2024-01-17 03:58:00
More than 100 days following the massacres, a former Israeli hostage remembers the horrors of the Hamas massacre and calls for the release of all captives (AP)
More than 100 days following the massacres of that Saturday, October 7, that Hamas committed on the Israeli people by breaking into their territory, Sharon Alony Cunio spoke in first person regarding this episode and the terrifying subsequent days she spent with her family as hostages in Gaza.
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Cunio, with her husband David and her three-year-old twin daughters, Emma and Julie, lived in the Nir Oz kibbutz, on the border with the Strip. That morning they were at her house with her family and, upon noticing the incidents, they quickly took refuge in her safe room. David slammed the door shut and managed to isolate the intruders.
However, they turned on the gas and set the house on fire, forcing them to leave. Sharon remembers that her husband took the girls and she began to lose consciousness. Her sister shook her and helped her out of the room. “Let’s open the window and get out, it’s better that they shoot us… that way there won’t be any suffering,” she recalled her telling him.
Sharon and her family were taken to Gaza on a tractor
But far from providing them with a painless death, the Hamas terrorists dragged them and four other people onto a stolen tractor, in which they traveled to the Palestinian enclave.
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During this journey, the family lost contact with Emma and even feared it would be forever. For the first 10 days, David, Julie and Sharon were hiding in a Palestinian house, where two fighters guarded them. She remembers that on the ninth the house next door was bombed and the walls of her room began to collapse.
To protect the girl, the parents threw themselves on top of Julie and Sharon was injured in the scalp.
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The next day, the captors began their transfer to what the mother now recognizes as the Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the south of the territory. They covered her husband with a sheet to make him look like a corpse, dressed Sharon and Julie in traditional clothes and loaded everyone into an ambulance to disguise the operation.
The days there were no better. They were on the first floor of the hospital and only a few stacked boxes separated the hostage section from the rest. As the weeks went by, the space filled up and they ended up in a crowded room with 12 other captives – although there were two other rooms nearby with, in total, regarding 30 hostages.
Furthermore, they only had a small bed and a pillow, stained with blood. Food was not guaranteed and, on the best days, they had two portions. It was generally spicy rice with meat and pita bread with feta cheese, although it was often moldy.
Sharon lost regarding 11 kilos and together with her husband had episodes of vomiting and diarrhea. “I’m hungry,” the girls cried. “It was devastating,” she lamented.
On the third day there came good news for the family. After hearing crying outside her room, a man “handed Emma to me, like she was a box or something,” Sharon said. “I was shocked. She was scared and crying, she mightn’t believe they had brought her back,” she continued.
Sharon and the girls were freed during the November truce but David remains captive in Gaza (REUTERS)
Although some of the captives received medical treatment from hospital staff and others even underwent surgery, the truth is that these stories confirm what the Israeli Army has maintained since day one: Hamas uses civilian facilities to go unnoticed in its maneuvers and victimize itself. before the international community.
The days passed and November arrived and, with this month, the truce that allowed the release of 105 captives. Last week, without telling them anything, the terrorists first moved the entire group to an outside room with a window. Sharon recalled seeing the long line of Palestinians who had fled their homes and were camping around the hospital.
However, from one day to the next, David was taken out of the room and taken to speak with a Hamas officer who broke the news: Israel and the militia had reached an agreement but only to bring back women and children. .
“We sat there for three hours, hugging. Me, him and the girls. They were crying. ‘Why do you leave? Why are they taking dad?’” they said. Three days later, on November 27, the Red Cross vehicles appeared to take them to Israel.
David is, today, one of the many hostages still alive in Gaza, awaiting their release. Although they are a few miles apart with Sharon, they are completely out of reach of each other.
“Fight for me, don’t give up. Please scream what I can’t scream. “I’m very afraid,” were David’s last words as he said goodbye to his family, in a deteriorating state of health.
Sharon vowed to fight until she gets her husband home (AP)
Emma and Julie, although now safe, continue processing everything they have experienced. From time to time, they even ask “where are the booms?”, referring to the constant bombardments they heard in Gaza, similar to thunderstorms, or regarding the terrorists guarding their door.
Sharon, for her part, decided that she will not return to the kibbutz and experiences her husband’s absence with great anguish and uncertainty. She assures that “I promised him that I would fight for him and I will not stop until he returns.”
“Everything is full of guilt. Showering, eating hot food, playing with our girls, being outside when he is in the tunnels,” she explained, adding that, in her saddest moments, she listens to a voice message from her husband in which he says, “I love you, you’re the best”.
(With information from AP)
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