When the 90-year-old woman mentioned the name of Argentine football sensation Lionel Messi, she managed to escape being abducted. This woman appears to have survived the onslaught on Kibbutz Nir Oz, which was spearheaded by Hamas during Israel’s October 7th raid last year.
The 90-year-old Esther Cunio will be included in a documentary series that tells this tale from the Israeli perspective. As Cunio disclosed that she is from the same village as Lionel Messi, rumors have it that she was spared from being taken prisoner. The Argentine football player was born in Rosario.
According to additional reports, eight or so of her family members were captured. A truce between the Israeli government and Hamas resulted in the release of five family members. Ariel and David Cunio, two of her grandhidler, are still being detained, nonetheless. Arbel Yehud, Ariel’s girlfriend, is also detained in Gaza.
She has also gone on to request the release of her surviving family members. She also described the events leading up to the ordeal. When the Hamas wanted to see her family after knocking on her door, she responded that she didn’t have any.
But because she doesn’t speak Hebrew well and the Hamas fighters spoke Arabic, they were unable to converse effectively.
“Now I would ask for my grandchildren, for my two grandchildren who are locked up there, and I would tell him to please pray to God, to send them… that he tries to get them out because they are kids who are worth gold,” Cunio says in the film.
“One of them asked, ‘Where is your family?’” she recalls. “I don’t have any family, I tell him,” she told them. “I am alone.”
“You speak Arabic, and I speak Hebrew poorly,” she told him. “I speak Argentine, Spanish… Do you watch soccer?”
“Messi!” replied the gunman, enthusing about the World Cup-winning Argentinian national team captain. “I like Messi.”
“I hope that if [Messi] knows that I mentioned him, and because of him, I was saved,” she says in the film.
