The 2 tiny redheaded boys had captured the hearts of Israelis and have become symbols of the lengthy and emotional marketing campaign for the discharge of the scores of hostages seized throughout the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, 2023.
On Thursday, below grey, stormy skies, an anguished nation marked an unofficial day of mourning after Hamas handed over three black coffins that the group mentioned bore the stays of Ariel Bibas, who was solely 4 when he was taken captive to the Gaza Strip; his child brother, Kfir Bibas, who was not even 9 months previous on the time; and their mom, Shiri Bibas, who was 32.
A fourth coffin bore the stays of Oded Lifshitz, an octogenarian grandfather, a peace activist and a founding father of the pastoral Israeli village of Nir Oz, close to the border with Gaza, the place he and the Bibas household resided.
All had been alive when taken. And later it will be revealed that solely three of the 4 had been really returned.
At a grotesque handover ceremony in Gaza on Thursday morning, with loud music blaring within the background, the coffins had been placed on show on a podium bearing pictures from household pictures that had been additionally utilized in Israel for hostage posters: Ariel in a bit white polo shirt; Kfir with a large, toothless grin clutching a vivid pink cuddly toy; and Shiri Bibas, smiling and radiant earlier than the household’s world fell in.
The masked gunmen, although, appeared to have blended up the kids’s footage and names.
Within the early hours of Friday morning, the Israeli army introduced in a press release that the stays of Ariel and Kfir had been positively recognized by Israel’s Nationwide Middle of Forensic Drugs and the Israel police.
Mr. Lifshitz’s physique had been positively recognized earlier on Thursday.
However in a surprising and gut-wrenching twist, the army mentioned that the identification course of had decided that the extra physique obtained was not that of Shiri Bibas, and that no match was discovered for some other hostage. “That is an nameless, unidentified physique,” the army mentioned, calling the obvious ruse a “violation of utmost severity” of Hamas’s cease-fire settlement with Israel.
The revelation, which got here as most Israelis had been in all probability sleeping, was prone to additional jolt the nation, jeopardize the cease-fire and delay the collective agony surrounding the Bibas tragedy.
Yarden Bibas, Ms. Bibas’s husband and the kids’s father, was kidnapped individually throughout the Oct. 7 assault, bleeding from a head wound. He was launched alive this month as a part of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that got here into impact in January.
However the destiny of the remainder of his household has tormented Israelis, underscoring what many right here view because the cruelty of Hamas. Ms. Bibas’s aged mother and father had been additionally killed within the October 2023 assault.
“Pricey residents of Israel, on today we’re all united in grief that’s too heavy to bear,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned on Thursday, in a somber message to an aching nation. “As we speak, each residence in Israel bows its head.”
A month after the warfare set off by the Hamas assault started, the group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, claimed that Ms. Bibas and her two kids had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Fears grew in Israel after they weren’t among the many different captive moms and kids launched throughout a weeklong cease-fire that month.
However the Israeli authorities had not confirmed their deaths, not to mention the circumstances, saying solely that there was “grave concern” over the hostages’ fates.
Relations held out hope till the very finish.
After Hamas introduced on Tuesday that it will launch the Bibases’ stays, the household expressed anger over the early eulogizing within the information media of Ms. Bibas and the kids earlier than Israel had even decided that they’d been killed.
“Ought to we obtain devastating information, it should come by way of the right official channels in any case identification procedures are accomplished,” the household mentioned in a press release on Wednesday.
The Israeli army’s assertion on Friday mentioned that the accessible intelligence and forensic findings indicated that the 2 Bibas boys had been “brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in 2023,” with out elaborating. The Israeli authorities didn’t instantly present particulars of the reason for Mr. Lifshitz’s demise, however mentioned he had been “murdered in captivity” by Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian armed group that has been holding a lot of hostages. Hamas asserted that Mr. Lifshitz, too, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Not one of the claims may very well be independently verified.
Hamas turned over the our bodies as a part of a sequence of negotiated exchanges within the first section of the cease-fire settlement. In current weeks it has launched 19 dwelling Israeli hostages.
The settlement offers for the discharge of 33 Israeli hostages in alternate for greater than 1,500 Palestinian imprisoned in Israel throughout the first section, which, barring an extension, is about to run out in early March.
The Israeli authorities mentioned final month that Hamas had supplied an inventory indicating that 25 of the 33 hostages had been alive and that eight had been killed.
Roughly 1,200 individuals had been killed within the Hamas-led 2023 assault and greater than 250 kidnapped, in accordance with Israel. Nir Oz was one of many hardest-hit communities, with a couple of quarter of its 400 residents both killed or taken hostage. Kfir was the youngest to be seized.
The assault prompted Israel to declare warfare on Hamas and invade Gaza in a 15-month army marketing campaign that has killed tens of hundreds of Palestinian civilians and combatants and left a lot of the coastal enclave in ruins.
On Thursday, teams of Israelis stood within the rain and held silent vigils alongside the route because the 4 coffins had been transferred in a convoy from Gaza to the Nationwide Middle of Forensic Drugs in Tel Aviv.
Eylon Keshet, Mr. Bibas’s cousin, described Ariel in November 2023 as a boy who cherished being the focus and taking part in with toy tractors and automobiles. Kfir, he mentioned, was a “chill” child who was simply starting to eat stable meals.
The Hostage Households Discussion board, a company advocating for the hostages and their households, described Ms. Bibas in a press release as “a devoted mom and accountant, identified for her boundless kindness.”
“They weren’t simply names,” the discussion board mentioned of the deceased hostages, including, “They had been beloved individuals, with households who cherished them, with desires and futures stolen from them.”
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