Bittersweet Mother’s Day for Israeli moms whose husbands remain in captivity
Mother’s Day this Sunday serves as a grim reminder for three Israeli moms who’ve been pulling double duty as their husbands suffer in Hamas captivity — making them real-life “Wonder Women.”
Sharon Cunio, Lishay Miran-Lavi. and Rivka Bohbot have been caught in a hellish dilemma over the past 19 months — keeping their hostage husbands’ memories alive while also raising their kids single-handedly, they told The Post.
“We have to fight every day for them to remember their father and the amazing dad that he is, and the difficult times that we go through without him over here. And I keep reminding them that the things that they ask me to do as dad are dad’s things, and I’m not replacing anything. This is like dad doing it through me,” explained Cunio, 36.
Cunio, her husband David and their twin daughters Emma and Julie, now 4, were all abducted from their Kubbutz Nir Oz home during the Oct. 7 attack.
The couple expected the family to be released together, but they discovered in horror that David was being held behind while the girls and their mother were granted freedom after 52 days.
“We’ve never been separated for that long, and I think that something happened after our release from captivity that made me understand how much he is my other half and how much we shared our life together,” said Cunio, who has been with David for 12 years.
“I try to do my best to keep myself happy or pretend I’m happy in front of them, but it’s really difficult because it’s 24/7 around the clock. You’re alone with them. You have to handle the trauma that they’re going through without their father here, and you have to take care of the post-trauma that they have from captivity and from October 7. And it’s really, really hard to do it alone.”
Bath time was an especially hard transition for the Cunio girls — it was the first thing the mother wanted to do for her young daughters after their release, but it was a task that their father had done with them for their entire lives.
The girls kicked and screamed at first, but have since grown used to the new routine with mom.
“Half of me is not here, and it’s half of the girls as well. It’s getting along with a life of three, and I don’t want to get used to that,” she said. “I want him to see what his girls became … A father that hasn’t seen his girls for more than a third of their lives, it’s crazy. It’s unbearable. But mostly it’s just the loneliness. I don’t know myself without him, and I don’t want to. And it’s been hell, it’s been extremely difficult.”
On getting through it, Cunio explained that David’s memory and spirit push her to be there for their babies.
“People always say that mothers are Wonder Women, but we are able to be Wonder Women because of our Supermen,” she said.
Miran-Lavi, 40, also lived in Kibbutz Nahal Oz at the time of the attack, but Hamas left her and her daughters, Roni, 3, and Alma, 2, behind when they dragged her husband, Omri, into captivity.
The family has been living a nightmare in the ensuing months as Miran-Lavi battles to give her daughters a normal life while campaigning for Israeli leaders to bring her husband home.
“Since October 7th, I have two jobs in my life: I’m the wife of a hostage that’s still in captivity with Hamas, and I’m a mother of two young daughters that saw their father kidnapped before their eyes. I’m not sure I’m good at this, but I do my best,” said Miran-Lavi.
“Every Friday night when I light the Shabbat candles we sing and dance and we all make the wish that daddy will come back home. And Roni, when she sees a butterfly or a flower or anything she think she can make a wish on, she wishes for that. And Alma, when she started to speak, also started to make this wish.”
Roni remembers the harrowing moment her father was ripped from her life after Hamas held the family hostage in their home for hours and has taken on the heartbreaking responsibility of teaching her little sister about their hero dad.
“Every night she tells him, ‘Good night, Daddy’ to a photo of him. She remembers all the things they did together, how they used to ride his bicycle around the kibbutz,” said Miran-Lavy.
“And Alma, it’s a really different story, because Alma was just six months old on October 7th. She knows her father from a poster. She doesn’t really know what ‘Daddy’ means. Roni really helps me with this, because she tells Alma a lot of stories about Omri.”
Similarly, Rivka Bohbot struggles each day to keep her 4-year-old son Re’em’s hopes alive that he will be reunited with his father as the young boy desperately looks to other family members to fill the void.
Bohbot was an organizer for the Nova music festival that Hamas attacked on Oct. 7 — where her husband Elkbana was captured.
“Every day — every single day — my son asks when his father will come back home, when the bad people will leave and leave my husband to come back to the house to his family,” said Bohbot, who was an organizer for the Nova music festival that Hamas attacked on Oct. 7 — where her husband Elkbana was captured.
The struggle is even harder for Bohbot because her own parents live in Colombia.
“There is this big hole in our lives. You know, the mother always is taking care of the children, dressing them, making sure they are fed and look good. The father is the crazy one who starts the game with the children when they’re supposed to go to sleep. As a mother, I try to be both with Re’em, but I can’t be both,” Bohbot grieved.
Ahead of Mother’s Day, the Bohbot shared a message to cherish their loved ones — and not to wait until it’s too late to share their love.
“I say to every mother whose family is whole, just close your eyes and open them again and look at your husband, look at your children and say thank you.”
