Families of five pairs of sibling hostages held in Gaza mark 400 days of captivity

Sylvia Cunio doesn’t live in Kibbutz Nir Oz right now, but when she visits, she has only one wish: To go to Gaza and find her two sons who were taken hostage last October 7.

“I was in Nir Oz the other week and I said to my friends, to my family, ‘Let’s go to Gaza, let’s go, let’s go get them,'” she said. “I just want to go to Gaza and bring them out myself.”

The Cunios are part of a distinct circle within the broader group of hostage families — those awaiting the return of two siblings held by Hamas in Gaza.

Many sets of siblings were taken hostage on October 7, but only five pairs are left in the enclave, with their families bereft and anxious about the future of their loved ones. Four of those are David and Ariel Cunio, Eli and Yossi Sharabi, Iair and Eitan Horn and twins Gali and Ziv Berman. The fifth pair of captive siblings are Ariel and Kfir Bibas, ages 5 and 22 months, who were taken hostage to Gaza with their mother Shiri Bibas, and their father Yarden Bibas abducted separately, from Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Sylvia’s sons David Cunio, 34, and Ariel Cunio, 27, were each taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz. David was taken with his wife, Sharon and their three-year-old twins, along with Sharon’s sister Danielle and niece Emilia who were visiting Nir Oz that weekend. Ariel was taken hostage with his girlfriend, Arbel Yehud.

On November 27, sisters Sharon and Danielle and their three young children were all released home to Israel under the week-long truce. David was left behind, injured, rail thin and terrified, as described by his wife, Sharon, who was aghast at the idea of leaving him behind in Gaza.

Ariel and Arbel are also still held in Gaza.

“I have hope and that’s the last thing I’ll lose,” Sylvia said. “But I won’t believe they’re coming back until I see them with my own eyes, next to me, and hug them, smell them and cook for them.”

Brothers pulled apart

Up until October 7, 2023, Gali and Ziv Berman, 27-year-old twins, led poignantly parallel lives. The two lived next door to each other in Kibbutz Kfar Aza’s neighborhood for younger members, and both worked as sound technicians.

Taken from their homes on October 7, the pair are still both in Gaza, though they are believed to have been separated while in captivity, according to information received by the family months ago. Relatives have declined media requests in recent weeks.

Yossi Sharabi, 54, and Eli Sharabi, 51, both members of Kibbutz Be’eri, were also taken hostage on October 7.

Eli Sharabi, is still believed to be alive in Gaza, but it’s presumed that he doesn’t know that his wife and teenage daughters were killed at their home on that day.

Yossi Sharabi was taken hostage with his daughter’s boyfriend and a neighbor’s teenage son, both of whom were released at the end of November. Months later, on January 16, he was identified as having been killed in captivity; his body is still held in Gaza.

“If we don’t get his body back soon, we won’t have anything left to bury,” said their younger brother Sharon Sharabi.

Sharon Sharabi has been endlessly active in the struggle to bring his brothers home and is one of the six family representatives on the board of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

An information technology manager at Bank Hapoalim, Sharon hasn’t worked for the last year. His role at the Forum involves being in contact with the government, and he chooses his words carefully when speaking about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the missed opportunities to bring the hostages home.

“I’m so thankful for the heroic efforts of the soldiers, and I wish the war would end, and that we succeed in bringing all the hostages home and returning all the evacuees home,” he said.

Sharon was at home in the West Bank settlement of Alfei Menashe on October 7. The whole family had gathered at Sharon’s home to celebrate Sukkot a few days earlier.

The siblings grew up near Ramat Gan, and Eli was the first to move to Kibbutz Be’eri, settling there as a young adult. On the kibbutz, he met his future wife, Lianne, a young Jewish volunteer from England and they had two daughters, Yahel and Noiya.

His older brother, Yossi, followed him there after some years of travel and living abroad. He met his future wife Nira on the kibbutz, and they raised their three daughters there, occasionally hosting the extended Sharabi families on holidays.

“I haven’t mourned Yossi yet, I haven’t had time to mourn him, Lianne and the girls because my life’s mission is to return Eli for my mother,” said Sharon. “I swore I would return Eli to her.”

The family presumes that Eli was first taken hostage before his wife and daughters were shot and killed. Their bodies were found between the safe room and the living room of their Be’eri home.

“We lost four people,” said Sharon. “We sit around the table at the holidays and there are five chairs that are empty, four of them will never be full again.”

He is focused on the struggle to save Eli and to bury his brother Yossi, a measure of mourning that he feels is vital for his sister-in-law and nieces.

“I try not to think about the terrible possibilities,” said Sharon. “I try to be optimistic, I try to imagine my mother hugging Eli.”

Argentinians in Nir Oz

Sylvia Cunio, 64, leads her family in the struggle to save her two sons who were taken from Nir Oz.

She and her husband, Louis, 65, moved to Israel from Argentina in 1986, first living in Ashkelon with their eldest, then a toddler, before a friend brought them to the kibbutz.

“I didn’t know anything about life on a kibbutz,” said Sylvia, who had trouble getting pregnant. She described the kibbutz community’s support, as “like an incubator.”

“They take care of you, feed you, house you,” said Cunio, who has worked in the children’s house, the kindergarten, in the chicken coop, the kitchen and in the kibbutz laundry room over the years. “I loved it more than my husband did.”

The extended Cunio clan had a large presence on the kibbutz. Aside from Sylvia and Louis, the kibbutz was also home to Louis’s mother Esther, 90, the Cunios’ eldest son, Lucas, and his family, and three more sons — Eitan, David and Ariel — who all lived in homes with their families just a few minutes walk away from one another.

Each unit of the Cunio family was in their own home on the kibbutz on October 7, said Sylvia Cunio, speaking by Zoom from her temporary apartment in Kiryat Gat, where most of the kibbutz has been evacuated for the last year.

The elder Cunios survived the terrorist onslaught in their sealed room. Lucas and Eitan Cunio also survived with their families.

Esther was alone in her kibbutz apartment and somehow kept her cool with the terrorists who broke into her home, distracting them with a conversation about Argentinian football star Messi. One terrorist took a video with Esther holding his Kalashnikov before they left her alone, a video that went viral when it was later discovered.

It wasn’t until later in the day on October 7, when the survivors were gathered, that Sylvia heard from a neighbor what had happened to David, Sharon and their girls.

The neighbor had been taken captive on a stolen kibbutz tractor with David, his wife Sharon and one of their 3-year-old twins, and a few others. (Their other twin daughter spent 10 days alone in captivity before being reunited with her family inside Gaza.)

As the terrorists drove the tractor across the kibbutz fields toward Gaza, an IDF helicopter opened fire at them, apparently unaware of the existence of hostages in the vehicle.

One of the hostages was killed, others were hurt and the neighbor played dead, later rolling off the tractor and crawling home for over two hours to the kibbutz.

The Cunios only found out later that their youngest son, Ariel and his girlfriend, Arbel, were also taken hostage. The last they heard from Ariel was at 8:28 a.m., when he wrote a text message to the family group, saying that they were in a horror film.

It’s all still a shock for Cunio nearly 13 months later, and she acknowledged that she can’t summon her usual strength and energy, but she pushes herself, whenever she can.

She takes care of her husband, Louis, who is ill, and does everything she can for her children and seven grandchildren. What gives her strength is speaking to groups, mostly groups of religious women gathered through a new friend in Carmei Gat.

Her friend brings Cunio to speak with those who are less exposed to the news and personal stories from the war and October 7.

“They’ve heard about some of it, maybe, but to meet a mother who has two kids held hostage is something else,” said Sylvia Cunio. “When they see me crying, they hug me and that gives me strength. I’m thirsty to tell my story.”

From Buenos Aires to Israel

Like the Cunios, Iair Horn, 46, was also part of a large Argentinian expat community in Nir Oz.

Iair was hosting his younger brother Eitan on the kibbutz for the Simchat Torah holiday weekend when the attack unfolded.

Eitan lives in Kfar Saba, as does his mother, Ruty Strum, and another brother, Amos with his family. Their father, Itzik Horn, lives in Ashkelon.

Itzik Horn said he would have regular get-togethers with his sons at various locations. During those meetings, he said, “We always eat barbecue, real Argentinian barbecue, not chicken wings.”

“We’re a Zionist family,” said Itzik, who survived the 1994 terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires. “We came here to be Jewish, to be in a place where there’s no antisemitism. What holds me is the hope that they’re okay and will come back but the government isn’t doing what they can.”

Itzik receives dialysis three times a week at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, and from there he usually makes his way to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum headquarters, to help however he can.

He has received some bits and pieces of information about his sons from the army, but can’t divulge those details. He spoke with former hostages released last November who saw his boys, but those sightings are now nearly a year old.

“I’m waiting for a real message,” Itzik said.