SARAH STINSON: Israeli hostage Nimrod Cohen finally reunited with mother Viki in Tel Aviv after Gaza hell

You never forget the moment you sit across from a mother whose child was brutally taken by terrorists - and still, somehow, she’s the strongest person in the room.

I met a softly spoken, composed, fragile Viki Cohen in Israel earlier this year.

Her 20-year-old son, Nimrod, had been taken on October 7.

Every morning she woke not knowing what - or if - he’d eaten, if he was warm, if he was scared, if he was safe.

But she refused to give up. Every single day. Praying. Protesting. Hoping.

“Who wouldn’t do this?” she asked. “I am his mother. He will always be my baby. I just want him home.”

Today, it happened - Nimrod Cohen came home.

The soldier whose story became a symbol of endurance and grief is back where he belongs, in the arms of his family.

After 737 days in captivity, his name - shouted in protest, carried on placards and whispered in prayers - has finally returned.

My thoughts are with his mother, who for 737 days clung to the faintest thread of faith, still believing she would hold her son again when belief itself felt impossible.

When so many had moved on, she refused to.

She kept her son’s name alive.

Because that’s what a mother does - she holds the line when hope begins to fade.

Then the phone call finally came.

It’s hard to comprehend the moment she saw him again... the first touch, the first embrace - the kind of overwhelming relief that breaks you long before it starts to heal.

Holding on so tight and never wanting to let go ever again.

There will be time to understand what Nimrod endured, and what his freedom means for a country - and a world - still struggling to define peace.

For political leaders, it’s a moment of relief wrapped in reckoning: proof that diplomacy, when backed by moral courage, can still pierce through deadlock and division.

And a reminder that behind every headline and negotiation table sits a human story - one family’s heartbreak, one mother’s fight.

The release of Nimrod Cohen does not erase the horror of what’s been lost.

Nothing ever will.

But it restores something so powerful - belief that light can still find its way through the dark.

For the first time in a long time, hope feels real again.

And tonight, it has a name.

Because the reminder the world needs right now is not only that light can return but that it endures because someone kept it burning.

Even in the longest dark, we owe it to one another, and to ourselves, to keep faith that the door will open again.

And tonight, for one mother who never stopped believing ... it finally did.

Sarah Stinson is the Seven Network’s Director of Morning Television