All language subtitles for original ON MADRE DE HERSH GOLDBERG REHEN DETENIDA EN GAZA

The last time I saw Hirsch was on Friday night, October 6th.

We are Americans and Israeli

and we live in Jerusalem with hershe and our two daughters.

We had gone to as a family, to synagogue

and then to dinner at our friend's house.

And at 11 p.m.

Hirsch took his backpack he had brought with him,

kissed me and kissed John

and headed out to meet one of his childhood friends

whose name was Honor,

and they were going to go to an all night

nature music festival in the south of Israel,

ironically called the Festival of Unity and Love.

The next morning
I was having a cup of tea when the bomb sirens

started to blare in Jerusalem.

John had already left for synagogue.

I quickly woke my two daughters

and we went into our bomb shelter in our apartment.

After 10 minutes, we came out

and although normally
I don't use my phone on the Jewish Sabbath

because it was an emergency,

I turned on my phone
to make sure that Hirsh and honor were okay.

That was at 820 Saturday morning.

Immediately, two texts popped up on my screen from 811.

The first texts said, I love you,

and the second said, I'm sorry.

And I immediately knew something

horrible was unfolding in my world.

We came to find out what happened

when the massacre that ultimately

killed close to 300 at that music festival

and more than 1400 people total when that massacre began.

Hirsch Honor and 27 others managed to escape

to a roadside bomb shelter and hid inside.

Hamas militants came to the doorway and began

throwing in hand grenades,
which all witnesses with whom we have spoken said

that honor managed to pick up eight of them
and throw them back out.

But three of those hand

grenades did get by and detonated inside.

Next, Hamas fired into this small concrete room of 29 music

lovers, an RPG,
and then sprayed the room with machine gunfire.

After a couple of moments of the dust
settling, Hamas entered

most of those young people were now dead.

Some were alive and wounded
and trapped under the dead bodies.

So they pretended to be dead.

It is from those witnesses that we know

that Hirsch and two other young men were ordered to stand.

And when Hirsch stood up, they all saw that his left arm

had been blown off from the elbow.

He had somehow managed to put

on some sort of tourniquet or bandage
and walked out with the other two young men.

They were loaded onto a Hamas pickup
truck and headed toward Gaza.

HIRSCH His last cell phone signal was found inside of Gaza

at 1025 in the morning on October Abu Tober seventh.

And since then, we have been given a video showing

Hirsch getting into that truck with a bloody stump

where his left arm used to be.

And that was 18 days ago.

And since then, we know nothing.

We have begged the Red Cross from all

and all other international humanitarian
aid organizations to find out

if the hostages who are from 33 different countries

around the world who were severely wounded,

like Hirsch, were they treated

the grandmothers, the babies or 17 year old route?

Peres, who has my tonic dystrophy
and was stolen from her wheelchair

from the music festival without her feeding tube.

But our pleas came to no avail.

The Red Cross said they were at the border,

but they were denied access into Gaza.

So here I live in a different universe than all of you.

You are right there.

We seem like we live in the same place.

But I like all of the mothers
and all of the fathers and wives

and husbands and children and brothers and sisters
and loved ones of the stolen.

We all actually live on a different planet.

And the very cruelest of questions,

each of us is asked every single day without intended

malice is, how are you?

Well, picture your own mother

and then picture her being told there are only two options.

You are either dead

or you had your arm blown off

and were kidnaped by gunpoint into Gaza
and no one knows where you are

or if you bled to death in that pickup truck 18 days ago,

or if you died yesterday,

or if you died 5 minutes ago.

Picture your own mother.

And that those are her only two options.

And that is my answer to you when you ask how are you?

That is how all of us here on our planet

feel this planet of beyond pain.

Our planet of no sleep.

Our planet of despair.

Our planet of tears.

There are over 200 hostages being held in Gaza right now.

Over 100 of them are from 33 countries.

Where is the world?

We, the families of the 200 hostages

are far away on our own planet of agony.

But where are you?

Why is no one

crying out for these people
to be allowed access to the Red Cross?

Why is no one demanding just proof of life?

This is a global humanitarian catastrophe

and the hatred being showered on Israel.

Now, I keep being asked by that in all of the press.

And I will say two things.

First, in an article I read,

it was so eloquently stated

that when you only get outraged

when one side's babies are killed,

then your moral compass is broken

and your humanity is broken.

And therefore, in your quiet moments alone,

all of us everywhere on planet

Earth need to really ask ourselves, Do I aspire to be human?

Or am I swept up in the enticing

and delicious world of hatred?

This is not a phenomenon unique to Israel or Gaza.

This is everywhere on our planet.

I understand that hatred of the other,

whoever we decide that other is, is seductive,

sensuous, and most importantly, it's easy.

Hatred is easy, but hatred is not actually helpful,

nor is it constructive.

Second,

I know that Israel is being cautious
not just because Israel knows

there are 200 hostages who were stolen

into Gaza on October 7th,

but also because Israel knows there are 2 million

Palestinian civilians who are trapped in Gaza.

And this is why Israel gives warnings to civilians in Gaza

to relocate before they strike.

But there were no warnings given to the women,

the children, the elderly, the music lovers and the babies.

On October 7th, before the intentional massacres

on innocent lives, we all know that war and conflict

always, always ends up hurting the innocent.

And that is why war is so brutal.

And it is why it's so very devastating.

We see that everywhere in our world and everywhere

in the history of our world and a competition of pain.

There is never a winner.

One thing gave me a

whisper of hope from all of the horror on October 7th,

because one of the witnesses with whom I spoke

told me that when the rocket fire
first began and all of those young music

loving hippies went running into the bomb shelter,

there was a Bedouin man who was a guard at the kibbutz

kibbutz across the street, and he ran into that

same shelter for cover.

And as Hamas closed in on the bomb shelter,

the man told the young people to stay quiet.

Let me go talk to them.

And he went outside and he said in Arabic, I'm a muslim.

Everyone inside is my family.

We are Muslim. You don't have to search in there.

He tried to save them.

He could have just said, I'm
a muslim and just saved himself.

But he tried to do the right thing,

even though it was terrifying and even though

it required unimaginable courage,

he was brutally beaten and the witnesses

do not know what his fate was.

But I take comfort, comfort

for a fleeting moment, knowing that

there was someone trying to do the right thing

when everything in the universe had been turned upside down.

We human beings have been blessed

with the gifts of intellect,
creativity, insight and perception.

Why are we not using it to solve global conflicts?

All over the world?

Because doing this is hard and it takes fortitude,

imagination, grit, risk, and hope.

So instead we opt for hatred
because hatred is so comfortable,

so familiar, and so very, very easy.

I implore world leaders,

both seen and unseen,

who have been working tirelessly to get all the hostages
free.

I see you on behalf of all people everywhere

to remain steadfast, determined and tenacious.

And may God be with you

because the time is running out to save them.

The time is running out to save all of us.