From the Liveblog of
Monday, February 3, 2025
Bibas relatives: Yarden asks about his wife and sons, and we have no answers for him. We demand answers
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Two members of the Bibas family — Ofri Bibas Levy, sister of released hostage Yarden Bibas, and Dana Silberman Sitton, his sister-in-law — speak at Sheba Medical Center, where Yarden is hospitalized.
“Yarden is here and we realized again what we already knew, how strong and wonderful he is,” says Ofri Bibas, of her brother, who was released by Hamas on Saturday. “We found out how he took care of himself in hell, with the sensitivity and humor that so characterize him.”
Ofri says her brother is slowly hearing and learning about what happened during the last 15 months since he and his family were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, as they help him fill in the blanks, as difficult as it is for him to hear everything.
He has told them that he was moved many times in his captivity, with little food. He lost a lot of weight and muscle mass, and almost never saw the sun.
Ofri Bibas says that her brother realizes that he is no longer anonymous, and how beloved he and his family are, which moves him but is not easy to get used to.
His path to rehabilitation has only begun, says Bibas, but will not be complete until his family — wife Shiri and small sons Ariel and Kfir — are home.
“It all feels very fragile,” says Bibas. “My brother returned, but my sister in-law and nephews have not. Yarden asks about them and I have no answers for him.”
Ofri Bibas demands that the prime minister “give him and us the answers. He deserves that, after all he has suffered.”
She thanks the government for making the difficult decision to agree to the hostage release-ceasefire deal, and calls to bring about the second stage of the deal in order to get all the hostages home.
Dana Silberman-Sitton, older sister of Shiri Bibas, says she is finally able to breathe a little now that Yarden is home. She chokes on tears, as she notes that her parents and friends were killed on October 7, and her little sister Shiri was taken captive with her nephews, Ariel and Kfir, and their father Yarden.
“I’m so happy that I’m able to hug him, to hear his voice and to look at him again in the eyes,” says Silberman-Sitton. “But where are Shiri and the boys? Three-quarters of our heart is still held hostage. And until they come home, it will remain missing.”
Silberman-Sitton says she is demanding answers about her sister and nephews.
“We have only one question: Where are Shiri and the children. We won’t accept this uncertainty any longer. We demand answers. We demand their return. That is the state’s obligation to us, after all we have been through.”
“Shiri and the boys were in a complete home, in a complete kibbutz, still in their pajamas, as the whole world and the nation saw,” she continues. “The state failed to protect them. The state has failed for almost 500 days to get them home. No longer.
“It is the responsibility of the government and country to Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir,” she says. “To Yarden. To me and our family. And for every Israeli citizen who looks and asks if the State of Israel knows how to protect its sons and daughters. Does the State of Israel know how to bring them all home?”
According to a Channel 12 report earlier this evening, Yarden was held in a cell separate from other Nir Oz captives, was dressed in a galabiya, and was taken out once a day to eat with other hostages.
Yarden reportedly thought that Shiri and the boys were saved at home on October 7, and kept asking his captors about them all the time. They eventually lied to him and told him Shiri and the boys had been seen in Tel Aviv.
Eventually, the terrorists told one hostage to tell him their fate and she refused. Another was forced to tell him, and, in a shaking voice, updated him, a moment that the the terrorists filmed. (Hamas claimed in late November 2023 that Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were killed in an IDF strike, and filmed Yarden in a video at the time that it issued this claim. The IDF has never confirmed the claim, and has described the video as cruel propaganda. Israel has said it has “grave concerns” about the fate of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir.)
