Alana Zaichik, like President Donald Trump, is heading to Israel where her family will finally be reunited as part of a ceasefire agreement brokered by the White House to end the war in Gaza.
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- On October 7, 2023, seven members of Alana Zejcik’s family were taken hostage by Hamas.
- A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas could allow the two remaining detained family members to be released.
- The five family members were previously released during a temporary ceasefire in November 2023.
- Families continue to grapple with the trauma of kidnapping and captivity, especially for young children.
WASHINGTON — Somewhere in the Midwest, above the clouds, the news flashed on Alana Zejcik’s phone.
Hamas and Israel have agreed to ceasefire terms brokered by the White House, ending more than two years of fighting and potentially allowing the release of hostages still held in Gaza.
Zejcik couldn’t wait to get off the plane. She had been working and praying for this day. On October 7, 2023, her seven Jewish family members in Israel were abducted by Hamas fighters. Five of them, two cousins and three young daughters, were among the first hostages released as part of a temporary ceasefire in November 2023. However, the cousin’s husband, David Cunio, and his brother, Ariel Cunio, remained in captivity.
Czajczyk cried and frantically sent messages to her family. A text message from one of her cousins confirmed what she had read on the plane from Los Angeles to New York.
David and Ariel are back home. Right away.
“I was excited and wanted to jump on it,” she said.
But she didn’t. There was still work to be done.
“Fight for me. Don’t give up.’
Ms. Zejcik and her cousin are close. Like sisters. That’s what happens when you grow up with only siblings.
Sharon Kunio was the closest thing she had to a sister. As teenagers, they would walk around town and talk about the boy during Zejchik’s annual vacation to Israel.
Her other cousin, Danielle Arony, was like a big sister to her. When Danielle came to New Jersey to work as a nanny during high school, Zaychik stole cigarettes from her.
Their kidnapping hit Zejcik like a punch to the gut. Sharon and David were at home with their twin daughters, Emma and Yuri, then just three years old, in Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel, near the Gaza Strip, when armed Hamas militants opened fire. Daniel and his 5-year-old daughter Amelia were visiting for the weekend.
David’s younger brother Ariel was in another house on the same kibbutz.
All seven people were taken hostage. They were among 251 other men, women and children kidnapped in a brutal attack on Israel that killed 1,400 people.
When she returned to Brooklyn, Zejcik made it her mission to find her family. Two days earlier, she had quit her job at a social media technology platform. Searching for missing relatives becomes her full-time job.
She turned to traditional and social media to keep the world’s attention on the hostages. She agreed to an interview. I met with members of Congress. Hand over the petition to the United Nations. I sent a ton of long distance text and voice messages to my family in Israel.
Then, seven weeks after the kidnapping, a breakthrough occurred. Daniel and Amelia were released the day after Thanksgiving as part of a temporary ceasefire brokered by Qatar and the United States. Three days later, Sharon and the twins were also released.
Zeitchik wanted to meet them. To hug them. She boarded a plane to Israel the following February. Sharon was sleeping on the couch when we arrived.
“I just crawled in and held her forever,” Zejcik said.
She always believed they would come back. But when I met them and learned they were alive, I felt a great sense of relief. “It was very emotional,” she said.
However, the family was not yet complete. David and Ariel were still missing. He is still being held hostage somewhere in Gaza.
“Fight for me. Don’t give up,” David, who was thin, frail and with a scar on his leg, told Sharon as they hugged one last time before being released, she recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.
“Scream what I can’t scream,” he begged. “It’s really scary.”
No one in the family has seen them since. Week after week there were reports that some hostages had died in captivity. Still, the family held out hope that David and Ariel were alive. Then, last February, encouraging signs appeared. A recently released hostage sent a message to Sharon that David had been seen a few days earlier.
No sightings of Ariel have been reported. However, he and David are both believed to be alive, according to the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, a volunteer group focused on the safe return of all abductees in the Gaza Strip.
“Anything is possible”
Zejcik’s family has not received any official information about when David and Ariel will be released. The White House says it will likely be next Monday or Tuesday. But exactly when and where, they don’t know.
“We will not breathe until we are all home and in the arms of our loved ones,” Zejcik said.
Still, they are optimistic. The Israeli government approved the peace agreement early on Friday, October 10, and announced that a ceasefire had come into effect. Under the agreement, the Israeli military is to partially withdraw its troops within 24 hours and completely cease fighting in Gaza. Hamas is expected to free the 20 surviving Israeli hostages within 72 hours.
Zaichik is as confident as he can be that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders will see through to the deal.
“I know there is a lot of pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu from the U.S. government, and that was necessary,” she said. “And he agreed. That was the most important part for us. I also know that the Arab countries are putting a lot of pressure on Hamas and really pushing them into a corner. So I’m generally confident right now.”
still …
She paused for a moment to consider the possibility of the deal unraveling.
“Something can go wrong at any time,” she said. “I never dreamed that my family would be kidnapped. Now I know anything can happen.”
“Why are they trying to kill me?”
When David and Ariel return, she believes, the trauma of the past two years will not end.
Zejcik said Sharon has done her best to raise the twins on her own while fighting for David’s release. She hides her depression by putting on a happy face for the girls. They are now 5 years old and have been without their father for 2 years. They still play the silly games he taught them. They wear T-shirts embossed with color photos of his smiling face. They are startled by the sound of an “emergency alert” siren warning of falling rockets.
Amelia, now 7 years old, vividly remembers the kidnapping, the bad guys who took them, the terrible food they ate, and how the water in the shower froze. The time she had to take shelter in an air raid shelter was particularly painful for her.
“Why are they trying to kill me?” she asks.
Zychik said the state is providing trauma counseling and the girls’ mothers are coping with a lot of support from family, friends and others. Children, she says, are resilient in their own way. “But they have significant trauma from their time in captivity that we are still dealing with and will probably continue to deal with.”
David and Ariel have now been missing for 737 days and will take time to heal before they return. Israeli hospitals are preparing to receive all the hostages once they are released. Doctors will monitor their medical conditions and needs to see what complications have arisen during their care.
It is unclear how long they will be hospitalized. But when they finally come home, Zejcik said their families are ready to embrace them with all the love they need on the road to recovery.
On Friday, October 10, Zejchik boarded another plane in New York and returned to Israel.
She had planned the trip before the peace deal was announced and before she knew David and Ariel would be returning home. Still, she held out hope that her family would be whole again while there.
“I thought the universe was going to give me a gift,” she said.
Finally, she thinks it has happened.
Contributor: Joey Garrison
Michael Collins writes about the intersection of politics and culture. He is a veteran reporter who has covered the White House and Congress. X Follow him at @mcollinsNEWS.
