Rachel Goldberg-Polin Says She Failed to Bring Hersh Home Alive From Gaza

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, one of the most recognizable voices in the campaign to bring Israeli hostages home from Gaza, told Anderson Cooper on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that grief has shaped her life since her son Hersh was kidnapped on October 7, 2023.

“Since Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel, two and a half years ago, and the war in Gaza began, far too many mothers, Palestinian and Israeli, have lost children”

CBS News

Speaking in a television interview aired on the eve of Israel’s Memorial Day, she said she feels that she failed in her mission to bring her son home alive, telling Cooper, “We got all of these people home, not as we wanted. We wanted them home, alive, but they had come home.”

CBS News

She showed Cooper a ball of masking tape kept in Hersh’s room, made up of the numbers hostage families would wear on their clothes to mark the number of days in captivity, and said that “between their two daughters, herself and her husband, Jon, over the course of more than 800 days, ‘we had 3,000 pieces of tape.’”

Goldberg-Polin said, “It’s extraordinary to see all the pain and everything that is in that ball,” and added, “You know, it’s like these symbols of failure.”

When Cooper asked, “Do you think you failed?” Goldberg-Polin replied, “Yeah,” and acknowledged, “Sometimes, 100 percent is not enough.”

In the same interview, she described her understanding of grief as “chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular – not linear,” and said the interview was recorded in February, prior to the war with Iran, and ahead of the release of her book, titled “When We See You Again.”

Goldberg-Polin’s account ties the hostage crisis to the morning of October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded southern Israel and her son was abducted from a bomb shelter.

Haaretz reported that Hersh, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, was attending the Nova music festival when Hamas invaded southern Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023, and that he fled to a nearby bomb shelter where he was severely wounded by a grenade, losing his left hand.

Haaretz

CBS News described the Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border on the morning of October 7th, saying that “They slaughtered 378 people, and wounded hundreds more,” and it quoted Goldberg-Polin recalling that “at 8:11 two messages had come in from Hersh. The first one said, ‘I love you.’ And the second one said, ‘I’m sorry.’”

CBS News also said Hersh sent those texts from inside “this bomb shelter crammed with more than two dozen people,” and it stated that “In all 16 people were killed in the shelter,” while Hersh “survived but was seriously wounded by a grenade.”

The CBS account further said that “four young men” were not able to hide under bodies, were “wounded and… taken outside and put on a pickup truck,” and driven into Gaza.

Goldberg-Polin later learned that Hersh was executed in a tunnel in Gaza on the 328th day of his captivity, and i24NEWS said he was found in a tunnel in Rafah alongside five other hostages, with the family informed he had been killed by gunfire after months of captivity.

Goldberg-Polin described the hostage campaign as an exhausting effort to reach leaders and officials, and she framed it as a struggle to convince the “right people” that it was urgent.

“Between pain and faith: Rachel Goldberg-Polin says goodbye to Hersh The mother of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg tells "60 Minutes" about her efforts to bring her son home in an emotional interview published on the eve of Memorial Day On the eve of Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism (Monday), CBS’s “60 Minutes” is broadcasting a full and emotional interview with Rachel Goldberg-Polin”

i24NEWS

i24NEWS said she recounted the “330-day effort she and her husband, John, made to try to save their son, Hersh,” and it described her global campaign to meet leaders and officials, saying they were “running like mad” around the world.

She told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that she believed there were officials who “could do stuff, and for whatever reason they were not doing it,” and she said she and her husband also failed their son by being unable to “convince the right people that it was urgent.”

In the same CBS interview, she described the moment she shouted toward Hersh at the Gaza border through loudspeakers, and i24NEWS said she later learned Hersh had been killed that same day.

She also described the role of former hostage Or Levy, who met Hersh during the first days of captivity and later told her that Hersh heard her voice in the media.

Haaretz quoted Levy’s account of Hersh repeating a mantra, and i24NEWS and The Jerusalem Post both included Levy’s recollection that “Hersh kept repeating this mantra. ‘He who has a why can bear any how.’”

The same CBS “60 Minutes” interview is presented with different emphases across the Israeli and international coverage, shaping how readers understand Goldberg-Polin’s grief and the hostage timeline.

Haaretz foregrounded her “failure” framing and the symbolic tape, quoting her directly on “symbols of failure” and on the idea that “Sometimes, 100 percent is not enough,” while it also stated that the interview was recorded in February, prior to the war with Iran, and before the release of her book “When We See You Again.”

La Vie

The Jerusalem Post similarly centered her admission that activists “largely failed,” but it foregrounded the “high points” of the interview through Or Levy’s recollections, including the mantra “He who has a why can bear any how” and the account that Hersh heard her on the news.

i24NEWS, while also describing the “330-day effort,” emphasized the campaign’s exhaustion and the videos she saw, including what it called a “shocking abduction video in which his arm appears severed,” and it described the second video as giving her “another bolt of adrenaline to keep going.”

CBS News, by contrast, embedded the story inside a broader framing of the war in Gaza and included detailed numbers about the attack at the Nova Music Festival, stating “They slaughtered 378 people, and wounded hundreds more,” and it described the shelter as “crammed with more than two dozen people” with “In all 16 people were killed in the shelter.”

Vatican News presented Goldberg-Polin’s message as a call for unity, quoting Pope Francis saying terror was “the absence of humanity,” and it described her asking the world to join her in wearing the tape as “a symbol of solidarity in our fractured world.”

Goldberg-Polin’s interviews and statements also describe what she says comes after the death of her son, including how she continues campaigning for remaining hostages and how she copes with the absence.

“Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of slain Gaza hostage Hersh, discussed the fight to bring the hostages home from Gaza with CBS's 60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday, telling Anderson Cooper that the activists largely failed”

The Jerusalem Post

Haaretz reported that even after learning of Hersh’s death, Goldberg-Polin and her husband Jon remained active in the campaign to secure the release of the remaining hostages, and it said that in February 2025 Hamas released Israeli hostage Or Levy.

The Jerusalem Post

It also described how Levy and his wife Einav had been attending the Nova festival when the invasion began, and that Einav was killed by grenades thrown inside, while Levy later revealed that he and Hersh spent three days together in the tunnels beneath Gaza.

In the CBS interview, Goldberg-Polin described the transformation of grief into a “badge of love,” telling Anderson Cooper, “grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.”

i24NEWS added that she chose to believe she could grow stronger despite warnings from other bereaved parents that she would “never be okay,” and it quoted her on coexistence: “We either figure out how to live near each other, or we will all die here together.”

Vatican News described her carrying a piece of tape indicating the number of days since Hersh’s disappearance, writing that number every morning, and asking the whole world to join her in wearing the tape as a symbol of solidarity, saying, “Join me in the symbol of a grieving mother.”