Yesterday, three women returned to Israel after 15 months as hostages of Hamas. Their release marks the beginning of a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza and of an exchange of Israeli captives for Palestinian prisoners. One of the three, Romi Goren, 24, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, where Palestinian terrorists killed 364 people during the invasion of October 7, 2023, and kidnapped dozens more.
Another young Israeli seized at the same festival was Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Badly wounded, Hersh was spirited into Gaza, and for months it wasn’t clear if he was alive or dead.
I knew Hersh—his parents are friends—and saw him a few weeks before October 7 at a family dinner, where he regaled us with tales of working on a falafel truck at an electronic music festival in Italy that summer. He was smart, and funny, and his future was bright. He was 22.