A new four-part documentary, 7/10 Testigos del Terror, produced by the organization Fuente Latina, sheds light on an overlooked perspective of the October 7 Hamas massacre—the experience of Spanish-speaking immigrants in Israel, the largest migrant group targeted in the attack.
Fuente Latina CEO Leah Soibel discussed the project in an interview with Ynet on Sunday, emphasizing the documentary’s importance in documenting the atrocities through the voices of Latin Americans in Israel.
Fuente Latina CEO Leah Soibel discusses her new documentary on the impact of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel's Latin American community
(Video: Yaron Brener)
The series captures the unique immigration stories of Latin Americans in Israel and features testimonies from the Bibas family, of Argentine-Peruvian descent, whose desperate pleas for the return of their kidnapped loved ones ended in heartbreak.
What inspired Fuente Latina and you to produce this documentary focusing on Spanish-speaking survivors of October 7?
“When I founded Fuente Latina back in 2012 from my kitchen table in Jerusalem, I did so because I found a void in the Spanish-speaking media market. And there it was a desire on behalf of the Spanish speaking world to get to know Israel and the Jewish community better. And so Fuente Latina tells stories, and it tells stories about Israel and the Jewish community, stories that resonate with millions of non-Jewish Hispanics worldwide.
“In Israel, we're so fortunate because we have such an incredibly large and just an amazing Spanish-speaking community and many of those storytellers had always lived around the Gaza border in the kibbutz scene and they some of them were even the founders of the kibbutz movement and the kibbutz scene there on the Gaza border.
“When October 7 happened, I made a decision that we need to stop telling these stories on sound bites, and we need to do it in a much more profound way. Their stories must be heard because we know here in the West that the best way to reach a Hispanic is through a cultural and linguistic lens that resonates with them, and that is precisely the importance and the power right now of Israel's Spanish-speaking community to get those stories told.”
Can you share some of the stories and the testimonies featured in the film? For example, I saw Sylvia Cunio in the trailer.
“We decided to do this documentary in December, and we just ran [with it] because we know the urgency and because we know time is short and we need to be telling these stories and get it out there. We filmed 41 testimonies, and those 41 testimonies of young people that survived Nova—a young Colombian woman who called her partner in Tel Aviv who drove down in the midst of the attack, found her and saved her while her other friends were in the bomb shelter, and unfortunately were killed by Hamas during the massacre.
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90-year-old Esther Cunio recounts her near-abduction on October 7
(Photo: Fuente Latina)
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Esther Cunio made to pose for the camera by terrorists during the October 7 attack
(Photo: Fuente Latina)
“You have families, the 90-year-old Cunio grandmother [Esther Cunio] who said that the terrorist came back several times to her house, and because she mentioned [soccer player Lionel] Messi and trying to explain where she's from, which is Argentina. She built a relationship with the terrorist in that second and she says in the documentary that she believes Messi saved her life.”
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The movie shares the stories of young, old, mothers, fathers, those that came back after being taken hostage in Gaza and those families that still have loved ones today like the Horn family and the Cunio family.
"We made a decision to break up the episodes in a different way—not by different localities—because most people outside of Israel don't even know what a kibbutz is. They don't even know that there are Latinos in Israel, and so the first episode breaks down why there are Latinos in Israel and how they got there. They got there the same way all migrants do—they fled their homes in Latin America because of political or economic insecurities, and they were searching for a better home, and those homes happen to have been on a border, hoping to build a better life for their family and to have security. So the first episode breaks down Latino immigration to Israel, which frankly is not very well investigated.
“The second episode tells the stories of the Hispanic survivors of Nova. The third episode talks about the women who came back from captivity after being kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, and their family members who used the mainstream media, and went repeatedly to the United States and Latin America to use their voices to get freedom for their family members. The fourth episode talks with those families and family members who still have loved ones in captivity. And now we think we may even have to do a fifth episode because the story is still developing.”
How has the October 7 attack been reported on in Spanish-speaking countries?
"It depends on the country. The Hispanic community is not all the same—Argentina is very different from Mexico and the U.S. Hispanic community. By and large, if we look at what's happening in English, it has been quite fair, largely thanks to what Fuente Latina has been doing. We brought more than 100 non-Jewish Hispanic journalists to Israel since October 7, and we continue to do so to ensure that every single Hispanic journalist that wants to have an opportunity to see, to learn the facts for themselves, to speak with the family members, to speak with those that came back from captivity, has the opportunity to do so and to cover it through Latino lens for their specific audiences.”
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Paula and Romina Engelbert, of Latin American descent, advocate for the release of their loved ones held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. From 7/10 Testigos del Terror
(Photo: Screengrab)
Where do you plan to screen the documentary and what kind of reactions have you received so far?
"We screened it last week in Los Angeles in an event in cooperation with Creative Artists Agency and SCA Latino, and the reaction was incredible because there we had Hispanics, non-Jews, Jews who are not Hispanic and Hispanic Jews, and the feedback from the non-Jewish Hispanics was, ‘this wasn't in my feed,’ ‘I didn't know this,’ ‘I didn't think it was true, but now I believe’ and ‘now I promise to share this message.’ The Hispanic Latinos [felt that] somebody's telling their story.”
What message do you hope the audience takes away from this film?
"That we in the Jewish community in Israel have an asset—Spanish language stories. I do this every day for a living, and I can tell you that these stories resonate with non-Jewish Hispanics, but we have to get out of the communications bubble. We have to speak to them and tell these stories in a way that resonates with people. You would be surprised that there are people on this side of the world that still don't know about October 7, and these stories can help us not only tell that story but to ensure that it never happens again.”