Chicago Trucker to Take Bold Stand at DNC to Raise Awareness for Israeli Hostages

Rachel Goldberg, mother of Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin speaks during a rally for hostages marking 100 days since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, outside the Jerusalem Municipality on January 14, 2024. (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

He has a special route planned for the four-day DNC, so that he not only passes the convention center but also all the delegates’ hotels

By Batya Jerenberg

An American trucker is determined to remind delegates at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this week that Hamas is still holding some 115 Israeli hostages, and plans to use his truck to bring attention to their plight.

Jeremiah Smith says he will be driving to venues where the Democratic National Convention delegates are staying in Chicago with the abductees’ pictures plastered on his vehicle, the New York Post reported Sunday.

Smith told the Post that he is “not afraid of the hate” he may meet from the expected crowds of anti-Israel protestors who want to push the Democratic party to stop arming Israel and force the Jewish state to withdraw from Gaza rather than destroy the Hamas terror organization that sparked the ongoing war by its October 7 massacre and abduction of 251 Israelis and foreign nationals.

The 28-year-old African-American Chicagoan has a personal interest in publicizing the hostages’ plight, as he considers himself the older brother of one of them – Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose family comes from the city.

Grandmother Marcy Goldberg began tutoring Smith in school, when he was just six, and five years later the boy from the violence-wracked projects moved in with her.

“Marcy definitely saved my life,” he said. “I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t know these people. The Jewish community welcomed me with open arms.”

He and Hersh became great friends, with Smith visiting him in Israel several times. When he heard that Hersh had been abducted from the Nova festival, he was devastated and went to comfort Marcy, he told the paper.

In April, when Hamas released a propaganda video of Hersh, who had had part of one arm blasted off by a terrorist’s grenade, he was “so happy,” he said, but “some days it’s hard to have hope.”

Smith got the idea just a month before that to raise awareness about the hostages by driving all around the city showing Hersh’s and others’ pictures on the sides of his huge truck, and has done so ever since for twelve hours a day, six days a week.

He has a special route planned for the four-day DNC, so that he not only passes the convention center but also all the delegates’ hotels, because this is a “huge opportunity,” he said, to “raise awareness.”

He will not just stay behind the driver’s wheel, saying, “I always want to have conversations. I want to make a difference – I want people to see the truck, to talk to me, to ask me why I support the hostages. I want peace, of course. [But] I want the hostages home.”

He has encountered opposition during his five-month run, with people cursing him and saying he is supporting the murder of children in Gaza, and so he’s made sure to learn about Israel and the conflict so he could counter with facts.

“I try to tell them, ‘If you were at that festival, they’d try to kill you too,’” he said. “I say, ‘You’re not safe just because you’re Muslim.’”

Saying that he wants to make Goldberg-Polin “proud” of him, Smith noted, “I’m not standing down,” and “I can handle the hate,” although he added that he hoped the demonstrators will be peaceful.