Exclusive | Bittersweet Mothers Day for Israeli moms whose husbands remain in captivity

Mother’s Day this Sunday serves as a grim reminder for three Israeli moms who’ve been pulling double duty as their husbands suffer in Hamas captivity — making them real-life “Wonder Women.”Sharon Cunio, Lishay Miran and Rivka Bohbot have been caught in a hellish dilemma over the past 19 months — keeping their hostage husbands’ memories alive while also raising their kids single-handedly, they told The Post.“We have to fight every day for them to remember their father and the amazing dad that he is, and the difficult times that we go through without him over here.And I keep reminding them that the things that they ask me to do as dad are dad’s things, and I’m not replacing anything.

This is like dad doing it through me,” explained Cunio, 36.Cunio, her husband David and their twin daughters Emma and Julie, now 4, were all abducted from their Kubbutz Nir Oz home during the Oct.7 attack.The couple expected the family to be released together, but they discovered in horror that David was being held behind while the girls and their mother were granted freedom after 52 days.“We’ve never been separated for that long, and I think that something happened after our release from captivity that made me understand how much he is my other half and how much we shared our life together,” said Cunio, who has been with David for 12 years.“I try to do my best to keep myself happy or pretend I’m happy in front of them, but it’s really difficult because it’s 24/7 around the clock.

You’re alone with them.You have to handle the trauma that they’re going through without their father here, and you have to take care of the post-trauma that they have from captivity and from October 7.

And it’s really, really hard to do it alone.”Bath time was an especially hard transition for the Cunio girls — it was the first thing the mother wanted to do for her young daughters after their release, but it was a task that their father had done with them for thei...