Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) delivered remarks on the Senate floor on Monday honoring the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose body Israel recently recovered in the Gaza Strip and identified, and his parents, who sought so hard for his release.
Goldberg-Polin, who had ties to the senator’s state “was one of the young people at the music festival on Oct. 7 in Israel during the heinous Hamas attack that sparked so much death and destruction,” Durbin said. “He lost part of his arm trying to protect others from grenades, only to find himself taken hostage.”
“His parents, Rachel and Jon, spent the next 329 days of his captivity crisscrossing the globe on a desperate quest to save their son and end the ghastly war,” the senator added on the Senate floor. “Can there be a crueler fate for a parent than suffering the daily plea and waiting for a horribly injured child’s release?”
“Hersh is no longer with us, but the heroic lengths his mom and dad made to save him touched many of us deeply, including me,” he said.
The Illinois Democrat also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, upon whom he said the lesson “has been lost” and who, he said, “with each passing day seems to step deeper into the pernicious and ruthless trap set by Hamas.”
“He seems to have no long-term plan for stability, failed to secure the release of the hostages, created a terrible humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and appears more concerned with his far-right coalition’s political survival than a viable path forward,” Durbin stated.
“Let me be clear: There are those in the region who want to destroy Israel, and the nation has a right exist and a right to defend itself. But I worry the current prime minister is pursuing a highly counterproductive strategy,” he added. “He is alienating allies in the region and abroad who want to help with a path forward, creating even more suffering and animosity among the Palestinian people and pursuing political survival above all else.”
The senator concluded by quoting the “Middle East expert” and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, a longtime critic of the Israeli government, saying that there must be a ceasefire and “long-term, two-state vision.”