Sharon Aloni-Kunio, who was released with her daughters, recreates the captivity in Gaza/Reuters
On the morning of October 7th, Hamas terrorists broke into the home of 90-year-old Esther Kunio, in Kibbutz Nir Oz in the Gaza Strip.
They demanded that she accompany them, in order to kidnap her into the Gaza Strip.
However, with her resourcefulness, and with a little help from the Argentinian soccer player Messi - she managed to be saved.
Now, the extraordinary story of the 90-year-old will be presented in a new documentary in the Spanish language.
Esther's daughter, Ruthie Feldfeber, told what happened to her mother on that black Sabbath: "Mother said that at 6:30 in the morning she was at home, she heard a red color and went into the emergency room.
The terrorists broke into her house through the window, and told her that they wanted to take her and that she could not stay alone.
They asked you if she had a family in the kibbutz or at home, and she lied and replied that she was alone."
Esther Cuño, with the terrorists who kidnapped her/official website, Fuente Latina
"They spoke a little in Arabic and a little in Hebrew," says the daughter of Shaira, "she told them that she doesn't understand well, and that she speaks Spanish."
At this point, a conversation developed between the elderly woman and the terrorists: "She asked them if they liked football and said she was from the place where Messi was born. As soon as she told them Messi, they took a picture with her."
Esther credits her survival that morning to the conversation she had with the terrorists about Messi.
One of them told her he loved the soccer player and then started taking pictures with her.
According to Ruthie, "They told the mother that she should come with them because there would be a war here and she replied that she couldn't go because they stole her walker and scooter - in response, one of the terrorists threw a designer flower pot at her and then they just left her."
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Ruthie says that her mother Esther knew they loved Messi: "My mother always told me when we warned her that she lived in Otef, that 'if terrorists come I will talk to them about Messi and they will leave me.'"
Esther was indeed rescued from her captors, but eight members of her extended family were kidnapped on the morning of Black Sabbath to Gaza.
Among them, her grandson David who is still being held in Gaza, his wife Sharon and their two daughters Yuli and her mother who were released in the kidnap deal.
Esther's face has become familiar since the war in Gaza started - this was following the publication of the photo with the terrorists who broke into her home, where she was seen holding a weapon and making the v sign with her hands.
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