Bring Hersh Home: Why a Soccer Super-Fan Taken Hostage by Hamas Is Still a 'Ray of Hope' in Israel

Hey, Ms.

Marshad.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for helping us report a story that is unlike any other story we have done on this show.

I was hesitant to do this episode,

not because I didn't think it was

like genuinely, genuinely fascinating, but because I'm always mindful of the ways in which sometimes, you know, sports outlets, they just want to shoehorn sports into like the serious news story.

Absolutely.

And sometimes it just feels both flimsy and forced in terms of the connection that they're drawing.

This one, though,

does not feel that way to me.

I've reported on the way the sports and politics interact for a long time.

And just for me, as someone trying to understand the news, you know, I've always felt like it's a way to get closer to the way people actually interact with the news.

Yes.

With this one, with Israel and these soccer teams that we're going to talk about,

it's just what was on my mind.

Okay, so this has been on my mind for a very long time now.

This basic dilemma.

What are we supposed to do on our show, which is technically a sports show, about the biggest story in the world?

We are a newsroom, I say this tongue-in-cheekly sometimes, and I wanted to actually think about how we're supposed to touch the thing that pretty much nobody, if they don't have to, wants to touch in public.

And I get why.

This is the most generous version of this motive, I suppose, but lots of people just don't know enough.

It is a complicated story it is sad it is controversial in the most obvious ways and so i get it but i've been reading the work of amos barshad for more than a decade now amos is a writer who is at grantland the washington post the new york times magazine all these places and he is now working for the lever

an independent reader-supported news site at levernews.com, where you can go read a companion version of the story that we assigned Amos to report for us here today.

Because of all the topics he has covered, the one that stuck out to me ever since I first read it, his reporting from there 10 years ago, was Israel.

And specifically, it was about the Israeli government

and this administration, which is going to dictate which direction this current war

goes next.

Yeah, so I I want to set the scene here.

When did you realize that the war between Israel and Hamas, which started, of course, with the terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7th, when did you realize that that was actually a sports story?

Yeah, you know, at first the news was coming out and I was just trying to make sense of it and wasn't thinking at all about a way in for me.

I have reported from Israel in the past, but, you know, I live here in New York and was just reading the news trying to understand.

Hamas unleashed a ferocious attack over the weekend that seemed to come from everywhere, raining deadly rockets into residential streets and sending militant fighters across the Gaza border where they murdered and kidnapped Israeli civilians.

Hamas is warning it will execute the hostages it kidnapped over the weekend if Israel continues to retaliate in Gaza.

You know, there are moments in this life, literally, when the pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world.

It was a few days after that that I saw a video clip.

A group of soccer fans ran through a hospital in Tel Aviv, and they are supporters of this team, Beitar Jerusalem.

Their supporters' group is called La Familia, and they are a notorious organization in Israel.

There's a minister that has in the past suggested declaring them a terrorist organization for various reasons.

What happened was they had basically come across a rumor that a Hamas fighter was being treated at this hospital in Tel Aviv, and they decided to take matters into their own hands.

I did speak to a doctor, Iram Klein, who works at the hospital in Tel Aviv.

They stormed the hospital on bikes.

You know, young people dress in black on motorcycles.

People might confuse them for a storm by the Hamas.

At the time, there was no

Hamas in the hospital.

So they actually

invaded the hospital

and went from floor to floor to see if there are no terrorists.

There was none.

And the shouting went quickly from death to the terrorists,

quickly to like within a minute, death to Arabs

and

within seconds death to left-wing

people Jews

I knew so little coming into this story that you've reported here about how fanatical some fans in Israel are about their soccer teams.

So just explain Beitar Jerusalem.

Like where do they fit into like the political cultural landscape in Israel?

This is the Israeli domestic soccer league, the top slight league that we're talking about, which is, you know, a relatively minor league.

And Beitar Jerusalem is one of the traditional powerhouses of the league.

Is also known as the team of the right wing.

I want to actually understand how extreme this faction is.

Like, La Familia, you called them.

Yeah.

That alone, I'm like, why are they called La Familia?

Yeah, you know, I spoke into a researcher, kind of an expert in Lafamilia, and she said that it's kind of what you'd assume.

They're trying to sound like,

first of all, like they're from Europe.

So, so the ultras, right, like the hardcore, like European

soccer fans.

I'm sure we've all kind of seen footage of the guys who are bringing the flares, bringing the banners, leading the chants, the drums, you know, kind of associated with Italy and Spain.

So they pick this name that kind of sounds to them, you know, Italian.

Their politics

are very, very clear.

You know, there are other groups in the world and world soccer that flirt with the far right or borrow symbols.

Like these guys aren't flirting.

They're running around chanting death to the Arabs.

This is the Jewish state.

I hate all the Arabs.

Like there's no confusion.

But I want to go back to the time you spent about a decade ago in Israel as you're reporting on Beitar and La Familia in person, which seems

horrifying to contemplate at this point.

But you,

in that time uh in that place what did you see when it came to just their position in the political superstructure?

2013 I was in um I was in Israel reporting this story for Grantland.

Beitar had signed some players that were Muslim.

That led to the fans, specifically Lafamilia, to revolt.

They were so angry by this that they set fire to the trophy room at the Beitar headquarters.

The confusing thing was that the team hadn't signed, you know, Israeli Arabs.

They had signed two guys from Chechnya.

Right.

They're not, at least they're not.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, they think they're being cute or clever, threatening the needle.

La Familia, you know, effectively makes it very clear that they will not have this.

Multiple owners over the years of Beitar have tried to push back on La Familia, have tried to push back on this radical fan base.

Does La Familia listen to what the team?

It seems like they have their own pretty distinct ideas.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

I mean,

2013 was basically a huge victory for La Familia.

They managed to get these guys to leave by the end of the next season.

To this date, there has not been an Arab or a Muslim player at Beitar.

So, you know, they're actually dictating like who can play and who can't, you know?

It's not a

subtle thing or some sort of a, you know, in the background kind of influence.

And so that influence, though, how has that functioned at a time when the political administration of the state of Israel has also been now leaning rightward, trending directionally in that way?

I mean, yeah, to come back to what, you know, we first asked, you know, how is this a sports story?

I mean, for me, this feels like a reflection of the right-wing ruling coalition.

Politicians have for decades fronted as Bitar fans to, you know, to gain support, to gain voters.

And as an example, here is the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Nanyahu, declaring his allegiance to Beitar in front of this crowd of flag-waving, raucous fans.

There's an implicit connection between certain elements of the right-wing coalition and La Familia.

You know, to me, La Familia have increasingly acted as the street fighters, you know, for the right wing.

There's been many protest movements in the last few years in Israel.

Most recently was a weekly protest movement against an attempt by the ruling right-wing coalition to effectively neuter the Israeli Supreme Court.

La Familia acted as like a counter ballast.

They were kind of called upon to come out and be the counter-protesters.

Mostly that involved, again, chanting horrific things like death to Arabs and some funnier things like where are the horns of Antifa.

Oh man, they're on Twitter?

Yeah, they're on Twitter too.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

They hate Antifa.

You're describing a scene in which this soccer fan base has been conscripted to fight an explicitly political war.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

And they, you know, they love it.

I mean, this is great.

You know, it puts them centrally in the conversation.

And at the same time, the right wing feel like they have support in the street, you know?

Right.

But there is clear indications that La Familia is seen as kind of a like a strike force or like a little militia you know that to call forward and usually when they come out to the street there's violence

the protesters are are injured um arab bystanders are injured the person that uh is central to this story currently is uh the minister of national security pitamar ben gavir

Ben-Gavir, a man one commentator dubbed the David Duke of Israel, is so extreme that he makes our very own Marjorie Taylor Greene and Carrie Lake and Doug Mastriano look like woke leftists.

He is an openly racist anti-Arab member of a far, far, far-right party that Netanyahu joined with to form his coalition.

He's come in with this ruling right-wing coalition.

He represents the most radical strain of Jewish supremacy.

His background is a defense lawyer for Jewish extremists.

He believes in expanding the settler movement.

In public, he represents the extremist nature of this ruling coalition.

And he is a self-described Bitar fan, of course.

In fact, here is Ben Geveer in the middle of a crowd of singing Betar fans on video, arm in arm.

So he has seen soccer be this useful, I mean, I guess, both a figurative, but also potentially a physical, literal cudgel to do what to his enemies.

Yeah.

I mean, he has

used it to become, you know, a populist figure to make himself seem like a man of the people.

In the old days, politicians used to go to the market in Jerusalem, you know, shake hands and kiss babies and do all that kind of stuff.

And in the last few decades, you know, Teddy Stadium has become the center.

Yeah, you go there and you put the scarf on and the Baytar supporters chant their anti-Arab chants.

And, you know, It's Mar Bengvira is there taking selfies.

You know, it's a familiar scene and it's an effective scene.

And it allows him to not even have to say the horrible things, right?

It's like the people around him are saying the horrible things.

And just to establish how horrible these things are, in this scene here, the fans are chanting, we are the most racist team in the country.

It's literally what they're saying as translated.

One notable incident with Ben Gweer and La Familia is that he's actually defending them on the national news.

There's this contentious interview he was doing, kind of was being pushed on his embrace of La Familia, and he kind of just snapped.

And this kind of echoes of Trump's famous comments after Charlottesville.

But you also had people that were

very fine people on both sides.

And what he said was, in La Familia, there are officers in the IDF and there are people who serve and who are moral and have high values.

Please stop doing character assassination for the entire world.

So, you know, this is the Minister of National Security going on national news to defend them, which I'm sure they loved.

And just to be very clear about this, their enemy as they see it is who?

So their cross-city rival is called Hapuel Jerusalem.

Hapuel is not historically a big club, but the fans are super devoted.

Small but passionate fan base.

The interesting thing about them is that they are explicitly a club that fights for coexistence, you know, Arab-Jewish solidarity.

It's a very, very different mentality.

And they actually share a stadium.

You said they're sharing the same physical location.

Exactly.

It's a funny thing to wrap your head around, the way that, you know, both these groups are beholden to their fans,

but in very different ways.

You know, Hapoel is actually fan-owned.

So

this is a team that is populist

in some structural ways, then, as well historical ways as well as in terms of um their ideology yeah yeah yeah absolutely i mean there's a lot going on you know so so yeah so hopuel jerusalem is is tied to the once powerful trade union that uh that uh exists that is still exists in israel but it isn't quite as powerful hopuel means the worker you know they have the sickle and hammer in their uh in their slogan it's all very explicit and then at the same time this current iteration of the club has created this community literally you know direct democracy system you know fans that pay around 300 a year year get voting rights on the, you know, on the board.

The board appoints the CEO.

The CEO hires the manager and the coach.

So, you know, ultimately if the fans aren't happy, you know, things are going to have to change.

So I think it's a, it's a fascinating way to think about being a sports fan, you know, especially for me as an American sports fan.

You know, I've loved the Celtics my whole life and I've just given them my money.

You know, quite as socialists.

Yes, Celtics.

Yeah, yeah, unfortunately.

I bought a lot of Paul Pierce t-shirts.

So again, I want to be mindful of the ways in which I'm not oversimplifying this story, but you've painted a picture here, Amos, where two teams that share the same stadium are on two diametric sides of the aisle,

ideologically and also politically.

Hoppowel, I want to just personalize them here.

When you think of their fan base, is there a particular person that comes to mind?

I think about a fan named Hirsch Goldberg-Polin.

He's 23, and he has supported them since he was like a kid, like a preteen.

He grew up in the U.S.

until he was seven, so grew up in American sports culture, was a White Sox fan.

His mom says in part despite his dad, who was a Cubs fan, he moves to Jerusalem, I think he was seven or eight, and falls in love with this altogether different thing, this Israeli Jerusalem soccer culture, this team, Hapuel.

His friends describe him as just super, super passionate, always standing and singing.

And he is a part of a supporters group that you could look at as kind of a parallel to La Familia.

These are the guys who are the hardcore for Hapuel.

I spoke to one of his friends that is in this supporters group.

His name is Narius Smith.

We don't like sit down and watch the game and you know,

like

eat sunflower seeds or something like other fans.

We sing and we clap and we dance and we try to like

affect the game in our own way.

Very explicitly, they believe in peace, coexistence, Arab true solidarity, almost like a social outreach entity.

You know, they love this team.

That's what brings them together.

And then within that, they go forward in all kinds of charitable acts.

What do they do as a matter of like programs?

If Lafamilia is over there setting things on fire and

hurting people,

what are Hirsch and his friends doing?

Yeah, it's all super you know kind of classic do-goodery yeah they held a tournament for people from Sudan that were you know effectively seeking asylum in Israel so this group actually organized a day where they busted them to Jerusalem had Sudanese food and music musicians actual performers and held a tournament after a Jewish Arab school was was torched in 2014 by a suspected Jewish extremist you know they held up a banner in the stadium in support of the school they're not like an anti-occupation entity.

They're not, they don't have solutions to the conflict and to the occupation, and they're not really suggesting them, right?

They're trying to like focus in on creating positivity in Jerusalem and just trying to control what they can, you know?

So, yeah, so Hirsch, within that context, is kind of like a classic Hapoil fan, travels to away games on these bus rides that, you know, bring him back home in the middle of the night.

I talked to his mom, Rachel, and she told me all about how he would just kind of finesse this with her.

Oh my gosh,

we were like so American.

He would say to us, he'd be in high school and he'd say, I've got to go to Naharia tonight.

Now, that's like on the bus.

That's like four hours from our house.

This is part of the beauty of when you're an immigrant.

You can tell your parents anything and they actually believe you.

He'd always be like, this is the most important game, you know, you don't understand.

If we like get three points here, then this happens.

And she would be like, I don't understand what you're talking about.

I don't understand the calculus.

But if you'd say, if you say say that's right, you know, go ahead.

And, you know, he'd like give her heart attacks because, you know, there'd be bus rides in the middle of the night.

I mean, there was one time I remember that I woke up and it was like 3.30 in the morning on a school night and he wasn't home.

And I tried his phone and it went, you know, it indicated that the phone was dead.

And I was really worried.

And I tried calling the other boy he was with and his phone was also dead.

And of course, what had happened was the bus had broken down on the way back.

And none of them had any way to call any of their parents.

And when he did come in, I was like, I had been sitting up waiting for him and I was like hysterical.

She referred to him as a teenager coming into what she said was non-sophisticated political awareness, which I think is a really nice phrase.

And I think a lot of us can relate to that being 15, 16, having like a Shea Guevara poster on our walls without being able to explain why.

And so he believes in something that he can't quite understand.

He finds this club and it's this perfect thing for him to just pour all his heart into.

And he becomes just like this really well-known fan.

And, you know, everyone describes him as cheery, happy, you know, and

always shirtless, like a shoves to be shirtless, which is great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, Amos, I want to bring us into the day that it all started, this war, October 7th, because there were various attacks by Hamas along the border with Gaza.

Where was Hirsch in all of that?

You know, mass confusion, mass casualties.

And in the middle of that, Hirsch was at a music festival, the Supernova Festival.

That became the site of a mass shooting.

The site of the music festival.

where Hamas did mass slaughter of young people taking hostages.

You're learning some more information about

that dance party that was taking place near the border.

You're talking about slaughter.

You're talking about human people who came face to face, shot up, stabbed, killed these people.

Hundreds of civilians were killed, hunted down as they tried to flee the festival.

So how do Hirsch's friends hear about this in the first place in real time as all this is unfolding?

Naria, his friend, told me that in the chaos of that day, you know, everyone from the fan group and the related pals were exchanging text messages, WhatsApp messages.

It just started circulating.

There was like frantic messaging back and forth that Hirsch is there.

He's at the party that we realized he went there and trying to find out his whereabouts and

calling people, trying to see who he was with and realizing that his family hasn't heard from him and this is real and this is happening.

It took a while to understand that that that's what happened because a lot of the people that were kidnapped, their status was first is missing.

It took a while to understand that people were kidnapped to Gaza.

He was hiding in a roadside bomb shelter with some 30 other people and terrorists came there and they shot into there.

It's a very tight space and they threw something like eight or nine grenades.

His best friend, his name is Danil Shapira.

He threw seven of the eight grenades that the Hamas terrorists threw into the bombshop.

He threw them out and he saved countless lives of people.

And in the end,

the eighth exploded on him and killed him.

Juanel was also a fan, and

he was Hirsch's best friend.

So

we also remember him.

So we should say here that Hirsch was severely injured by this grenade attack in this bunker, which we know in part because of cell phone video, first obtained by CNN, which shows Hirsch being loaded into a truck by gunmen and then being driven off to captivity.

Other gunmen shout as they bring survivors from the shelter.

Come, come, they yell.

Load them.

That's Hirsch on the right with another hostage.

His left hand and part of his arm is blown off.

The bone sticks out.

That video is the last visual proof that Hirsch's mom, Rachel, has of her son.

And the last thing that Hirsch told his family came in the form of text messages that he sent that same day, the day he was abducted.

The first text was, I love you.

The second one said, I'm sorry.

And today, as of this episode, Hirsch has been away from home for 66 days.

This is Hirsch's mom, Rachel, again.

I would obviously really like to know how my son is doing after losing his arm.

And that was the wound that we saw, you know, when you're in a small room and grenades are going off and bullets are being fired.

Yes, he lost his arm.

I have no idea if he has internal

bleeding, internal damage.

I don't know how his hearing is.

I don't know how his sight is.

She was very very direct about you know what she's going through how how does she describe what she's feeling um yeah you know she's talking about she she described almost like a physical pain you and i are talking right now and i seem probably pretty functional and normal but it's a lot of

um it takes like all of my reserves to do it because It's like if you didn't see that someone's underneath me, like twisting my ankle like backwards.

Like that's what it feels like.

Like it's actual physical pain at all times and

emotional, psychological, spiritual pain.

It's every kind of pain all at once.

It was nice for me to speak with her about Hirsch's fandom, you know, and to hear all the positive stories, you know, all the joy that he has had with Hapuel in his life.

And that team, that fan team, that club has come here to our house, has really just been,

they have become family.

The whole fan team had come out to support us with these huge banners.

And one of his best friends said, gosh, when he gets home, he's going to really hate this.

He's a lot like me.

Like, we like to fly under the radar.

And now, you know, there's these enormous murals of his face.

You know, that just say, bring Hirsch home.

And I said, you know what?

I would love to handle that anger.

Like, that would be amazing.

Like, if I can have him home and he'd be disappointed that his face is all over Jerusalem, that I will handle.

No problem.

I think that, you know, being kind of this community club, there's a natural way that you start spreading the word in the community.

There's murals in Jerusalem.

And his parents,

independent of that, have also,

from the outside, looks to me like they've done everything they possibly can.

you know, to press the right buttons, you know, to get this word out, to speak to politicians, politicians, to the media.

The idea of

what this team and club stand for, these ideas of peaceful coexistence, normalizing interaction through sports, it makes it feel like

this painful moment that happened, that there's still hope.

And in this time of intense, exquisite pain that I am in,

to know that these people are fighting for him and all of them is like a tiny ray of hope for me.

There's still hope.

It's hope that's battered and bruised and we're tender right now.

But

I'm thankful that

I have gotten to know these young people and that they feel so committed to these values that the club and that the team promote.

It's pretty amazing because like to see a stadium of 45,000, 50,000 people and the stadium announcers talking about Hirsch and his pictures on the big screen and the team has published on Twitter calls to bring him back and on Facebook and they've been very involved and I think that that's the power of our solidarity and our connection that could be shown also during hard times.

I try not to really think about where he is or what's happening because I could think that that could go really scary, really fast.

But when I have a moment of a happy daydream, I picture him playing soccer there.

I do.

I picture him playing soccer with some children there.

I don't know who those children are, if they're other hostages, if they're Palestinian kids.

I don't know who they are, but I do picture that.

It's a good game for teaching patients.

I'm willing to watch, but like, oh Ron, it takes a very long time for something to happen.

So maybe, maybe it's helping him somewhere because it's that being able to sit there.

Like the fact that you could sit there for two hours and the score is zero, one,

that's actually like a Zen practice of patience.

Maybe it's helping him.

Did you hear her?

sort of indulge the darkest fears that she might have that Hirsch actually

may not end up coming home.

No, absolutely not.

She's just manifesting that day, you know, when he comes back into her arms.

That's all she was focused on.

I also picture that he's probably really bummed out because he always liked being the goalie.

And I think a one-handed goalie is probably not really totally fair.

But I'm thinking when he gets back, we'll get him like a gigantic bionic arm and that that left hand is going to be even bigger than it should actually be, and then we'll meet an even better goalie.

Rachel, his mom, speaking to us, to you.

I mean, I can't imagine the nightmare that she is living.

This through line in her son's life, where he was this soccer super fan who was like sneaking out of the house basically to go watch this team yeah um this team that has as its whole like mission statement arab-jewish relations and he ends up being one of the people who are kidnapped here yeah and if i'm his mom i don't know if my first instinct would be to be thankful for the team yeah it almost feels like there's this incredibly cruel irony that hirsch specifically was one of these people who was taken.

Hirsch's story is both deeply moving,

I hope, to everyone, but it's also just one small window into

truly an unimaginable number of tragedies that are happening simultaneously.

Today, as we're speaking, over 15,000 people have been killed in Gaza.

You know, there are people buried alive.

Those aren't even counted as the deaths yet.

And we're talking about Hirsch, and we're like highlighting his story, But just one, but one narrow window.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

I think that it's a, it's like a human truism that we've all kind of heard this cliche that one death is a tragedy, you know, a million deaths is a statistic.

I worry, you know, that even as we're doing this, that's where, that's what we kind of get lost in.

Yes.

The stories of the people being killed in Gaza.

You know, each, each and every one of them is a tragedy, you know, each and every one.

we spoke about this story as a way to talk about israel uh to talk about the political landscape in israel yes and we uh are fixating on this club and hirsh is this basically fringe entity uh that is fighting for some little semblance of you know arab-jewish solidarity but the reality is that's not the country the country uh is more in line with bengvir the betar diehard the national security minister.

Yeah, exactly.

Anyone paying attention to some of the comments that have come out of kind of his allies in the Israeli far-right coalition would be, you know, would be horrified.

In part, it's just the

kind of flippant way in which they're talking about mass death, you know, talking about flattening Gaza, talking about crushing Gaza.

But it's also just as an aside,

the flippant way in which they're disregarding the hostages.

Right.

This is the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations saying as much on television.

We expect the Red Cross, we expect all international organizations to focus on these hostages and how they are treated and that they receive treatment according to international law, but it's not going to stop us, prevent us from doing what we need to do in order to secure the future of Israel.

We cannot.

People in Ben Vir's right-wing camp, you know, said about we have to target Tamas mercilessly without taking into serious consideration the matter of the captives you know another uh minister uh has advocated for dropping an atomic bomb on gaza and you know when asked what about the hostages said i hope and pray for their return but there are costs in war man back to hirsch for a minute and the idea of when could he maybe come home so this first phase of the hostage negotiations was focused on women and children And there was an idea that they could move towards another phase, but the negotiations have broken down.

Fighting has resumed.

Israel, of course, has withdrawn from negotiations in Qatar.

Negotiations over the release of additional hostages in Gaza appear highly unlikely to resume anytime soon.

Time is running out for those 130 or so remaining hostages inside Gaza.

And one of the things that we're hearing from the families that they're so frustrated about is they feel like they understand the shape of a deal that will bring their loved ones home.

It involves releasing probably thousands of Palestinian militants from Israeli jails, and they are saying to the the government, make that deal now, bring our loved ones back.

There is just a basic fact that

some elements of the Israeli government are prioritizing the war over releasing the hostages.

As this was going on, as the idea of continuing the negotiations was in the air, Ben Gira released a statement, you know, saying stopping the war equals breaking apart the government.

You know, that meant he was threatening to leave the coalition, the ruling coalition, which would likely trigger elections.

You know, this is a kind of like, you know, the most radical option that he could come up with.

And he's using it.

You know, he's threatening Netanyahu, the prime minister, that don't even think about trying to free more of these hostages or I'll, you know, do the worst thing for you.

When you hear,

you know, the ceasefire has ended, the hostage negotiations are off, you know, that didn't just happen.

You know, there are people involved that made that decision.

They are prioritizing other things.

And I also just want to be very transparent about like the decisions we make as a show.

I often talk about how we have a newsroom here and we do.

It's a small group of people that got to decide, like, what are we covering?

And what are we therefore not covering?

Yeah.

And we're a 50-minute show that is about sports technically.

And so I do want to acknowledge that Hirsch's story and the story of Beitar and Hopowel.

We chose that not just because it checks those boxes, but because this is now how I'm going to see what seems to be a very disturbing and complicated political dynamic in Israel.

And now, just to put what I've learned to the test, it seems like in Ben Geveer, the national security minister, Amos, we're going to get the Beitar superfan having to decide, do I want to release prisoners and exchange them for hostages when those hostages are these Hapoel super fans like Hirsch, who are not my people in the political or philosophical sense.

Yeah, I mean, you know, like we talked about, I've been reporting this for 10 years, been reporting La Familia for 10 years.

This is not the only way or even the dominant way of looking at things, but it is a way of looking at things.

The teams echo the bigger picture.

They aren't defining it.

But through them, I think we can tell these human stories

which

reflects the fans, the people in power,

this kind of mob mentality that exists with La Familia, the way they influence events in their particular unique ways.

And yeah, you know,

to go from here, to try to keep reading, try to keep understanding, you know, why this is happening the way it's happening.

Yeah, I hope, I hope, I hope it's of value in a small contained way.

Yeah, yeah.

And the next human story, again, that I want us to cover together is the story of the goalie with the biotic.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Superstar.

I want that scandal.

I want the robotic arm.

They can't tell him he can't play.

No, exactly.

You know, I'm worried tactically, they will just, the opposing teams will just go to the other arm, won't they?

I mean, it's he'll be all right, but he'll be found out fairly quickly.

You know what?

I have a feeling that Rachel is going to have a solution.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

She's thinking five steps ahead.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

She hates soccer, but she's a mastermind of it.

Yes, absolutely.

Amos Varshad, thank you for sharing your reporting.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

So, I should point out at the end here that Beitar and Hapoel actually played last Wednesday at Teddy Stadium, the stadium that they share in Jerusalem.

And Beitar won 1-0.

But by the very next day, which just happened to be the first day of Hanukkah, Hirsch's dad, John, the Cubs fan that we had mentioned earlier, who had inspired his son's contrarian baseball White Sox fandom, was

unambiguous in his rooting interest, as he explained on the Instagram account titled, Bring Hirsch Home.

So it's the holiday of Hanukkah now.

And every day of Hanukkah, we're going to share a little snippet about Hirsch corresponding to the number of what day it is of Chanukah.

Today's the first day.

So, of course, Hirsch is our first child, our one and only Sarud.

And there are lots of other ones and firsts that I could talk about.

But if I'm honest, Hersch's real first love

for many, many years has been

Haqqal Jerusalem.

And then a couple days later, Hirsch's sisters, Libyan Orly, followed up with some symbolism of their own.

Today is day three of Chanukah, which is a significant number because we're three siblings.

As you guys know, Hirsch is our older brother with three children.

He has this thing where every time the three of us are together, he'll say, oh, we're having an albukhadaqim, we're in a Siyat Achim, we're Serat Achim, everything we do together.

He just adds that word.

So we're just waiting for him to come back so we can have an Ihrimachim, like we'd love to have with him.

We love him and miss him and hope he comes home every day.

Hirsch's family, including Rachel,

the mom who spoke to us, is gonna keep posting videos like this.

And the hope is that there can be more hostages released and that there can be another ceasefire.

As unlikely as that might look right now, with the latest headlines indicating that the Palestinian death toll is rising, right alongside the number of rounds of tank ammunition that America is selling to Beitar Superfan Itamar Ben-Gavir and the Israeli government, which presumably celebrated that 1-0 outcome that I had just referenced.

But these teams, I do want to stress, are not the only lens to see this story through, as Am has said.

They are a lens, they are not the only one.

And for that reason, I suppose it would be easier to not have tried to talk about any of this.

But if you made it this far, listening,

I think that means something too.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark Media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.