Six Hostages Found Murdered in Rafah

The kaddish prayer for anyone who wishes to say it.

Words may come out all wrong right now. I read the news five minutes ago. I am not sure what to say but I feel the need to say something. The IDF have identified six bodies that were discovered in a tunnel in Rafah. I don’t want to post the images of the dead, but I have to so that you know who they are. So here I am copy-pasting this unconscionable grid of faces.

I’m so sorry. I never knew any of these souls but I feel like they’ve been a part of my life, and my family, for the last 11 months. They have been in my thoughts every day. In my ever more desperate prayers.

I met with Carmel Gat’s family back in December to help tell her story. I stood outside the house she was taken from in kibbutz Be’eri. Her sister-in-law Yarden had the courage to tell me all about Carmel, having just returned from Gaza herself following months in captivity. Carmel was helping teenage hostages in Gaza - hostages who returned. She was an occupational therapist. She did yoga with them every day. But she has not and will never return across the border to her home of Israel.

Hersh. Not Hersh. I feel like we all became Hersh’s family. Rachel - Hersh’s mother - has been one of the leading figures of the Bring Them Home movement, and spoke with her husband Jon at the DNC only one week ago. Rachel also appeared in TIME Magazine’s list of people of 2023. The lengths she has gone to bring her son home are nothing short of heroic. And nothing short of what any parent would do in her nightmare of a situation. I am so sorry Rachel. I am so sorry Jon.

Tonight I am also thinking of Eden Yerushalmi’s two sisters May and Shani who stayed on the phone with her as she was being abducted from the Nova festival, where she was a bartender. Wishing you nothing but strength at this time.

Like I wrote, I really don’t think words can come out right at the moment. So here is the news. Every day 2-300 trucks of aid go into Gaza, but the hostages don’t come out of Gaza. Why is that? Why. Is. That.

I am enraged. And my rage is not contained to Hamas. I am angry at the US Administration who let Hersh perish. I am angry that the world shared the most popular meme of all time – “All Eyes on Rafah” – and refused for months to let Israel go into the place where these six innocent hostages were murdered and found months too late in Rafah tunnels. I am horrified by the continued cowardice of the most elite institutions of the West which allow “protests” day after day in the town squares and on university campuses, cheering on and emboldening the TERRORIST groups who are committing these atrocities. I am completely sickened by the silent majority who are too weak to speak out when never again is right now. Never again was yesterday. Never again was October 7. Only 28,217 people risked their lives to help Jews in the Holocaust. That was it. At the start of WWII there were 530 million people in Europe. Only 0.005% of the population were righteous. Almost nobody rises to the occasion. Some things never change.

I have nothing left to share.

Hersh Goldberg, 23

Eden Yerushalmi, 24

Carmel Gat, 39

Alex Lubnov, 32

Ori Danino, 25

Almog Sarusi, 26

Baruch dayan haemet. May their memories be for a blessing, because we need them more than ever.