It’s clear from photos, videos, testimonies: Yarden and Shiri loved well, endlessly, and exceptionally.
When Ariel Bibas met his baby brother, Kfir, for the first time, he hugged the little boy’s legs. There’s a video of the first time they met after their mother, Shiri, gave birth. Ariel lovingly touches baby Kfir’s feet. Shiri hugs Ariel. He is giddy. Excited. Nervous. He treats his new sibling the way a child who knows love should.
We will never know what Ariel and Kfir’s last moment together was like because today, on February 20, their bodies were returned to Israel, and their dead lips will tell no stories. Kfir would not be able to anyway. He was eight and a half months old when he was taken. He would not have learned to speak in captivity.
Shiri and her sons were taken on October 7 from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. The image of Shiri clinging to her sons as Hamas terrorists pushed her out of her home became a symbol for Israel’s just fight against Hamas’s evil. Ariel and Kfir both had red hair. Ariel had a pacifier in when he was taken. Shiri had a blanket wrapped around the three of them. She looked despairing and terrified.
Ariel was four when he was taken. He loved superheroes. He asked his kindergarten teacher to write, “I’m flying and saving people that are stuck in a pit,” a couple of months before October, his cousin Yosi Shnaider said. He wore Batman pajamas and shirts and capes.
Kfir was the youngest hostage, a chubby, ginger-haired nine-month-old. He was a smiley little boy who loved his father.
Yarden Bibas is Shiri’s husband and the father of Ariel and Kfir. He was released from Hamas captivity earlier this month.
Hamas paraded the bodies of Ariel and Kfir as well as a body purported to be Shiri’s in coffins around Gaza on Thursday. Only later in the day was it revealed, by Israel, that Shiri’s body was not handed over, and that they had handed over an “anonymous, unidentified body” instead. (Israel called it “a violation of utmost severity by the Hamas terrorist organization,” and demanded the return of Shiri’s body “along with all our hostages.”)
The coffins were black and labeled with each person’s photo and “arrest” date — 10/7. They were placed on a stage adorned with propaganda posters. Directly behind the coffins, there was a poster depicting Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu as the Devil, with the faces of Shiri, Ariel, Kfir, and one more deceased hostage whose body was returned, 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz. The poster read: “The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Weapons.”
Israel had to inspect the coffins to make sure they were not booby-trapped with bombs. Hamas reportedly locked the caskets and did not provide Israel with keys to open them.
Crowds of Palestinians gathered to watch the show. Many brought their children. They whistled and listened to loud music as baby Kfir’s body was handed off. Hamas terrorists in masks stood behind the bodies menacingly with automatic weapons. Adult men set up a cache of weapons nearby that boys could try out.
“There are no words,” many have said of the family’s horrific homecoming. No words to describe Yarden’s pain. He returned home weeks ago without his wife and children to hold onto, and now, no hope either. And there are no words that can do his story, or his family’s, justice.
But there are words that describe the terrorists who took a baby and a toddler and their mother and father from their home, and there are words that describe the civilians who knew where Hamas held the baby and toddler in the Gaza Strip: demonic, cruel, despicable. And there are words that describe the shills who said in the beginning of the war that “Hamas did not kill babies” and “Hamas did not terrorize women”: liars, immoral, shameless. Today, the bodies of a baby and a little boy Hamas killed were returned to Israel in locked coffins.
Hamas took them alive. Hamas returned them dead.
Shiri and the boys were, are, deeply loved. Ariel never celebrated his fifth birthday. Kfir never celebrated his first. Neither even lost their baby teeth. Kfir did not learn to walk. The boys didn’t get the chance to grow up or fall in love.
But in their short lifetimes, Ariel and Kfir knew so much love. It’s clear from photos, videos, testimonies: Yarden and Shiri loved well, endlessly, and exceptionally.
Ariel and Kfir, R.I.P.