Anderson Cooper Helps Family Spot Missing Hostage Son in Israel

This story contains graphic descriptions and images

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on Monday spoke with the parents of an American hostage who was seen in a never-before-released video being abducted in Israel by Hamas.

Cooper explained that in a prior interview with Rachel Goldberg and Jonathan Polin about their 23-year-old son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, he realized that he had a video of him on his phone.

“It had been shown to me by a soldier at the music festival. We recorded it off his phone. We had permission to do so,” Cooper said. After showing the minute-long video to Goldberg-Polin’s parents after that interview, he said, the couple decided they wanted it to be shared with the world.

“They want you to know what has happened to their child, and they want the world to know that there are seriously wounded people who were taken by Hamas,” Cooper said, before narrating the scene in which gunmen load an injured Goldberg-Polin and several others in the back of a pickup truck.

Goldberg-Polin’s “left hand and part of his arm is blown off,” Cooper says.

Polin told Cooper that for him and his wife, seeing the video “gave us a dose of optimism.”

“As horrible as it is as a parent to see your kid under gunpoint being pushed with one arm, the composure with which he’s walking on his own legs, pulling himself with his one weak hand—he’s a lefty and his left arm is blown off—pulling himself with his one weak hand onto the truck, gave me a real dose of strength that he’s handling a horrible situation and he’s doing it with composure,” he said.

Goldberg added: “I mean, we’re saying he walked out calmly, which he did. But I think it was from shock.”

Goldberg and her husband were on the most recent cover of TIME magazine for its feature on the hostages, of which there were upwards of 200 in Gaza as of Sunday, according to the Israeli government.

Polin said that while he and his wife feel supported by the U.S., they want more.

“As American-Israelis, we’ve been embraced by the U.S. government. The support is there. The empathy is there from the U.S.,” he said. “We’re obviously hungering for more than that. We want action. We want results. There are hostages from somewhere around 30 countries. Why have we not yet seen prime ministers, foreign ministers, global leaders screaming to get the wounded help?”

Earlier on Monday, Hamas handed over two elderly Israeli hostages whose husbands are still in the terrorist group’s custody. Last Friday, an American mom and daughter became the first two hostages released.

Goldberg described her experience being among a group of family members of hostages that President Joe Biden spoke with recently.

The president, she recalled, mentioned the death of his first wife and two of his children.

“He said things… because he knows loss, so it wasn’t platitudes,” she said. “It was someone speaking who has lost children speaking to a mother who lost her two children. And it was a real moment of coming together just as people who know what pain is. You know, this very excruciating part of pain.”