Argentinian officials are celebrating the release of Israeli-Argentine Yarden Bibas from Hamas captivity after almost 16 months of the war in Gaza.
President Javier Milei of Argentina, a staunch supporter of Israel, posts a stream of emotional videos all morning Saturday on X showing Bibas greeting his relatives after his release with long and tearful hugs.
The Israeli Embassy in Argentina says that Bibas obtained Argentine citizenship through his wife, Shiri. Their two small children, Ariel and Kfir, are also Argentinian.
The condition of Shiri and their two sons, the youngest hostages to be abducted during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, remains unclear. Hamas claimed last year that they had been killed by an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli officials never confirmed that.
Axel Wahnish, a Sephardic rabbi and the Argentine ambassador to Israel, says that Argentine authorities are following Bibas’s release closely. He hopes that “all the kidnapped people can return safely to their homes.”
Wahnish also praises Milei for his strong condemnations of Hamas, which he says stands in contrast to the “silence of some leaders of the free world.”
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From the Liveblog of
Saturday, February 1, 2025
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