American families plead with Biden to rescue loved ones taken hostage by Hamas

The last text message Rachel Goldberg received from her son Hersh Goldberg-Polin on Saturday morning was “I love you” and “I’m sorry.”

Goldberg says Hirsh is believed to be among the hostages held by the terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, kidnapped after the group launched a surprise assault into Israel, infiltrating dozens of small communities bordering the Strip and attacking a music festival with hundreds of partygoers, at least 260 of whom were killed on the spot. 

“I knew immediately wherever he was, it was a terrible situation. I took it to mean ‘I love you and I’m sorry because whatever is going to happen is going to cause you a tremendous pain and worry,’” Goldberg, a dual Israeli-American citizen, said at a Tuesday press conference in Israel.

She was one of six dual citizens who spoke to reporters in Israel and pleaded for President Biden and the Israeli government to do everything possible to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas into besieged Gaza.

The number of those kidnapped is likely to exceed more than 100. The Biden administration is assuming there are Americans among them, but it has not confirmed a specific number. The families present represented at least five dual Israeli-American citizens, but they said they are in touch with at least 10 families with dual citizenship who believe loved ones are being held hostage in Gaza.

While more than 1,000 people are believed killed in the assault that began on Saturday, a key prize for Hamas was the taking of hostages that leaders in the group have said they will use as bargaining chips to free Palestinian prisoners in Israel. They’ve also threatened to broadcast executions of hostages in retaliation for Israeli counter-strikes on the Gaza strip. 

The American-Israeli families who spoke to the press Tuesday pleaded for the Israeli and U.S. governments to do everything possible to secure the release of their loved ones. 

Goldberg said she and her husband have been able to put together a picture of Hirsch’s last moments in Israel — that he took refuge in a bomb shelter with other partygoers, which was then attacked by Hamas terrorists who threw in grenades and shot inside with machine guns.

“We’ve spoken to eyewitnesses, we know that he was injured in a gun battle. I mean, they were all civilians at a music festival. They were fish in a barrel sitting in this bomb shelter,” she said.

Hirsch’s arm from the elbow down was blown off, Goldberg said, and he tied a tourniquet around his arm with his shirt. The family said eyewitnesses told them that Hirsch and his friend Amer Shapira saved people’s lives in the bomb shelter by tossing out grenades that had been thrown in. 

“Hamas came in after the gunfire settled down and said anyone who can walk, stand up and walk out. We are told that he was completely calm. I think he was probably in shock,” Goldberg said.

“And he got up and he walked out with five other young people from the music festival. Two young women, three other young men, they were put on a pickup truck and driven away by Hamas. And then the police told us one thing they knew is that the last known cell signal from his phone was on the border with Gaza.”

American citizen Nahar Neta, whose 66-year-old mother Adreinne Neta is believed kidnapped from the southern Israeli community of Be’eri, said the Israeli and U.S. governments have a responsibility to bring back all the hostages kept by Hamas.

“President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken … they’re responsible to bring the U.S. citizens back home safe and sound,” Neta said, struggling to speak after describing how his family was on the phone with their mother when they heard her screaming as Hamas terrorists barged into her home.

“My mom used a little bit of Arabic that she picked up working as a nurse in the hospital in Sorokov for 20 years to calm down the terrorist,” Neta continued.

“And it is our hope, which is a bit ridiculous at this stage to say that the optimistic scenario here is that she’s held hostage in Gaza and not dead, on the street of the kibbutz [community] where we grew up.”

White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday said the president had directed his team to work with Israel “on every aspect of the hostage crisis, including sharing intelligence and deploying experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts.”

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, an American citizen who lived on the kibbutz Nir Oz that was attacked in the early morning on Saturday, said his 35-year-old son Sagui Dekel Chen is missing. The kibbutz — typically a tight-knit, farming community — was destroyed, of 400 residents there are 160 confirmed survivors, he said.

“Kibbutz Nir Oz is no more. … It was destroyed in a barbaric inhuman attack, in which dozens of my friends, my neighbors were killed. Many dozens more are either known to be hostages or missing,” he said.

“The survivors call this a pogrom,” Dekel-Chen said, using the term for an organized massacre where Jewish communities have been historically targeted.

Dekel-Chen, originally from Connecticut, appealed for people the U.S. government and Congress “to do what they can on the side of good here.”

“We’re waiting for Sagui to come home. We do not know what fate he met.”

The families represented at the press conference said their loved ones likely held by Gaza include young men, fathers, Netta’s mother Adreinne, and uniformed Israeli soldiers.

Ruby Chen, whose son Itay is an Israeli soldier missing in action, appealed for the U.S. and Israel to pressure the international community to demand military hostages be treated as Prisoners of War.  

“The last time that we heard from him was Saturday morning, where he said that they were under attack,” Chen said of contact with his son.

With no confirmation that Itay is alive, wounded or dead, Chen is assuming he is being held in Gaza and “then he is by definition, POW, a U.S. citizen, an Israeli citizen.”

“What we are asking … for the U.S. government, as well as from the captives Hamas is to treat him as a POW, should be treated according to international law, meaning having someone visit him, have a doctor to see him, have a U.N. representative see him as well.”

Chen, who has family living in New York and New Jersey, told the group of journalists not to think of Itay and the other families as “a headline,” and described how his son had volunteered to stay on his military base on the Gaza border over the weekend of Oct. 7 so he could be with his extended family the following weekend to celebrate the bar mitzvah of his younger brother. 

“And as I said before, we want to go back to being a family. We want this to end as soon as possible,” Chen said. 

“We still hope that that celebration with my sisters and my family will happen in the near future.”

Sharon Udasin contributed.