Bring us home now.
This was the appeal of an Israeli-American hostage shown in a video released by Hamas terrorist on Wednesday.
Identified as Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, one of the hostages abducted from the Nova music festival in southern Israel during the Hamas attack on 7 October, he also slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the military for failing to bring the hostages home.
“Netanyahu and members of the Israeli government, while you sit and have (Passover) holiday meals with your families, think of us, the hostages, who are still here in hell,” Goldberg-Polin says in the video.
He says the captives have been living “under the ground without water, without food, without sun, without the medical care that I need so much for a long, long time.”
Goldberg-Polin also tells his family, “I need you to stay strong for me and not stop fighting until I, and each and every one of the hostages, return home safely.”
“Hersh, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days and if you can hear us, we are telling you, we love you, stay strong, survive,” his parents, Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, said.
The footage was posted on Hamas’s official Telegram account. The captive’s parents said in a statement they were “relieved to see him alive” but worried for his wellbeing.
Goldberg-Polin was seriously wounded during his capture and the video shows him missing a hand.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group said the family had “given permission for the video of their son Hersh” to be broadcast by the media.