Hostage’s mother says she feels she ‘failed in her role’

Two American-Israeli mothers of hostages, Yael Alexander and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, are speaking to a Tel Aviv rally for the return of the Hamas captives.

Yael Alexander, the mother of Edan Alexander, a lone soldier from New Jersey who holds both American and Israeli citizenship, tells the audience that she feels she “failed in her role as a mother.”

“If I could magically turn the big clock behind me — that counts their days in Gaza — back to before your enlistment,  I would have said: ‘Idan, go to college, don’t enlist because everything we told you about this state sadly belongs to the past,'” she says.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, thanks the foreign ambassadors who spoke earlier tonight for “not only standing up for their own citizens, but standing up for other citizens of the world who are still being held hostage in Gaza after 225 days.”

Goldberg-Polin tells an anecdote from earlier this week about a visit to the eye doctor where she found out that her “tear quality is very poor.

“I found [that] so intriguing since I thought all I have done over these past seven months is to perfect the art of crying, and now I come to find out that even my tears are broken,” she says.