Rachel's Life in Pieces
REVIEW: 'When We See You Again' by Rachel Goldberg-PolinJake Wallis Simons: The anti-Zionism mob is showing its true insidious colours
"Once upon a time, I was meandering down the road of life with my husband, Jon. It was a regular and beige life, and it worked. It was a warm beige. We felt, and were, blessed and lucky. Normal.
"Suddenly, one day, while walking along our way, a metaphorical 18-wheeler semitruck hit us from behind and broke every bone in our bodies. All 412 of our combined bones were fractured, our spirits were mangled, and our hearts were stolen. Our life was stolen.
"That day was October 7th, 2023."
So begins the soul-searing memoir by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the Chicago-born American-Israeli whose globe-trotting efforts to free her son Hersh from Hamas captivity ended when he was murdered in a tunnel in Gaza 330 days after his kidnapping.
When We See You Again is a book no parent should ever have to write but every American should read. That every Israeli will read it I take as given, considering the prominence of Hersh in the country's national consciousness and the fact that posters pleading for his release still cling stubbornly to street signs across the world's only Jewish state.
The book is an attempt by a bereaved mother, beloved by the millions of people across the globe who read and watched her and her husband's efforts on behalf of their only son, to capture Hersh's personality beyond the headlines and psychologically work through her unimaginable grief. "Since my heart is shattered into tiny pieces," she writes, "it is easier to share than when it was one mighty, solid, and strong heart. So please take a shard. Be careful, they are sharp." Its brilliance lies in the author's weaving of unending loss and boundless frustration alongside attempts to find measures of comfort through Jewish teachings (by profession, she is an educator). Additionally wise is her avoidance of distracting the reader with partisan politics. No political figure in America or Israel is mentioned by name and she does not take a side on the debate that roiled the global Jewish community as to whether imprisoned terrorists should be freed in exchange for civilian hostages.
The reader is reminded of Hamas's brutality, often absent from daily headlines about Middle East negotiations and by those who would seek a Palestinian state. Describing how Israeli authorities found the bodies of Hersh and his fellow murdered captives, she unsparingly and clinically notes, "They were all skeletal, filthy (the coroner estimated they had not bathed in months), bearing scars of torture, and riddled with close-range bullet wounds. Hersh had six. And his hair was covered in gunpowder." She details how Chaim Peri, an 80-year-old peace activist, was kidnapped and murdered after 100 days of captivity. While Goldberg-Polin doesn't dwell on every horrific detail, it's worth reminding readers that on the 7th, Hamas also killed Holocaust survivors, burned Jews alive in their homes, sexually abused both living and dead victims, and livestreamed the murder of grandmothers on Facebook. Forty-six Americans had their lives snuffed out that day.
On the surface, the anti-Zionist cover story is quite convincing. They simply long for the evil state of Israel to be replaced by a single, democratic country with equal rights for all. The Zionist project was a historic mistake and should be humanely dismantled. Pretty reasonable, no?British Museum evacuated after ‘suspicious device’ found days after Jewish event postponed
Not so fast. For one thing, if you’re going to start dismantling every country with a history of injustice, best of luck to America, Australia, Canada, Turkey, Pakistan and India, all the Latin American states founded through Spanish and Portuguese conquest, all the European states built through centuries of feudal warfare and empire, and much of Africa and the Middle East.
Secondly, any practical thoughts on that single state for Jews and Palestinian Arabs? Here’s a clue: think October 7 and multiply it. So what’s the solution? Send the Jews back to the countries from which they most recently fled, like Poland, Russia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt and Libya? What about the racists in those countries who persist in their demands that the Jews go “back to Israel”?
They must know all this, just as they must know that “Death to the IDF” would mean a second Holocaust. Regardless, celebrities like Gary Lineker and Juliet Stevenson craft the anti-Israel narrative, while progressive Jews like Miriam Margolyes and Zack Polanski provide the alibi. “Respect” is awarded. Then the shock troops go in.
Here’s another flavour of the idiocy of the scene. Molly Crabapple, an anti-Zionist writer, recently published a book about Bundism. This was an Eastern European Jewish socialist movement of the 20th century which opposed the Zionist dream of returning to the land of Israel. Instead, Bundism promoted “doikayt”, a Yiddish word meaning “hereness”, insisting that Jews should fight for dignity where they already lived. According to The Economist, this could inspire modern Jews who “want to celebrate their heritage without tying themselves to Israel”.
Thanks for that. Here’s the problem: the Bundists were slaughtered in the Holocaust. This, then, is a vignette with a warning. To prevent the rhyming of history, we need immunity to spin. Insidious ideas must be given their true names, regardless of the nomenclature shrilly demanded by their proponents.
The British Museum was evacuated on Saturday after staff discovered a suspicious device in a visitor toilet and received what it described as “malicious communications”, just days after the institution faced criticism for postponing a Jewish Culture Month lecture on ancient Israel over security concerns.David Collier: Antisemitism and Ignorance on Display at Cambridge Market Square
Police were called to the museum at around 2.50pm and between 12,000 and 16,000 visitors were evacuated as a precaution.
The Metropolitan Police later confirmed that the package was found to be non-suspicious and that there was no ongoing threat. The museum reopened shortly before 4pm.
In a statement, the museum said: “Earlier today, the British Museum was evacuated as a precaution after a suspicious device was discovered in a visitor toilet. At the same time, the museum received malicious communications, which were treated seriously and reported to the relevant authorities.
“As this remains a police matter, we will not be providing further comment on the nature of the communications received.”
The incident comes less than a week after the museum postponed a lecture on the kingdoms of ancient Israel and Judah, which had been scheduled as part of Jewish Culture Month.
The lecture, due to be delivered by Paul Collins, Keeper of the Department of the Middle East, was postponed after concerns that activists planned to disrupt the event. Museum officials said intelligence suggested a significant proportion of those registered to attend intended to prevent the lecture from proceeding.
The decision sparked widespread criticism, with politicians, historians and public figures accusing the museum of capitulating to threats of disruption.
Last week someone showed me a photograph of a pro-Palestine stall in Cambridge Market Square. What I saw was not angry students or hardened activists, but four elderly women – probably in their seventies – who had chosen to spend their day urging strangers to boycott Israel.
The image stayed with me – and I decided that I wanted a closer look at what was actually taking place. So yesterday I went up to Cambridge to listen to what they were saying. Selling a Fictional Palestine
When I arrived, the stall was slightly larger than the one I had seen in the photograph, with perhaps six people gathered around it. The women from the original image were there, now accompanied by a couple of younger men. For a while I simply stood nearby, looked through the maps and leaflets laid out on the table, and listened to the conversations taking place with members of the public who had stopped to engage.
At one point, one of the Cambridge Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists was speaking to three young people, probably in their early twenties. The discussion turned to the word “Palestine” – and it quickly became clear that none of those involved had any real grounding in the history they were attempting to discuss.
For much of the last two millennia, “Palestine” was primarily a geographic term used by successive imperial and colonial powers in reference to the Holy Land. It was not part of the traditional identity of the local Arab population. Yet the subject has become so politically charged that many pro-Palestinian campaigners now tie themselves in ahistorical knots trying to pretend otherwise.
Which was exactly what I encountered.
After the group moved on, and noticing my interest in the stall, one of the women approached me. I deliberately chose not to challenge her or present myself as informed. I wanted to test the depth of her knowledge, so rather than appearing as an adversary, I presented myself as someone open to being educated.
We spoke for around twenty minutes, and almost everything she told me was either misleading, historically confused, or simply false.
Here are a few examples:
Invading armies
I was told that while the Arab armies did invade in 1948, they only entered the areas allocated to the proposed Arab state and did not enter the Jewish enclave. This is simply false. Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian and Lebanese armies all entered areas allocated to the Jewish state. Jordanian forces also captured the Jewish areas within the international zone around Jerusalem and ethnically cleansed them of their Jewish population. At one stage, the Egyptian army was just twenty miles from Tel Aviv.
The woman was not merely mistaken. She was dramatically rewriting the nature, ambition and scope of the invasion.
