From the Liveblog of
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Sister of Shiri Bibas says government ‘destroying Israeli society in the name of political survival’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleBen Sales is a news editor at The Times of Israel
Dana Silberman Sitton, sister and aunt of the murdered hostages Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, tells a rally at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square that the country must fight “apathy” as the war continues.
Sitton speaks to the packed crowd ahead of a called general strike Sunday for the release of the 50 hostages still held in Gaza and against a planned invasion of Gaza City.
She says the government is “destroying Israeli society in the name of political survival.”
“We’ll keep fighting the external enemy but also the internal apathy, and demand the most basic thing: justice, truth, and human life,” she says.
She adds, “If the country doesn’t wake up now, it will wake up to a total moral destruction.”
The Bibas family, parents Yarden and Shiri, and young sons Ariel and Kfir, were taken hostage in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre and became perhaps the most prominent faces of the hostages’ plight. Yarden was released alive during a ceasefire earlier this year, and shortly afterward, the bodies of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were returned after having been murdered in captivity.
The Times of Israel Community.