A new Jerusalem basketball team is taking the court this season with the name Hapoel HaShisha, meaning “The Six,” in honor of the six hostages murdered by their Hamas captors in Gaza in August 2024, after 11 months of captivity.

Founders Nadav Haas and Amitai Weltman, both in their early 20s, have played basketball since childhood and wanted to create something in the sports community to honor the six, who were among the 251 abducted by invading terrorists on October 7, 2023.

Some 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, were massacred in the onslaught. Dozens of hostages were subsequently killed in Gaza.

“I always wanted to do something in the basketball world in Jerusalem from a professional standpoint and to commemorate Hersh’s memory and the ‘Beautiful Six,'” Haas said, referring to Hersh Goldberg-Polin and fellow hostages Carmel Gat, Ori Danino, Alex Lubanov, Eden Yerushalmi and Almog Sarusi, who were killed in a Gaza tunnel.

Haas is family friends with Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, and grew up with their son Hersh. Working with the Polins, Haas and Weltman received the endorsement of all six families to commemorate their loved ones with the new sports team.

Haas said the name also reflects unity in Israeli society and among these six murdered hostages, noting that Ori Danino, the only other Jerusalemite among them, was a fan of Beitar — a fierce rival of Hapoel — yet his family still gave its blessing to the new team.

Goldberg-Polin was an ardent supporter of Jerusalem’s Hapoel soccer and basketball squads.

Danino and Goldberg-Polin were together from the earliest days of their captivity in Gaza. Danino, a........

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