Released hostage Yarden Bibas described meeting Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar while in captivity in Gaza, after which he was allowed to remain with his best friend, David Cunio, who is still a hostage, for two weeks before they were separated.
“David is my best friend, he has been with me my whole life,” Bibas told Channel 12 news in an interview published on Tuesday evening, the day before Cunio was to celebrate his 35th birthday, his second in captivity.
Bibas said he crossed paths with Cunio in the Hamas tunnels after they were abducted on October 7, 2023, in an attack masterminded by Sinwar. Their families, too, were among the 251 people kidnapped when the Hamas terror group led a devastating invasion of southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and triggering the war in the Gaza Strip.
Bibas’s wife Shiri, and their children Ariel, 4, and baby Kfir, were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, then murdered in captivity in Gaza.
Cunio was taken hostage from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the onslaught, along with his wife Sharon Aloni Cunio, and their 3-year-old twin daughters, Yuli and Emma. Sharon’s sister Danielle Aloni, 44, and her daughter, Emilia, 5, who were visiting them for the holiday weekend, were also kidnapped by terrorists who stormed their kibbutz home. Cunio’s brother Ariel Cunio was also taken captive, along with his girlfriend Arbel Yehoud.
Aloni Cunio, Aloni, and the three young girls were released from captivity during a ceasefire in November 2023. Yehoud was released in January 2025 as part of a subsequent ceasefire-hostage release deal.
Bibas said he met David Cunio on the day the latter’s wife and daughters were released from captivity on November 27, 2023.
“He passed by me in the tunnel [as he was being taken somewhere else]. When he saw me for the first time, he was in shock. He thought he was seeing a ghost. I hugged him, and then he continued to the next place,” Bibas said.
At the time, Hamas claimed that Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas had been killed in an Israeli airstrike and forced Yarden to make a video in which he blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for refusing to return their bodies to Israel as part of the ongoing hostage deal.
Bibas told Channel 12 that when he realized his family had been killed, he wanted to be with Cunio, whom he met in first grade.
His guards agreed, and Bibas was moved in with Cunio. The move may have saved his life, as the other hostages he was with at the time were later murdered by their Hamas guards.
It was while the two were together that Sinwar came to see them.
“When Sinwar arrived at the tunnel, I said to him that this is my best friend and I want to stay with him. He said there was no problem, you can stay with him. After around two weeks, they separated us. I don’t know why,” Bibas said.
Even after their separation, the two occasionally met as they were being moved about in the tunnels.
“There was always a strong hug and a kiss on my cheek,” Bibas said.
Sinwar was killed by IDF troops in Gaza in October 2024.
Bibas was released on February 1 of this year as part of the second ceasefire deal with Hamas. The bodies of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir, were also returned under the same framework. An Israeli autopsy determined that they had been murdered by their Hamas guards.
Bibas said he agreed to speak with Channel 12 not in order to tell his own story, but to raise awareness about Cunio and the other hostages, calling for greater efforts for their return.
“I clung to the hope of seeing Shiri and the children,” he said of his time in captivity. “I know that David is holding onto the same thing, to see Sharon and the girls, his brothers, and his parents.”
Sharon Aloni Cunio on Wednesday pleaded for her husband David to be released from Gaza as he marked his second birthday in captivity.
“David misses Emma and Yuli, and they miss him. Not a day goes by without them asking, ‘When will Daddy come back from Gaza?’ They need their father to heal. To recover. To rebuild trust. And he’s not here,” she said in a statement.
“I’m consumed by longing for the man I love, the one I cannot live without. Every day he doesn’t return deepens their wound, and mine,” she said. “Emma and Yuli need their father. Alive. Breathing. At home. I need my husband here, with me. Bring him back, before the heartbreak becomes a scar that will never fade.”
To mark the occasion, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum released a video of Aloni Cunio along with her husband’s twin brother Eitan and her husband’s best friend, Bibas.
The Cunio twins are among 58 hostages held by terror groups in the Gaza Strip, including 57 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.
They include the bodies of 35 hostages confirmed dead by the IDF, including an IDF soldier killed in 2014 whose body has been held since then. Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the well-being of three others, Israeli officials have said.