Daniel Aloni

Daniel Aloni, a 45-year-old devoted single mother, and her 6-year-old daughter Emilia were abducted by Hamas during a visit to their relatives in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Aloni's harrowing experience of captivity was marked by moments of sheer terror and a profound sense of helplessness. In an emotional recount of her ordeal during an extensive interview on Channel midnight, Aloni shared the overwhelming fear that gripped her as she and her daughter were taken: “‘I’m sorry, we’re going to die here,’” she recalled telling Emilia, encapsulating the despair she felt in that moment.

Aloni's narrative is a chilling testament to the terror of her abduction, as she described the indescribable fear with, “a feeling of terror that cannot be explained in words. There aren’t words in Hebrew that can describe this kind of terror." Her desperate attempts to keep her daughter with her were met with cold indifference by their captors, as illustrated by her plea in Arabic, “La, la! Binti, Binti! La!” (No, no! My daughter, my daughter! No!), and the captor's menacing gesture mimicking shooting her daughter.

The conditions of their captivity were dire, with Aloni and Emilia exposed to the grim reality of Hamas's network of tunnels and the sight of other hostages bearing untreated and open wounds. This environment of constant fear and imminent danger was briefly punctured by moments of poignant tenderness, such as when Emilia, in a role reversal, comforted her mother during a panic attack, telling her, “Mom, don’t cry, I’m okay, I’m okay.”