From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Sister of Yarden Bibas decries ‘abuse’ after PM shares graphic details about murders of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir against family’s wishes
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleLazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Ofri Bibas, sister of released hostage Yarden Bibas, slams Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Israeli news outlets, social media users and public diplomats for detailing, against the family’s will, the murders in captivity of Yarden’s wife Shiri and young sons Ariel and Kfir.
Publishing such information over the family’s repeated requests was “abuse for its own sake of a family that has gone through 16 months of hell and still has the worst ahead,” writes Ofri Bibas on Facebook, a day before the funeral of her nephews and sister-in-law.
Netanyahu had described the young boys’ murder in graphic detail in a speech before the America Israel Public Action Committee on Tuesday, and, while holding a picture of the victims, at a military ceremony on Sunday.
Following Netanyahu’s speech, the Bibas family sent a cease and desist letter to Netanyahu’s and other government offices asking they stop publishing unapproved details of their murders, the Ynet news site reports.
The family also issued a statement via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Saturday requesting media outlets “stop adding details to the fact that Shiri and the kids were murdered by their captors.”
“As someone who sat in the room with [IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel] Hagari that day, I’ll write this: Yarden and the family approved, word for word, what the IDF spokesman said in the statement. Nothing more,” she writes.
She says that authorities were yet to complete their report on the murders, much less present it to the family, which, to its great consternation, nonetheless found out details from “the media, public diplomacy apparatus, Twitter users and yes, for whatever reason, even the prime minister.”
The Times of Israel Community.