“I dream of seeing both of my sons coming through the door,” Silvia Cunio, a survivor of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in Kibbutz Nir Oz and the mother of Hamas hostages David, 35, and Ariel Cunio, 27, told JNS on Friday.
On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked Cunio’s house along with the residences of her four sons. David and Ariel were taken captive by the terrorist group and have remained in Gaza ever since.
The Cunio family marked David’s second birthday in captivity last Wednesday.
“It’s very difficult. The girls ask for their dad all the time and cry at night,” Silvia said, referring to David’s twin daughters.
“When they return, we will give them all the love they did not receive in nearly 600 days. I hope we will succeed in getting them out. I try to remain optimistic and strengthen the family,” she added.
Of the 20 people who took part in the Cunio family’s Simchat Torah celebration on Oct. 7, eight were kidnapped. Six have since been freed via ceasefire agreements.
Ariel, Silvia’s youngest son, and his girlfriend, Arbel Yehoud, were the first of the eight to be kidnapped.
“At 8:28, Ariel wrote to me that he had ‘entered a horror movie’. Before he was kidnapped, he managed to alert us that there were terrorists at the kibbutz’s clinic,” Silvia recalled.
While Yehoud was released after 482 days in captivity, Ariel remains in captivity and has not been heard of since the day of his abduction.
David Cunio, Silvia’s other son, was home with his wife, Sharon, their two twin daughters, Yuli and Emma, Sharon’s sister Danielle Aloni and her five-year-old daughter Emilia.
“They found themselves for four hours in the safe room with heavy smoke. When they started to choke, David tried to get them out. He took his daughter Yuli and went out through the window. He wanted to go to the neighbor, but the terrorists caught them and put both of them on a tractor on their way to Gaza,” said Silvia.
While on the tractor, David saw his wife, Sharon, being taken out of their house by a Hamas terrorist and yelled to them that it was his wife. They then proceed to put her on the same tractor.
For days while in captivity, David and Sharon did not know what had happened to their second daughter, Emma.
Emma was kidnapped from the same house, together with Sharon’s sister, Danielle Aloni and her daughter Emilia. Emma was then separated from the two.
Emma was held alone in a house in Gaza for 10 days. She ended up at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis due to a fever that would not go down. She was eventually reunited with her parents and her twin sister Yuli there.
“They were all together until day 49 of their captivity. On day 49, Hamas took David to the tunnels,” Silvia said.
On Nov. 24, 2023, Sharon’s sister Danielle and her daughter Emilia were released as part of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that saw the release of 105 hostages, primarily women and children. On Nov. 27, 2023, Sharon Aloni Cunio was released together with her two daughters Emma and Yuli.
David and his brother Ariel are still held by Hamas in Gaza.
“I turn on the television to see if there is any progress and if there isn’t, I turn it off. Painting by numbers gives me a bit of peace. It helps me not to think. I don’t like the noise, I don’t like to scream, but I scream silently,” Silvia said.
“I want everyone to stand together. Together, we will win—I want everyone to scream that we need to get the hostages out.
“First, the living and then the deceased for burial. Pray and continue speaking about it,” she added.