Sharon Aloni-Cunio was kidnapped by Hamas alongside her twin daughters Ella and three-year-old Yuli, and was released with them in the previous hostage deal. David, Sharon's partner, is still being held captive by Hamas after 102 days. Sharon spoke Tuesday with Udi Segal and Anat Davidov on their show on 103fm and talked about her feelings following the mood in recent months.
"It's hard. I would be very happy to return to obscurity and to a kibbutz that no one knew until October 7. I would simply want our life before, because life since then cannot even be defined as life," she admitted painfully. "I feel like a walking zombie while my husband is still being held there under God knows what conditions. The girls who keep asking about him, have to adapt to the city, a new kindergarten, many foreign faces and there is no father to support them. We have lost everything."
This week, the terrorist organization Hamas published another video of abductees, in which Noa Argamani, Itay Sabirsky and Yossi Sharabi were seen. Sharon, whose partner David was left behind in captivity, shared: "This is my biggest fear every day, I'm so afraid that David will be the next cruel video they release. At the end of the day, we just get news of 'more abductees being murdered there.'
"Out of 136, I don't know how many between lives, because in my bitter experience of being there, a lot of the information is not given while it is happening. And this paralyzing fear of not knowing what his condition is for over fifty days and thinking that tomorrow is twice as long as I was there with him, and knowing what state of mind we were in, it breaks. How am I supposed to keep holding on to hope?"
In addition, Aloni-Cunio explained that she feels it is her duty to share what she went through on October 7th and in the captivity of Hamas, for the sake of the other abductees. "Dealing with it, the interviews is like poking at a wound that won't heal.
It always takes a very heavy mental toll, but David told me to promise him in captivity that we were separated and that I would shout his cry, no matter how much it costs me in my health, I will do it until my last breath for him and for the other abductees because they can't actually do it. If there is no one to make their voice heard, we simply will not see them anymore."
"I just want everyone to sit down for a moment and imagine if they were in our place," she cried, "how does it feel to know that you are going to sleep in a warm bed, and 136 people are sleeping in moldy tunnels, without food and without water. About your children, you can get up and give them a kiss and a hug every morning, and many parents, fathers, many people who are there and can't do the same. I want someone in this cabinet to wake up, unite, and stop dealing with nonsense."
Released hostage calls for unification of government to bring hostages home
She also attacked the conduct of the political echelon in the campaign and the struggle for the release of the abductees: "Let them unite as this nation united to bring about our liberation and put an offer on the table, let them harness the world to this and bring the abductees home at any cost. It does not make sense that we sit and wait for proposals from a terrorist organization. It does not make sense, unacceptable.
"It's not that not enough is being done, I do want to stop the military action, soldiers are losing their lives and my heart goes out to their families, who are sacrificing their lives for our security. I'm talking about the side of the cabinet, that I feel that they don't even put a proposal on the table, but always wait for external initiatives."
"Did you talk to any of them?", Segal was interested, and Sharon replied: "No. Absolutely not. I once went to a cabinet meeting with the families, shortly after we left Gaza, it was a very charged meeting. In the very first days. Since then, in fact, no one has created I was contacted by the government, the cabinet. How can you not come and hear our cry?
"As someone who was there, they don't come to see and hear first-hand the conditions, to shock you so that you understand the urgency, that every minute there increases in their lives. Every minute you fight is a minute we get another horrible video of more bodies being released to us."
Later, Aloni-Cunio revealed that since the October 7 Massacre, her nights are never the same. "A lot of nightmares, especially around October 7, anxiety about their fate. David, Ariel, Arbel and Dolev, who didn't even get to know his daughter who was born a few days after the start of the war. And a lot of other families, everything just haunts the night, there is no day and no night , and it won't be until they don't come back. You can't even begin to process this experience, I personally still live in it."
"I haven't started to digest yet, we are with my parents, I can't move into a house without him, just me and the girls, it's a horror scenario for me, it makes me feel like I have to acknowledge the state of life without him and I'm just not able to take such a step. We're here until David He will return," she emphasized, "I truly feel my enormous gratitude to the citizens, because the cry they uttered, I believe, is the one that applied the pressure for the first deal thanks to which we are here."
"Many people approach on the street, many very warm, wanting to hug, support and pray for David. There are sometimes the less pleasant questions that come up, which I gently explain that it's difficult for me to relate to, that I prefer not to get into it, and people respect that very much."
At the end, Sharon Aloni-Cunio asked to thank the Israeli public. "This nation simply united in a way that I didn't believe could happen. The fact that it continues is what gives us families of the abductees the strength to go on for a little while and hold on to hope - we are not left alone. This is also what I expect from the cabinet."