Captivity survivor Yarden Bibas shares his longing for his friend David Cunio, who is still held by Hamas in Gaza. “Sinwar promised me we’d stay together, but we were separated.”
Captivity survivor Yarden Bibas spoke to Channel 12 News about his deep longing for his best friend, David Cunio, who remains in Hamas captivity in Gaza.
The two had been inseparable for years, starting from first grade, and were briefly together during their captivity. “I met David the day Sharon (David’s wife) was released,” recounted Bibas. “He passed by me in the tunnel and continued to where he was being held. When he saw me for the first time, he was in shock. He thought he was looking at a ghost. I didn’t recognize him at first either, but once I did, I just got up, we hugged, and they hurried him to move on to the next place.”
Yarden requested to be held captive with David on the day he was informed of the deaths of his wife, Shiri, and their children, Ariel and Kfir. “I wanted to be with my closest friend. At first, I was scared to ask to be moved. I didn’t know where he was, whether he was with better or worse people. I knew the ones I was with, so maybe it was better to stay. I was terrified to leave, but after the video [the Hamas terrorists made me record], I realized I had to be with David. We slept on mattresses side by side. He was thinking about his daughters and Sharon, about everyone. He thought a lot about his brother, because he didn’t know his condition.”
“The last words he had in his mind were Eitan (his twin brother) saying, ‘Save me.’ There’s this thing with twins feeling each other. When he told me, ‘I can’t feel my brother,’ I started to worry. Later, after a long time, he told me one of his captors said they saw his brother on TV, so I knew he could at least breathe a sigh of relief about Eitan,” he added.
Their time together in captivity was short. “I was with David for, I think, about two or three weeks, and then they separated us—despite my request to Sinwar. He asked me, ‘What can I do to help you?’ I told him, ‘I want you to allow me to stay with David.’”
After the terrorists filmed Yarden and informed him of the deaths of Shiri and their sons, he asked for only one thing from the captors: David. When Sinwar came to the tunnel, Yarden made the same request. “I told him, ‘This is my best friend, I want to stay with him,’” Yarden said. “He said, ‘No problem, you’ll stay with him.’”
Despite Sinwar’s promise, Yarden and David were separated. “He didn’t understand why they separated us, and neither did I.”
On one occasion, David passed by some hostages. “He made sure they brought me a pillow; he sent a pillow for me,” Yarden described. “We’d meet occasionally when we passed each other in the tunnel, sometimes when they moved us from one place to another, or when they moved them. It was always a quick, strong hug and ‘keep going.’ I hope he’s strong, I hope he knows everyone is waiting for him.”
Regarding his daily life, Bibas says, “You can’t really recover. Because I was there, in the same tunnels he’s sleeping in, on the same mattresses he’s sleeping on. It feels wrong that I have a big bed to sleep in, hot water to shower with, and three meals a day. My best friend doesn’t have a choice.”
