Jonathan Polin, the father of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, requested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “stop claiming” credit for returning his son to Israel.
In a Sunday post on Facebook, Polin — whose son Hersh was kidnapped from the Nova festival and murdered in captivity in August 2024 — asked that Netanyahu “stop claiming that ‘his forceful application of combined military and diplomatic pressure has so far achieved the release of 205 hostages out of a total of 255.'”
Polin wrote that the “insensitive claim whitewashes the lives of the 20% of the 205 who were taken into Gaza alive, survived a period of torture, and were then killed in captivity, including my son Hersh.”
He added that before Hersh’s murder, “a negotiated deal was possible to release a number of hostages, including Hersh and at least three others of the five with whom he was held,” and blames Netanyahu for instead deciding to “continue with the risky military operation in Rafah.” That decision, he said, led to the execution by their captors of Hersh and the five hostages he was held with — Carmel Gat, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, Eden Yerushalmi, and Alex Lobanov.
“Please do not take credit for ‘achieving the release’ of Hersh,” Polin concluded. “This is offensive to Hersh and to our family.”
Netanyahu reiterated the claim over the weekend in a response to The New York Times, which had reported that he extended the Gaza war to remain in power. His policies, he wrote, have “so far secured the return of 205 hostages out of a total of 255.”
The hostages were abducted on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a devastating invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and triggered the war in Gaza.
While US and Israeli officials expressed optimism last week about the chances for an imminent agreement for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, negotiations have been stuck over the scope of Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza, an Arab diplomat and another source involved in mediation efforts told The Times of Israel.
Netanyahu has insisted the war cannot end until Hamas is no longer able to rule Gaza or pose a threat to Israel, vowing to achieve both that goal and the return of all the hostages still held in the Strip.
Terror groups are still holding 50 hostages — 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023, and the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014. Of them, only 20 are believed to be alive, Israeli officials have said.
Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May as a “gesture” to the United States. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 49 have been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of another soldier who was killed in 2014.