Ex-hostage David Cunio opens up about hardships suffered during captivity in Gaza

The 35-year-old was kidnapped from his home on October 7, 2023, along with his wife, Sharon Aloni Cunio, and his then 3-year-old twin daughters, Yuli and Emma.

Former Gaza hostage David Cunio was repeatedly told by his captors that his wife had moved, he shared with N12 in an interview on Monday.

The 35-year-old was kidnapped from his home on October 7, 2023, along with his wife, Sharon Aloni Cunio, and his then 3-year-old twin daughters, Yuli and Emma. All four, along with Cunio’s sister-in-law, Danielle Aloni, and her then 5-year-old niece, tried to hide in the safe of their home, but Hamas terrorists set the house on fire.

Cunio tried to block the incoming smoke with a thick towel, but was eventually forced to escape out the window with Yuli. The two men were arrested outside the house, while the rest of the family were arrested separately and kidnapped from Gaza.

“Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see Sharon, being dragged by one of the terrorists,” Cunio told N12 about her kidnapping in Gaza. “I shouted: ‘My wife, my wife!'”

“As soon as I got to the vehicle, he asked me where Emma was,” Sharon remembers.

An IDF helicopter fired on Hamas vehicles as they headed toward Gaza, killing a kibbutz member and injuring Sharon, Cunio and Yuli with shrapnel. Throughout their ordeal, they still had no idea what had happened to Emma.

“The whole time we were asking them, telling them there was another girl who looked a lot like Yuli, named Emma, ​​and she was her twin and they could find her,” Cunio said. “But no one knew, it was such chaos.”

Once they arrived at the house in Gaza where they were going to be detained, Cunio described, he felt he had to protect his wife and daughter, as the only man there.

“I saw the two Hamas members who were keeping us sleeping,” he said, “and the knife under the bed, and I wondered if I could do anything.” But even if Cunio had managed to kill the two guards, he had no hope of escaping that way, he decided.

On the tenth day of the war, the house in which Cunio and his family were being held was bombed and the three were transferred to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.

“Yuli was on silent mode,” Cunio told N12. “Her sister was not by her side, she didn’t understand what was happening to her. We don’t know, we don’t have answers for her. She asks questions that we don’t know how to answer.”

At the hospital, the family finally found Emma. She was skinny, unkempt, had rashes, and had been brought in so Hamas could film a propaganda film about the family.

“We were holding her and she didn’t recognize us,” Cunio said. “She looks at us and continues to cry.”

Eventually, Sharon managed to calm Emma down by singing the children’s song“Red Eleinu Rowing” (Come down towards us, plane).

A family divided again: “I was dying of fear”

On the 49th day of their captivity, Sharon, Emma and Yuli were released as part of a deal between Israel and Hamas. “The worst time of my life was when I was separated from Yuli, Emma and Sharon,” Cunio said. “I couldn’t stop telling Sharon that I was scared to death. I asked everyone in the room not to give up on me, to take me out.”

Only a few weeks later, Cunio was taken from the hospital and taken to Hamas’s tunnels beneath Gaza, where he would spend the remainder of his two years in captivity.

On the first day, Cunio recalled, he asked one of the Hamas terrorists who spoke Hebrew about his twin brother, Eitan. “The last message I received from him was ‘Save me, I’m burning in my house with my family’. I was convinced he was dead and I wanted to know more.”

The terrorist told Cunio that Eitan was there and took him to another room – only for Cunio to learn that the hostage the terrorist described was Eitan Horn, not Eitan Cunio.

Horn and Cunio remained close during their captivity, but Cunio shared that he had difficulty pronouncing Horn’s name. “I said ‘Eitan’ and I started to cry,” he remembers.

It was only on the last day of his captivity that Cunio learned that his brother was alive.

Cunio suffered physical and psychological torture

Cunio detailed the numerous physical and psychological tortures he endured during his captivity. “There was a time when we drank 250 milliliters of water and half a pita a day,” he recalls. “It’s pitch black and you can hear people’s stomachs churning. We begged them to give us another spoonful of jam, something else small, but they didn’t give us anything.”

Although they gradually grew weaker from the inhumane treatment, Cunio and the other hostages had to walk for hours through the tunnels. “We thought we would walk for an hour or two… From ten in the morning until eleven in the evening we walked in these tunnels.”

Cunio described moments of anguish and despair, but also a fragment of hope that he was able to cling to. “I had a hair tie belonging to my daughters that I found in my pocket, and bracelets that I made from date stones,” he explained. “I would sit with them, I would close my eyes and I would pray. I would talk to them, I would tell them that I love them, that they are my most precious things in the world.” This bond with her daughters gave Cunio the strength to cling to reality when things seemed darkest.

Hamas members lied to Cunio about his family, he shared, telling him that his wife had moved away and could have been with someone else. “It sinks in slowly, this garbage,” he said. “No matter how fake it seems, in there it seemed completely real.”

On October 8, 2025, Cunio was finally informed of his release. He was delighted to find his younger brother, Ariel, who had also been taken hostage. Both had a video call with their family the morning of their release.

“All of a sudden I see that everyone in my family is still alive,” Cunio described. “Everyone, everyone, not even one missing.”

Cunio was trembling when he found his daughters for the first time after his captivity. “All I wanted,” he explained, “was for them to run to me and hug me.”

Cunio was amazed at how much his daughters had grown. “Their communication, the way they talk to Sharon, the sentences that connect and don’t get stuck in the middle, it’s like every little thing has changed. Their hair is long, long, long.”

“It’s not easy to come back from captivity and try to start a family as if nothing had happened, especially when you have little girls,” Cunio concluded. “Little by little, they trust me again, want me closer to them. Things are starting to fall into place.