past.”
By: John Micek
Source: MassLive