Freed hostages, relatives mark Thursday’s 1st birthday of Kfir Bibas, held by Hamas
Nir Oz holds ceremony in abandoned kibbutz kindergarten for youngest hostage abducted by terrorists to Gaza on October 7
Released Israeli hostages and families of those still held captive in the Gaza Strip by Hamas gathered at Kibbutz Nir Oz near the border with the Palestinian enclave on Tuesday for a somber celebration ahead of the first birthday of the youngest hostage abducted by the Palestinian terror group.
Kfir Bibas was almost 10 months old when he was taken with his four-year-old brother, Ariel, and their mother Shiri Bibas, 32, from their home on the kibbutz on October 7 during Hamas’s cross-border killing spree in southern Israel, and became the youngest of some 240 people dragged back to the Gaza Strip as captives. Father Yarden Bibas, 34, was taken hostage separately from the rest of the family.
The terrified mother and the young red-headed children appeared in a chilling video mid-morning on October 7 that showed Shiri Bibas holding both boys in her arms, with a look of raw fear on her face as she is surrounded by terrorists, her kids facing her chest, a blanket covering them.
On Tuesday, 102 days days after the family was abducted, the kibbutz held a ceremony for Kfir Bibas, who will mark his first birthday on Thursday as a hostage still in Gaza. He will have spent a third of his life as a captive of Hamas.
A bower of orange balloons — a nod to Kfir’s and his brother’s hair color — stood in the abandoned Nir Oz kindergarten on Tuesday, and his pictures signaled places at a table where celebrants should have sat.
“We’re marking a birthday for a kid who’s not here. We make him a cake, we put balloons, pictures, and blessings and everything and he’s not here,” Shiri’s cousin, Yosi Shnaider, told Reuters. “It’s crazy.”
On Thursday afternoon, families of hostages and supporters will mark Bibas’s first birthday with a gathering at the “Hostages Square” in Tel Aviv. A circulating poster for the event calls it the “saddest birthday in the world.”
Nir Oz has been frozen in time and trauma. Around 20 residents of the kibbutz, including Shiri Bibas’s parents Margit Silberman Shnaider and Yosi Silberman, were killed in the October 7 massacres and some 80 were taken hostage out of a population of 400. More than half of those seized from the kibbutz were women and children, some of whom were freed in a November truce deal that saw the release of 105 civilians from Hamas captivity.
Among them were Nir Oz residents Sharon Alony Cunio and her three-year-old twin daughters Emma and Julie. Cunio’s husband David remains as hostage in Gaza, with 131 other hostages, not all of them alive.
Hamas issued an unverified claim in late November that Kfir, Ariel and Shiri were killed during the ongoing war in Gaza while Yarden survived. Israel’s government has not confirmed what it has said is a “cruel” claims by the terror group and described them as “psychological terror.”
Hamas also released a propaganda video of a distraught Yarden Bibas reacting to the terror group’s claims his family was dead.
Free hostage Nili Margalit, who spent nearly 50 days in Hamas captivity, recently revealed that she was with Yarden Bibas when Hamas terrorists told him his wife and two young children had been killed and ordered him to film a video in which he blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for refusing to return their bodies to Israel.
Israel has noted that terror groups in Gaza had previously announced that an Israeli hostage had been killed in an IDF strike only to release her alive several weeks later.
In the absence of Israeli corroboration, relatives and friends back home have refused to let hope die for the whole family’s safe recovery.
Worry for the hostages’ fate grips a country that, after the worst attack in its history, has settled into the grim resolve of war — especially as Israeli officials, based on various sources of intelligence information, say at least 27 of the hostages have died in captivity.
“I can’t sleep. I suffer from nightmares. The girls ask about their father constantly,” said Cunio, who visited her now-burned out home in the formerly placid agricultural collective on Tuesday.
“I wake up in the morning with one purpose only – David made me promise him that I will fight for him. That I will scream his despair to the world as he is unable to do so,” she said.
Hamas on Monday aired a propaganda video purporting to show the bodies of two hostages who it claimed were killed in an Israeli strike.
Kibbutz Be’eri announced Tuesday that hostages Yossi Sharabi and Itay Svirsky were “murdered” in Hamas captivity in Gaza.
The announcement represented the first official public notification that the two men had died.
Sharabi and Svirsky were featured in a pair of propaganda videos published earlier this week by Hamas that also showed hostage Noa Argamani.
The second video, published Monday evening, raised particular concerns regarding Svirsky and Sharabi. Argamani is believed by the IDF to still be alive.
At the time, the Israel Defense Forces said that several days previously it had already notified their families of fears for their lives.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Monday evening that Hamas’s claim that the military targeted a building where the three hostages were being held, killing two of them, was a lie. However, he indicated that it was possible that the hostages were located close to a building that was targeted by the IDF and may have been endangered.
Sharabi, 53, was abducted along with his brother, Eli Sharabi.
Svirsky, 38, was abducted from his parents’ home in Be’eri, where he was visiting to celebrate the Simchat Torah holiday. Both his parents, Orit Svirsky and Rafi Svirsky, were murdered by Hamas terrorists. His 96-year-old grandmother Aviva Sela managed to survive the attack.
Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been trying to cobble together a new truce that might free some more hostages, even as Israel presses on with its devastating ground and air offensive to destroy Hamas and its military and governing capabilities in Gaza.
Agencies contributed to this report.
