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What I've Learnt - #BringHershHome · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Urgent.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: US citizen taken hostage to Gaza in dire medical need.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: That was Wednesday, October 13th at 8am.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Hirsch Goldberg Pollen was wounded and violently abducted at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel on October 7 by Gaza terrorists.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: He needs urgent medical attention.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Hirsch-Goldberg Pollen was among the thousands of young people attacked by terrorists from Gaza at the Nova Music Festival near Kibutzarim in southern Israel.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Eyewitness accounts confirm that Hirsch was taken hostage along with several others around 9am, but we think it was 9am Saturday morning by the armed terrorists after his arm was blown off.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: He and the other hostages were forced onto a pickup truck and believed to be taken from Israel into Gaza.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: He is in need of urgent medical attention.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Hirsch moved to Jerusalem at age seven with his parents John Collin and Rachel Goldberg and his two sisters Levy and Ollie.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: He is an avid soccer fan, championing the Hapel Jerusalem team, loves to travel and attend music festivals.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: He travels to the US annually to visit his grandparents and family, both of whom live in Chicago, instilling in him a love of American sports and culture.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: He was able to respond every US president by the age of seven.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: But on October 7th, Hirsch messaged his parents.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: I love you, and then I'm sorry.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that was his final communication.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: We are hopeful that he is alive and can be located.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: We just want him returned home safely along with all other hostages.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, his family are living a parent's worst nightmare, but his mother, Rachel, has bravely spoken out globally to get the world to see and hear the trauma and tragedy of what's happened.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Her kidnapped son's life with a massive campaign, powerfully titled Bring Hirsch Home.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm so grateful Rachel's joining me on the What I've Learned podcast at this very challenging time to shed light on how she's doing and how she hopes and prays daily for the return of her beautiful son, Hirsch.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: I am so grateful and honored to have Rachel join me on the What I've Learned podcast at this very challenging time.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Rachel.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: We're so happy to have you here, but in the most unfortunate circumstances.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for having me.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a special place in my heart for Australia because I spent a year in Melbourne when I was in uni.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: Did you really?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I never knew that.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that is a real no, so you know where we're coming from here in Melbourne and how passionate we are about our Jewish faith, but also culturally, it's a beautiful hub.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Did you go to, did you do a degree here or did you, what was the basis on which you were here?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I came for a year during university to study Jewish studies at Melbourne Uni.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, I went to Melbourne Uni, same uni.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting university at the moment, some interesting things happening there, which we can maybe touch on later, but it's certainly a very good university.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and also you loved Melbourne, and you can see that I think, as is often the case, our communities are not dissimilar.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: There's a great connection and similarity, and you obviously felt quite at home here.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually am still in touch with uh people, one of the wonderful families who I lived with actually brought a whole bunch of soup to me last week, because now they live here.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's amazing.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: What beau but that's the beauty of having that experience and and and having that connection.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: On that note, we're all here and we're all thinking of you and we're all here to support, but also most importantly, to tell your story, because uh by telling your story, one, it just gets up to the world, as you have been doing everywhere, including at the United Nations and elsewhere, outlining what actually happened on October 7th, which I know is difficult to recount.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sorry to ask you, but I think it's very important for our listeners, those who do know the story, but there are some that don't.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So could you give give us a little snapshot of what happened on that fateful and horrible day on October 7th?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So my son, who is named Hirsch, turned 23 on October 3rd.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he went actually the evening before October 6th, we had we went to synagogue, my husband, Hirsch, and my two daughters.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then afterwards we went for a Shabbat dinner, uh at good friends.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And Hirsch had said to us that he was going after dinner with his best friend, um, one of his two best friends, to um go do something fun and camp out somewhere.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't ask for details.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he brought his camping backpack.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right, I mean, at 23, I'm not gonna say their coordinates and let me know exactly where you're gonna be.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I knew who he was going with.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so we went to our Shabbat dinner and at 11 o'clock, he kissed me, he kissed John, he hugged our hostess goodbye, and he left with his blue backpack and said, I'll see you tomorrow.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that was uh October 6th, Friday evening.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Saturday morning, October 7th, my husband left uh at 7:30 in the morning for synagogue.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was having a cup of tea in our kitchen, and right around eight o'clock, I heard bomb sirens going off in Jerusalem, which is where we live.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went to wake up my two daughters who are 20 and 18 to get them into the bomb shelter that we actually have in our home.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the protocol is that you wait 10 minutes, and if you don't hear an explosion, you can then come out.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't hear an explosion.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We came out, and I normally don't use my phone on the Jewish Sabbath, but it was obviously an emergency situation.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I knew the boys were camping outside somewhere.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I ran to get my phone to check, to check in with Hirsch.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it was right around 8:20.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when I turned my phone on, immediately two WhatsApps popped up onto the main screen that had come in at 8.11.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: The first one said, I love you, and the second one said, I'm sorry.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I immediately, you know, my throat closed and my stomach clenched up, and I knew something horrible was happening or unfolding or had happened because I don't know any 23-year-old young men who at 8.11 in the morning start to write to their parents, I love you, randomly.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the second one was like haunting and chilling of I'm sorry.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't imagine, you know, immediately I thought something terrible is happening, and he knows that it's gonna be really hard for us.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was my immediate thought.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I tried to call and I tried to write to him, and of course, nothing ever, you know, he never saw those texts and he never answered.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what we came to find out is that when Hamas descended upon the Nova music festival, Hirsch and his friend Honor were both at the festival.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: They had gone there late Friday night and early Saturday morning when the festival came under attack by Hamas, which um ended up that massacre ended up killing 364 of those young people.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hirsch and Honor ended up escaping initially to a car with two other young people, and they tried to uh get out of the area, but Hamas had lined the main road and was just firing point blank at any car that came toward them.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of these young, you know, barefoot granola, hippie, crunchy, like kind of kids who like that kind of camping out, going for this music festival that was called the Festival of Unity and Light.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine who it's attracting.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: They went flying, you know, as fast as they could out of the cars, running for cover from the people who were shooting at them in the cars.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Persian honor ran into a roadside bomb shelter, above-ground bomb shelter that was very, very small, um, five feet by eight feet.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that is in metrics because I'm American.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it's small.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there is 155 by Yeah, it's very small and it's yeah.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, there are no windows or anything.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out that 29 of the kids ran into this one.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: There were five in a row of these uh roadside bomb shelters.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what we found out from eyewitnesses is that Hamas descended systematically, very formulaically, going to each of the bomb shelters, first throwing in hand grenades, which honor Hersh's friend was standing in the doorway, and all the eyewitnesses told us that he was picking them up one by one and throwing them back out, which was really heroic.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Very courageous.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um on the eighth one, it ended up exploding, and three more got by.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine the carnage in a very small space with 29 people smashed together and um at least three or four grenades detonating inside.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then Hamas came and fired in an RPG, and then they just came to the doorway with machine guns and were spraying the room with bullets.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So most of those young people were dead.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't survive.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, many of them were severely wounded, and some of the lucky ones, and I say that tongue in cheek, were trapped under the dead bodies, and they were lucky because they could pretend to be dead.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it was from those eyewitnesses pretending to be dead who told us that after the dust settled, there were a few minutes where it was very hot and smoky, but the dust settled, and Hamas gunmen came in, and there were three young men slumped against the wall who were wounded but clearly still alive.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them was Hirsch, and they ordered the three men to stand up, and these three young men stood up, and that's when everyone told us that Hirsch's left arm from the elbow down had been blown off.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: He had somehow tied some sort of tourniquet or bandage around the stump of his arm, and the three of them were marched out, put on a Hamas pickup truck, which headed toward Gaza.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hirsch's last phone cell signal was at 10.25 in the morning inside of Gaza.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then ironically, we a week, about a week later, so we knew that was the story, but a week later we were being interviewed on CNN by Anderson Cooper, who, when we were done with the interview, said to us, You guys, I'm calling you now, which we thought was very strange because we'd been doing a lot of media and no one had ever said, I'm gonna call you when the when the interview was done.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he called us and he said, I have an actual video of your son being abducted.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: He had been doing a uh documentary about the Nova Film Festival, and they found a GoPro camera that had fallen off of one of the helmets of one of the Hamas gunmen.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the Army found this camera and showed the footage to Anderson Cooper.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Anderson Cooper, while interviewing us, recognized Hirsch because there were photographs running next to us of Hirsch before October 7th.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so he recognized his face.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when we were telling the story about his arm being blown off, he remembered that he saw the footage of this boy getting on a truck without an arm.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so he sent us this footage.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't necessarily teach us anything that we didn't already hear, but we did see the extent of the injury, which is grievous, grievous and obviously, you know, I mean, horrifically critical maiming, an explosive amputation.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: He gets on the back of the truck.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's very calm.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he was in shock, and I'm sure he was in trauma.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: He had just also witnessed his best friend from when they were kids getting blown up, um, in addition to watching, you know, 18 other people die in front of him.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not like people die like this.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's, you know, we've talked to these witnesses.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was people screaming and moaning and dying, and it was a horrible scene.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, and that was 72 days ago.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And since then, um, as most people know, none of those hostages were allowed access by any international aid organization on the planet.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: The girls who were raped, the old men who were shot, the people who were cut, the people who, I'm sure Hirsch is not the only one who has an amputated limb.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: None of them have had access to international aid.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: We were lucky that two and a half weeks ago there was a lull and there was humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza where they desperately needed it.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: The civilians there are suffering horribly.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we had some hostages come out, over 100 hostages, which was a real celebration.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: But they explained also what the conditions were.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: One thing they told us that gave us hope is that they said for the people who seemed very injured initially on October 7th, the first stop was to have medical attention.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's important.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were hopeful, and we are hopeful, that Hirsch, because he was conscious, you know, he walked on his own.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: We saw it, no one helped him.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was completely, you know, he got himself up onto the truck with his non-dominant arm because his dominant arm is the left one, which is now he doesn't have anymore.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he was, again, I think, dazed and confused and and traumatized, but he was conscious.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are hopeful that he got some sort of medical attention.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you also need to clean a wound, you need to have a lot of antibiotics, and uh, you know, we just don't know what what's happened since then.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Rachel, thank you for that extraordinarily detailed and very articulate snapshot of what happened.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it is it is actually very important because we know how important testimonials are, and you telling this story, as painful as I know it will be and is for you as a mum, it is also critical that people understand the level of trauma and that and the level of what happened.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, for some reason, uh I don't know, people seem to, there are elements in the community and certainly in the radical community outside, there are, you know, obviously questions about what happened, how it happened.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: What you do by telling this story, and I've seen you do it on a number of occasions, is you are a testimony to what has happened to your son and you honouring him in that way is so important.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you, because I know that that's not easy.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Not only are you articulate, but you have this extraordinary capacity in watching a lot of um the reels that you have done and the interviews you have done.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's one, there's a number of things, there's so many, because I I I also have a 23-year-old, I just might say a girl.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so I feel you completely in the sense that how many times do our kids just go off to a rave or a or a festival and you don't think about it, you just do a little bit, like for how you're driving home.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: But to be honest, I feel that the way you describe it, that, oh, okay, have a good night, off you go, and that feeling that we all have as mothers of being anxious, but just letting them go on their journey and how important that is.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And tragically, and and this situation has been so traumatic, and we can only hope and pray.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: But you describe a beautiful, there's a beautiful image, you describe being on another planet, a planet of tears, a planet of agony, a planet where you ask, where is the world?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I can only imagine as a mother that it feels somewhat dystopian.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: And even listening to you as you tell this story, it makes me feel like, am I, is this, it's like a bad movie if it wasn't so real.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: That dystopian, that notion of being on another planet, has that has that changed over?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, 72 days.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think you talked about that earlier on in, you know, I think it was 18 or 20 days.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Are you still feeling that or is it getting more and more real as you talk about it more and you are trying to wake the world up to what has happened?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's newly sickening every morning.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it is um, I try to figure out how to explain it to people.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, we have to pretend to be people because in order to save him and any of the others, we have to function.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to function, we have to pretend to be people.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I kind of think of it as I'm talking to you, and I seem like a pretty normal person, someone who's been who who's been enduring a slow motion trauma and anguish and despair.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: But as I'm speaking to you, it's like someone has a branding iron on my back.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm in agony, but I have to pretend that I'm functional.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I think what's really tragic about the hostage situation specifically is that the world doesn't understand who were these 240 people taken on October 7th.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people were so quick to say, oh, this happened in Israel.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I hate Israelis, I hate Jews.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's you know what?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fine.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you hate Israel and you hate Jews, I mean, first of all, at least own it.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what was tragic to me is that over a hundred of those people were not Jews and were not Israelis.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was doing so what you were doing when people were tearing down these posters everywhere, tearing down the poster of Joshua Mollel, who is a black African Christian graduate student, who, by the way, three days ago Hamas announced they killed, and they have his body.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, but for you know, the first 69 days, his family was in trauma and wanted any information they could get, but his face really wasn't out there because people were busy tearing down his poster because they hated Jews so much.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, there's Yusuf, who is there right now, who he and Hamza, his son, who are both Arab Muslims, whose posters were also being torn down because everybody hated Israel and Jews so much, which was so ironic, right?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so these two men are still there, you know, in the horrible tragedy that happened yesterday, which we could talk about in a bit.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a horrible, horrible tragedy.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You realize that of those three young men, one of them was an Arab Muslim who was killed, who had been held in captivity for 71 days along with other people, finally escaped, and then this horrible tragedy happened.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is that there are Arab Muslims being held, there are Thai being held who are Buddhists, there are there's a Nepali uh um Hindu being held, there are people who have who are British citizens, French, Mexican, American, uh, you know, there were Irish people being held.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: It across the nation.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: There were, I had, I kept saying it was 30 nations.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I actually found out after doing the UN speech in New York, it was closer to 40 nations that were represented, five different religions, an age span of 87 years, a 10-month-old to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it was a unique constellation of human beings.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was human beings being held there.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and one of the things that I, you know, spoke about in the UN in New York was the fact that you know, hatred is very delicious.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's really easy, it's really fun, it's very uniting.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's why even when you're in a when you have a sports team and you have your rival and you hate that.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: So true.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: You hate this rival team, I mean, it's so much fun.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's so uniting.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I get it.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: I get why people don't want to know the details.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't tell me it's not all X, because I hate X.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if you tell me that there's also people who maybe look like me or share my thoughts or beliefs, then that's going to make this more complicated.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that the tragedy of what has happened in these 72 days is that a lot of people that should have had advocates around the world didn't because those advocates were too busy hating who they thought the hostages were.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually the humanity or the lack of humanity in this, and you outlining that is so important.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: And even though we have heard it in varying forms, you've just distilled it really well because it is, and also the irony of having to say, oh, there were lots of other people, not just Jews, in order to get empathy is sort of ironic in its own way.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love it.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you something.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: I spoke to someone who I promised I wouldn't reveal who this was.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I spoke to a really prominent African American.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Leader in America.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when I shared with him that there were African, black, Christian men being held, he said, What?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have to be an advocate for this.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now the truth is, I didn't mind because I'll take advocacy.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to say you realize that before that you thought that these were just 240 Jews, so then you weren't an advocate.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it really doesn't even bother me.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like I don't know how to explain it.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so used to the idea, tragically, that people are going to hate Jews because it's so ingrained as something that's kind of like a cool, acceptable thing to hate.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then it wasn't surprising to me.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime I speak to people who say, like, what?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's a Nepalese graduate student there.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now I feel terrible.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, it is humorous.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: It is actually so insane, but it also does really reflect what we're seeing in the world.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that's another sort of whole other layer.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, certainly here, we had a big vigil, as you may have heard, to honor the women that were raped and traumatized, which obviously the UN and a whole lot of other organizations didn't even acknowledge for 58 days, which was mind-blowing.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a very big vigil.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you're allowed to be a Jewish raped woman.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: You're just not allowed to be a raped woman.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, there's this me too, unless you're a Jew, and there's all this sort of whole sort of thing.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it was just an extraordinary experience because really, it was almost like it didn't happen and they they didn't acknowledge it.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: So this was a vigil to basically honor them and to, I suppose, draw attention from the world to the fact that no all of these women organizations hadn't even stepped up, mentioned it, or and they all stand for feminism and protecting women.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was just surreal.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: So once again, it was that same tone of, well, they were just Jewish women, you know.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: So that's okay.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's okay.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was okay.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the other irony is that I mean, speaking on a personal level, I mean, my husband and I have been involved in the coexistence movement for 30 years.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hirsch grew up in our house, has Palestinian friends who have come to visit us since this has happened, has been part of a youth group that was uh a fan group for soccer that was integrating uh Arab and Jewish children to learn coexistence through a safe place like sports.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, he's a pursuer of peace.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And as were so many of those people who lived right on the border, I met so many different families during this past 72 days of, you know, because we've become this huge hostage family.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I met this woman whose grandmother, her full-time job on her kibbutz for all of these years.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: She's now, she was now a grandma, was because she was a fluent Arabic speaker, she would go every single day with a van from the kibbutz to go pick up Palestinians, uh, Gazans who needed chemotherapy and take them to Soroka hospital in Beersheva, stay there with them to also translate if they needed any help, and then take them home.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: That was her full-time job for years on her kibbutz.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Her body and her granddaughter's body were both indescribably uh massacred and then burned and left on the border with Gaza.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, these are the people that that are that were taken, not that anyone deserves, I mean, it doesn't matter what your politics are or anything, nobody should ever be and be subjected to that.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there's like this really sad irony to the fact that, you know, these barefoot crunchy granola hippies who were there for like peace and unity.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Peace and love, yeah.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, there's 40 of them being held.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know who's still alive, we don't know what's happening to them.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I just think we're really in a very sad place.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually spoke, um, you know, we spoke about that.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: I spoke at the UN in New York, but that was on day eight.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I actually spoke in Geneva at the UN this past week on day 67.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um was this rights conference?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Was this the speech?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because there was a beautiful speech that you where you quoted the lullaby.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Is that that one?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at the at the end, quote the tiny seed.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was so moving.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: Our sea of tears all taste the same.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: That right.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk to that?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: That was I can talk to that, but before I even did that poem, I talked about how we as the human as human beings are at a crossroads.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we often like to call us ourselves, you know, them and us.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think that the world we often put ourselves into these buckets of they and us, you know.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, I think like I've started to understand that the real way of looking at people, I think, is people willing and people unwilling.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like that there are people in the world who are willing to say, I'm terrified of you, I think you're different than I am, I'm not comfortable with you, I feel like you've hurt me, but I'm willing to figure out how do we build a future together.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there are people who are unwilling, no matter what the consequences will be.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sophisticated, weaponized world like we have, those consequences are going to be that we are actually all going to die.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: We are all going to die because it's not that we're at a crossroads, we, you know, Israelis and Palestinians.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's everywhere around the world.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are people and hatred and vengeance and violence, and we are going to tip over into the real, I mean, I said I called it the abyss, and I wasn't meaning it symbolically or metaphorically.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean we are going to end up if we can't figure out how to live together, we'll we're all gonna die together.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's gonna be it.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think that so that was sort of you know, more of a universalizing what we have to figure out, and we could keep going on the trajectory of like they do this and we do that, and again, it's easy to do that, and it's kind of fun, and it's kind of attractive, it's like there's something exciting about hating.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Group group hatred.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's something super exciting about it.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um it'll be the end of us, it'll be the end of us, but but to your point, yeah.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, to your point, um, and just following that that speech in Geneva, there was a part that, as I just mentioned, you spoke beautifully about at the end of that speech in Geneva, a lullaby, and you refer to our Sea of Tears, all taste the same, referring to the mothers on the other side, suffering just like you, and you know, it's quite beautiful.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then you you come to a point, and I don't know if you can remember that a little bit because I know that you're probably speaking, but you talked about can we plant a seed?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was a really powerful message.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, in your circumstances, which is so troubling and and heart gut-wrenching, here were you showing empathy in the midst of heartache.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me how you like when you wrote that little piece, or it was a lullaby, obviously you knew, where did it come from and how beautiful it was in the in the context of what you're dealing with.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first I should actually mention the interesting thing, the first line I said, there is a lullaby that says, Your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually have never heard the lullaby.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: I heard that said by my Jewish studies teacher Mark Baker at University of Melbourne, Melbourne Uni.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I had written it down.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: He said, There's a famous Yiddish lullaby that says, Your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I had written it in my notebook, and I never found the lullaby, but I've always remembered remembered that line.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's another connection to uh to Melbourne.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and then I talked about, you know, that we're all in so much pain.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I do wonder, can we, is there any way out of this?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I do wonder our mothers or women at all somewhat the way out of this, because I do think that what I've grown to understand is first of all, the lives that we least value are men's lives, men's lives.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: The release values, yeah.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's why, you know, when we do these, we say, let's let the children out and the women out and the babies out, rightfully.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that was right.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then all of a sudden I realized what what these men who are all sitting, all the negotiating tables are all men.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: The war cabinet here, it's all men.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: All the people, and all of a sudden I thought, you know, we wouldn't be comfortable with that in any other situation if if we were saying we're gonna have a negotiation and it's gonna be all made up of uh Gazans.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: We would say, well, wait a minute, where's our representation?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or if it's all gonna be made up of Americans, you'd say, well, wait a second, where where are all the other uh, you know, the Israelis or the Gazans or where's the representatives of you know the Arab world?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't be right.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's so interesting that we women are not present when so much of our destiny is being decided in these rooms of power.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: I also think it's very different when something has come out of you and is now a live being.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think, and this might be not true, but I think that there is a level of empathy that's slightly different.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I might be overstating it because I think there are plenty of men who also feel empathy and who, as fathers, feel connected to their children the way that we do, but there's something I think missing in these rooms of power.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that we suffer, we suffered the the lack of that voice being in those rooms.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it really, and that's why I thought, I think that there's a woman somewhere who would say, you know what, I just don't want my sons to die.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want my I don't want my son to die.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm willing to do something really scary.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I um, and that's where the poem came from.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, as I mentioned, Hirsch is a pursuer of peace.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that he wouldn't see look, I don't know the horrible, horrendous trauma and terror he's been going through.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the Hirsch that I know wouldn't be seeking vengeance and violence.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not who he is, it's never been who he is, he never been who he was.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of the hope and inspiration for that poem was thinking, what would he want?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I do try to really picture, especially, you know, today um starts the in the Christian calendar, starts the third week of Advent, or um the four Sundays before Christmas are Advent Sundays, and the the uh theme today is joy.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking, how do I wrap my head around joy when I've not had joy for 72 days?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, if I close my eyes and I imagine her getting married, or I close my eyes and I imagine holding his baby, and then I can be joyful.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: That is so beautiful, and so please, we're all praying that that will be the journey.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I love I love your strength and your preparedness to also really look at the things around you, like Advent, which is not necessarily something you would normally reflect and try and embrace that.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's like what you've done with the poem, the reflection of other mothers.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: You talk about the other mother's face that you look into and see her sorrow and her pain, losing her son on the other side of the inverted commas, the other side of the fence, if for want of a better word.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that is something that I think is quite unique and quite, I feel like maybe there's a purpose that you have, that you are certainly stepping up onto the podium, not only for Hirsch, but for all the hostages, but also for a much more universal mission, which you've just outlined.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, coming back to the reflection of that mission being driven or represented by women, it makes a lot of sense.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think, as the nurturers, as the givers of life, biologically, why would it not be the case that really we have like a superpower?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: And why is it not being tapped?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: And why not?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the other thing that's really interesting to me just when I listen to you is why is it always the women that get suppressed the most and first when it comes to these extreme organizations, um, which are now, I mean, you just have to look at Iran and some of the interviews and what they're dealing with, and what potentially is coming to the West if you want to take your sort of dystopian concept to the absolute extreme, where basically it just invades and bleeds through every Western democracy.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's often the women that are not listened to, but more than that, they're actually crushed and suppressed.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: And well, I think they're threatening.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think the ability to give life is like the yeah, the ultimate godliness.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think traditionally that to to see, I mean, who can give life?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: God gives life.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're the vehicle for that, there's there's something threatening about that on a very primal level, um, going back thousands of years, which is why I think we would have our periods and be put Yeah, put into another row.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um or intelligent women who rose up were the first to, you know, be burnt at the stake or whatever it was, it was always like, but the irony is that these men wouldn't exist without the women.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: So to me, it's just the most, it's the most it makes no sense.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, coming back to your notion that we need more women in the room to try and find and seek peace.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: There's another story also.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: I interviewed another very senior um former IDF uh colonel who basically is now involved in mediation and peacemaking.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: I won't mention his name until it's cut it's coming out next week.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: And he speaks of this, he actually teared up and got very emotional as he told the story of a recent um mother that he is close to who lost her son in um, I think it was in the actual fighting in Gaza about two weeks ago.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: And she comes home and she writes a letter and she puts it in the letterbox of every Arab family that she has in her suburb because they all are still in you know connection.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: And she writes this letter pleading, saying, I have just lost my son.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: We have to do something as women, as mothers, not dissimilar to what you're saying.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: And she puts it in all the letter boxes, and he is choking up this big, you know, tough colonel, former colonel, who just says, It broke me.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was just like, he was this woman in her hour of utter grief, reaching out to all of these other people who were Arabs in their community, seeking a similar notion to your poem, saying, Isn't it time that we actually just looked at each other's losses and faith and did something differently?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: The question is, do you think that's that's something that will happen?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you say you've cried a million tears in the past 72 days now.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm not surprised.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure, as you say, there are mothers all over the region doing the same.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see any hope for change?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see, I mean, I don't know what you're hearing at the top end of, you know, the Israeli government and the US government and all the different, you know, excluding the UN who just seem to be on another planet.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to be honest, I really don't know until I'm out of this galaxy where I currently live, it's hard for me to really understand what is going to be or what the options could even look like.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because right now it feels very filled with anguish.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're saying that we have this two-pronged goal, the government has said we have a two-pronged goal.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: One is to diminish Hamas's capacity to harm Israel, which makes sense given what happened on the seven.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the other is to release the hostages.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: But those are clearly not equal goals.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was actually refreshing for me a couple of weeks ago to speak to someone who I can't say who it was, who finally just looked me in the face and said that that was true, that the hostages are not the primary goal.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Which I, and you know what?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hirsch is my universe.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's my primary goal, but I know he's not everyone's primary goal, and that those other remaining 140, 100, I think it's 137 hostages are not those 137 universes, they are not everyone's 107 universes.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what will be.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's very, you know, that's a hard place to be.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Do you trust that they have a mission that, I mean, clearly they've gone in hard and they've gone in fast and they've gone in with enormous rage and anger, which is understandable to defend borders and to ensure that they flush out the extremists, and some of which is clearly being effective based on what I'm reading.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: What's hard is for you, you just want to make sure that in doing that, acknowledging, as you said, it's that may not be the primary universe for them, but it's very much what has driven the mission is to ensure it doesn't happen again and that those hostages are part of whatever deal that they can try and do, which it looks like a ceasefire, which was that window which got those 106 out.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you have faith that that is something that you hope will happen, or is there any talk to you?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, because you'd be the first, the families surely they would come to and say, look, this is what we're doing, like they did with the last hostage release.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I would love for them to do what they did last time, which was not a ceasefire, it was a lull, it was a pause and get in the humanitarian aid that is so desperately needed for the Gazan civilians who are being horribly, horribly hit by this.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's very difficult to wipe out an idea.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: So Hamas is an idea, and I think you know, and Hamas is in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Europe, in the United States.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's an idea.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way that we can't wipe out the idea of feminism, I do think that it makes sense that we want to diminish Hamas's military capacity in Gaza so that October 7th cannot happen again anytime soon.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Tragically, I don't know that it will wipe out Hamas so that it doesn't ever happen again.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would want that.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: I just, if I'm being honest, I don't know how you make that happen truly without killing every innocent civilian in Gaza along the way.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, including, you know, there are other people living in Gaza who are civilians.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is named Hirsch.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there are, you know, 130 plus other innocent civilians living in Gaza who are hostages, but they're living in Gaza against their will, but they're living there.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: So there's that anxiety around that.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: I know it's very, very stressful.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you want.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have from the people who were let out that the conditions are horrible and that there's torture and there's sexual abuse and there's starvation and they're freezing, and it's very wet and damp everywhere, and there are bombs going off, and there are now accidentally, you know, horrible tragedies happening.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's um it's true torture for the hostages, and obviously for every one of us who's a hostage family, it's true torture.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad that I'm not able to describe it accurately, and I'm glad that not many people on planet Earth have experienced it.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've said I wouldn't even wish it on the people who did it to me.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm just so bad.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: I totally understand that.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, your resilience through this is quite extraordinary because as you I've got that image that you described of it's like somebody's, you're just you're you're trying to be a person, but behind you you feel as if was it like you feel like an iron rod burning on your back?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like when you brand that's right.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: The only other person, I mean, it's really interesting.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: I have a very close friend, very close friend, who lost her daughter to suicide, really tragically.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: And she describes something quite similar.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's a it's like I'm here, but I'm not here.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: She's it's a very similar thing.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it is almost like a human tool that maybe our brains developed in order to cope.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what you've, you know, and and as you say, you do it because you know it's the only way that Herschel's story is going to be paramount and put out there for the world to see.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so it makes a lot of sense what you're saying to me.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not because I don't know.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: I always say, I don't know what's going to be the thing, right?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: We work 18 to 20 hours a day.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have no idea if any of this is helping save him, save them.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have zero idea.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: We go to bed every night.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have to drug ourselves with these drugs that our family doctor gave us so that we could get three hours of sleep, so that we could wake up again and do the same thing in the morning.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we wake up in the morning and we say, Well, we failed because here we are, he's still not home.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a failure.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have to start again pushing the rock up the hill, like in the myth of Sisyphus.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: But we never know what is gonna be the stone that we unturned that helps.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Who is gonna be the person who listens to this and lives in Melbourne and says, but you know what?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: My cousin lives in Gaza.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm gonna call my cousin and say, you know where someone is.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't hide 240 people.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like we know that there are, and I understand why innocent Gazan civilians were not telling anybody where hostages were because they're terrified.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're terrified.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I always say to myself, I remember in fifth grade, my our teacher had us read the diary of Anne Frank, which frankly I thought was like super duper boring.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I was sophisticated enough to read it, but I remember she had a conversation with us, uh, you know, a discussion with us about what do you think you would have done during the Holocaust?
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Would you have been like meep?
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Would you have helped a Jewish family hide if you weren't Jewish?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Would you have snuck food to them, knowing that if you were caught, your family and you would also be killed?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, as fifth graders, we all said, of course we would do that, of course we would help those, you know, the Jewish people.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, now that I'm an adult, I realize I probably wouldn't have.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: I probably would have wanted to.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: I probably would have felt terrible for the Jews, and I probably wouldn't have helped because I would have been too scared.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I understand that there are people in Gaza who know where hostages are and who cannot help because they know that if they do, Hamas will come and do to them what they were doing to other people.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I understand that.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people don't understand.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing, by the way, is that we talked about this before, but I think that people don't know how to distinguish between you can want the Palestinian people to be free people with their own state, with their own rights, with their own lives.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually believe that also, our family and our community.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you can also say that what happened on October 7th wasn't okay.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, it they're not mutually exclusive.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can say, walking into someone's house when they're eating breakfast and slicing off the mother's breasts and gouging out the father's eyes and cutting off the children's toes, and then as they're all on the floor dying, sitting at their breakfast table and eating their breakfast while you upload it to their Facebook is really not okay.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you can still want the Palestinian people to be independent and have rights and have a country.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we have a problem.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we have a problem because unfortunately, you know, it's that it's that um there's a sanitizing, there's a disconnect, there's a sense of people not really, as you say, it's become almost like it's almost like fashionable to hate without even knowing what you're hating and why.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's quite surreal.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that that is obviously a horrible uh snapshot of just one of the many that.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, that happened.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's on the reel that I don't know if you saw the 47-minute reel.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm gonna be honest, I literally knew I could not watch that 47 minutes because I knew that from what I actually heard, there were people who had to be sedated, there were people who really couldn't cope.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And people ran out vomiting.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: So these were I haven't seen it either, but that I don't think you should that vignette was that vignette was what Anthony Blinken said to destroy them.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel like it's problematic if you can't distinguish.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there have been things that Jewish people have done that I have been very embarrassed and and ashamed of and felt sick over, sick over.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still a proud Jewish person.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: I can say I'm a proud Jewish person.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: That behavior was absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable, period.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: And my heart breaks and bleeds for the victims of what those people did.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's important about being a human.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what what you're really talking about is a common humanity.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of the day, I think a really important thing too is how have you maintained your faith through all of this?
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't mean you're you're Jewish.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: You it's like once you're Jewish, you're always Jewish, right?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's not something I'm not talking about your orthodoxy or your, I'm just saying, how have you maintained faith in that true sense through throughout this terrible journey that you've been through and are still going through?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: Has it sh has it rattled that?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: Has it, or have you just thought, or has it been a comfort?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, I'm not, I'm not sure how I would.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: It hasn't, well, it hasn't rattled it.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if rattles the right word.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, it definitely has been a comfort.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's also been a constant conversation, meaning I I pray every morning.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've prayed every morning for years.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is like a pre-October 7th thing.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's, you know, this who knows what God is.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: I like to say I believe in an idea of God, because I don't even know what it means when people say, I believe in God.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I believe in an idea of God.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even sure what that is.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I have said to John several times, like, what is God up to?
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is this?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is it's so excruciatingly painful, and it it doesn't, so it's very, it's a confusing uh existence, but I haven't lost faith in this idea of God.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm allowed to be exasperated and I'm allowed to be angry, and I'm allowed to say, like, what?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's part of being in a relationship.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you're in a relationship with someone, you can be upset with them.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is part of the relationship.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you don't believe in them because you're mad at them.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: It means you're mad.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I I do feel like, why does this boy have to suffer?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what's hard.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: I can take the suffering.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's excruciating, but I will take it.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, and I I've said, like, you know, do I have to go down to Asa and say, like, take him out and you can have me?
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's a one-for-one.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: We look alike, you won't even notice the difference.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like that's where it's tricky, but you know, I have I still pray every morning.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: I say psalms throughout the day.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: I do, you know, shout things to God in um part of our liturgy.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: I take lines that mean something, you know, meaningful to me, and I I continue to say those.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm constantly trying to talk to Hirsch to give him strength.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, when I was mentioning Advent before, I've gotten a lot of strength from not only Jews around the world, but my gosh, the Christian community has been so good to me, so good to me, sending prayers and very detailed prayers and saying which psalms they say for Hirsch.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that has been super helpful.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um, a Buddhist person wrote to me, and that was really helpful.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I have there's a young man who's Hirsch's age, who's a Muslim Arab, who gets up.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's an early morning time for prayer for the Muslim community, that it's special.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: They say that Allah really listens to those prayers, special.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he gets up, he and his mother get up, and they say a prayer to save Hirsch at that time.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's very important to me because I think it was very brave of him to reach out to me because I have not heard a lot from the Muslim community, which again, I understand that maybe it's loaded, it's too heavy, it's got too much baggage.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it means all the more so that this young man, he's 24, he says, I'm also a soccer fan, we're gonna go to a soccer game together when he comes home.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's helpful.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: That is so beautiful.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so just to finish, what have you learned about yourself, your community, your friends, your family, yourself?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've definitely learned that I'm stronger than I thought I could ever be.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because if someone told me 73 days ago that this would happen to me, I would think that I would probably lay down and die.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still here.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's number one.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: And number two, I'll say um, I've learned that my husband is the perfect partner to go through this like un indescribable, unbearable situation with.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: My community and the team that works with us has been just the most giving, generous, kind, brilliant, thoughtful people ever.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: My girls have been very resilient.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what I've learned is that my love for her continues to grow every single day.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing has changed except that my love grows more and that I talk to him a lot more.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when uh before October 7th, we would talk when we would talk, you know, and normal things, but now it's throughout the day I'm talking to him.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've never talked to him so much.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: But what's really interesting to me is how much your love can grow when someone's not there.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully, God willing, God willing, he'll be, he'll come home and uh come home alive to me.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you can meet him one day with his new bionic arm.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: I would love that.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_02: And Rachel, I will hold that to you because you know what?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, is it you're gonna hopefully bring him to Melbourne and hopefully you'll be here.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, I do know Mark Baker, who you referred to, and as you know, that he is no longer with us, you'll be aware.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: And let me tell you that you are the most extraordinary interview, and I've done a lot, many, many hundreds of interviews, and you are articulate, warm, inspiring.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I thank you so much for your time at this really challenging journey that you're on.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: But let's stay in touch because my heart is with yours.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate your time.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, and keep praying for Hirsch and all the hostages and um and our soldiers who are trying so desperately to save them that they should also all come home in safety and peace.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, uh, I appreciate you amplifying this story because we don't know who that stone will be that will turn over and everything will be better.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: Please go and praying for peace and for your son.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: Bring Hirsch home.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for listening.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_02: The What I've Learned podcast will now be coming to you weekly, with new episodes released every Tuesday.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind and curious.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: Love days.