Chris Cumo needs no introduction.
This is exactly what he said about the current Israel-Gaza war and the mudere of 6 Israeli hostages by Hamas savages.
"How can it be hard to discuss why the murder of six Israeli and American hostages matters? Six young people stolen from the Nova Music Festival by Hamas on October 7th. Then, just as the IDF was close to rescuing them after almost a year of searching, they were reportedly executed. And now I’m left with nothing but questions. But these are questions we all have to answer. The first one is, why don’t these faces unify us, at least here at home? Carmelo Got, Even Yorshomi, Alexander Longbein, Almog Sarusi, Master Sergeant Oread Anino. Young people that could have been part of the solution, lost to the problem.
There’s one face we know more about, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old Israeli-American, taken and now murdered along with the others. His smile has been the poster for the hostage crisis. I remember it when I first saw it all over his parents' house in Tel Aviv just after October 7th. I was blown away by John and Rachel’s love and commitment. Their hope, and mine, was that telling their story would help more connect to what is so wrong here, to what matters. Now, I have to wonder: did I help anything at all? I wonder, in part, because of how this news has been received. Why are all these lost souls merely called deaths? Some media accounts put it this way: did they die in an accidental crash, or from cancer, in that tunnel?
Hersh and the others were assassinated. Targeted murders performed by terrorists to remind us that they want no one saved from them. Our reaction was sent to me by a friend. Hersh’s family may have some hard questions. Before he was murdered by Hamas, in those final moments, was he aware of his parents’ anguish? Possibly, quite possibly, at the same moment, broadcasting at the Gaza border, another chilling plea for him to just survive. Did you hear Hersh’s mother last Thursday? “It’s I love you,” you know, “stay...” Was he able to hear that? Was he able to hear the footsteps of the battle-hardened Israeli soldiers who were finally closing in after almost a year of trying to save him?
You can feel how you want about the Middle East, one of the longest-running conflicts in history. It’s going nowhere. But Hamas will never be remembered as freedom fighters in any context except one: for them to be free to carry out Iran’s extreme Islamist wishes. They want Gazans free, yeah, only to follow their caveman ways, or die. And for Jews to die, no matter what. And for us to die as well.
Here at home, some on campus and online boost the cause of terrorists who would gladly kill them. And no, Hamas wouldn’t just torture those who identify with oppressed minorities, such as LGBTQ+, but all of the same people who paint their symbols and repeat their propaganda. Hamas and the other proxies of the poison regime in Iran want us all dead. Period. What else do you need to see? They celebrated the evil murder of a young woman by releasing a video of Eden spouting propaganda because they want you to know that her value was only as an echo of their animus. That is how they want her remembered. And too many here seem to agree with this idea—that the real victims are elsewhere in Gaza. And shame on us for giving all this attention to Hersh and the others who had it coming.
That idea has to be heard to be appreciated for its depravity. Listen to this: an anti-Israel protester in Manhattan, caught on tape, talking about Hersh Goldberg. “He was executed yesterday by a chair. You look at it, he deserved it.” Sure, was what business does he have? What business is he at a music festival, dancing with his friends? Israel killed, and you’re supporting terrorists like that.
He was also only one, just one representative of a kind. And we know where they’re getting it. Look at this Twitter thread that I found. So, I’m looking for what’s missing. Where’s the discussion about the hostages and why this happened? So, the only discussion on the thread was hostage murders. It wasn’t trending for its own importance. The theme was a headline that said Israel did something bad. These are just nasty tweets. Get those off the street.
This was the headline, in a discussion about the hostages being murdered. Where does this poisonous pursuit of parity end? And look, I get opposing the violence, the degree of death caused by Israel’s retaliation, the occupation, the settlements, the lack of aid, and media access. I want people in Gaza to be free and safe, and determine their own fate. I’m here for all of it and present those arguments regularly. But none of those desires will be met with Hamas terrorists in control, and no state would do much differently than Israel is right now if they shared a border with an organization pledged to their destruction.
What I do not get is people saying, “Who cares about six versus 40,000 Gazans?” This relativism, again, is poison. All six were stolen. All were innocent. Can you say that about all in Gaza?
Yes, there was trouble before October 7th. Yes, that trouble has a degree of Israeli culpability. But this current violence is the consequence of one day and the actions of one group. For the Israelis, these murders made deeper the festering wound opened on that day. I get protests of Netanyahu, and those arguing he could have taken a deal that was rumored to potentially bring hostages home. Whether or not it was the right deal, these murders are an indictment of decisions and desires. Yes, these murders rightly motivate the outrage that Bibi and his far-right regime are feeding off this war to maintain power and do not reflect the Israeli people’s appetite for this to end.
But to be clear, we are not a new prime minister in Israel away from peace. Certainly not now. Here is what seems horrible, but I don’t believe there’s any amount of suffering, any amount of death that would be enough to say “enough.” And the reason for that is now clear to me. Nothing can get better while we have a selective preference about who it’s okay to kill. While we have different rationales for right and wrong, depending on who dies. As long as some deaths move us in a way others don’t, there will be nothing approaching peace there—or here, by the way—either.
It all matters, or none of it matters. Either we all matter to one another, or no one matters to anyone. The dead in Gaza matter. These six being murdered matter. Moved to what we do to stop it, rather than compare killings. And the reality hit me when Hersh’s father said what he said at Hersh’s funeral: “We failed you, Hersh.” I had an instant rejection to that idea. He was wrong. John, I love you, you are wrong:
About you and your family, you have only succeeded, brother, in raising a beautiful kid with the right things in his head and his heart. By you and Rachel being a lodestar for putting pain to greater purpose, to show us we lost our grip on our collective respect for humanity, you are wrong about you, but you are right about many of us. We must make these murders matter. Relatively way too much quiet about what happened. Let this be the catalyst that drives leaders to demand Hamas give the hostages back, American and others, and then you stop the fighting. No leader should be silent now. And we don’t need to hear condolences and coy nods to peace. What are they going to do to make it stop? Or do you just want to wait for all the Americans to be dead?
Last point on what was lost: often I hear that with every Gazan killed, Israel has no enemies because you have all the loved ones. But there’s a much bigger price paid: the potential loss of the Gazans who could have driven Hamas out, who wanted a better life free from that oppression, the Israelis who could bring better. This is the lesson of Hersh for me. You see the reel of the family before Hersh was taken. Maybe this is why it hit different. He wasn’t just an innocent, not just proof of how evil October 7th was. As a friend of the family put it, somehow his survival represented a last strand of hope, that something precious could be saved out of all this destruction. And not just because of how he was taken or murdered, but because of how he lived and what he wanted.
Hersh was only 23, an Israeli and American, and a sympathizer with the plight of the Palestinians. He wanted to do the work to be a bridge. He was hope for a better future. Here is my kaddish, my prayer for the dead: John, “Zikhrono livrakha”—may his memory be a blessing to you. To the families of Carmel, Alexander, Almog, Ori, and Eden, “Zikhrono livrakha”—may their memories be a blessing to you and all of us. “Dayan ha’emet,” bless the true judge. And the memories of the murdered should be a blessing to us all, allowing us to see the truth."
