Hersh Goldberg-Polin's mother speaks out after Hamas releases hostage video of her son

How did it feel as a mother looking at your child with an amputate at all? It felt like he was 4. It felt like he was, you know, this is my little boy, and he has suffered horrible emotional, psychological, physical trauma that continues and it’s a horrible, agonising, miserable feeling. And on the other hand, he’s talking, he’s moving, he’s alive, he’s breathing. It must have been mixed emotions when you saw your son for the first time in over 200 days yesterday. It was overwhelming and emotional and I wasn’t even really listening to what he was saying. I was just hearing his voice. I haven’t heard his voice in six months. I haven’t seen him move. I’ve seen photos that we look at, you know, it was also obviously very disturbing to see him. He’s clearly medically compromised and medically fragile. And seeing his arm, Hirsch and I are both left-handed. Now. He’s not left-handed anymore. And you know, I go for walks early in the morning and I say it out loud as I’m walking. I just, it’s like I’m a crazy person. I just say it on repeat. I love you. Stay strong, survive. I love you stay strong, survive. And I don’t know how the universe works, and I don’t know if he hears it or if he feels it or if he knows it, but I am ordering him to survive. What is your demand then? I think that the five parties who are involved with these negotiations, they’re all very smart people. They can look around this entire region and see the horrendous suffering that is happening. Obviously, I’m the mother of a hostage. I look at my son, my only son, the person who turned me from a person into a mother. I think that everyone has to decide to care about their people and love their people more than they hate their enemies because it’s six months. There is so much tragedy and so much suffering. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Gaza are suffering. And you know of these innocent civilians who are in Gaza suffering, I know one of them really well. And his name is Hirsch. Proof of life after 200 days. Proof of life. Yes, huge. So many people were so emotional because they really have not thought he was alive. And I think as a mother and also what we had been told from intelligence is that people who they know that their loved 1 the hostage of a family where they know that that loved one is no longer alive, they do contact them. So every day that we would hear nothing, we kept saying, OK, God willing, we are hopeful. You have kept hope alive. Yes. I’ve said for 202 days, hope is mandatory, period. It’s not an option. It’s not a choice. It’s mandatory. Or else it’s it would be impossible to function. What gives you the courage to keep going on? You seem to have this incredible inner strength. I’m sure it doesn’t feel like that all the time. This is a very primal, innate, natural response when anyone in the animal Kingdom feels that their child is in danger. I wake up every morning, John wakes up every morning, and we go. We run to the end of the earth. We talk to anyone who will talk to us. We turn over every stone. We have no idea who is going to be the key that unlocks this, and so we have to keep going. There’s no choice. It’s must have been a very difficult Passover. Oh, Seder was brutal, brutal. Thank God. We were with our dearest friends and our close cousins. There were a lot of tears. So it was brutal but beautiful because we sat there what is normally a celebration of freedom. We turned it into a crying out for freedom. But there were just moments where I, you know, I couldn’t hold it in or others couldn’t hold it in. And there was a lot of crying. And I think that that was the right Seder. It was. The authentic thing to be doing was to be crying, crying out and begging for freedom. Of the remaining 133 hostages, they are from 25 different nations. There are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. The age range is 86 years. There is a baby there. There’s an 86 year old grandfather there. It is enough. Let’s be human. Let’s figure it out and let’s end this. All of these people with a lot of power and influence can get it done. It will be hard. It will be a steep, difficult compromise, because that’s what compromise is. Compromise is saying I am going to give up something dear for something I hold even more precious. And that’s not easy. And it requires courage, and it requires bravery, and it requires creativity, and it requires loving and caring about your people more than you hate the other. And I would beg and beseech at this point that we do that.