Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas to be buried in closed ceremony Wed.; public urged to line funeral route

Slain hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons Ariel and Kfir will be laid to rest on Wednesday in a private ceremony in Zohar, near their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, the family said Monday, adding that it would publish a funeral procession route to enable the public to pay its respects ahead of the burial.

“The warm embrace, the love and the strength that you have sent us from all over Israel and the world strengthen us and accompany us during these moments of crisis,” the family said in a statement on social media. “We are aware that many of you want to be there, to pay your respects, to express your love and to say your goodbyes together with us.”

“Please respect our choice to say our goodbyes during these final moments in the way that is right for us,” said the family.

Relatives added that they would arrange for the eulogies at the funeral to be live-streamed.

The Hostages Families subsequently asked the public to line the route of the funeral procession and bring Israeli flags.

It said that the funeral procession would set out from Rishon Lezion at 7:45. It added that the eulogies at the funeral would be live-streamed from 11:30.

The Bibas family, along with father and husband Yarden, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.

The bodies of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were returned as part of the month-old ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. Yarden Bibas returned, alive, on February 1.

The bodies of Ariel, 4, and Kfir, nine months, were returned on Thursday, along with that of hostage Oded Lifshitz and an unidentified Gazan woman who Hamas had said was Shiri Bibas. The terror group handed over Shiri Bibas’s body early on Saturday after Israel protested.

According to assessments by Israeli officials issued after her body had been identified, Shiri Bibas was “brutally” murdered by her captors in November 2023, alongside her sons — contrary to Hamas’s claims that the three were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Friday their captors killed the boys in “cold blood” and with their “bare hands” and committed atrocities in an effort to hide the evidence. Hagari said Yarden Bibas had asked for “all the world to know and be horrified” by the murders.

Ofri Bibas Levy, Yaden’s sister, said Sunday that the public’s embrace “moves him very much, but Yarden is still trying to come to terms with the horrible news,” and was struggling with publicity around his family’s fate.

In the span of a few weeks, the family went from “huge joy” over Yarden’s return to “deep sadness and shock” after Israel confirmed the murders, said Bibas Levy. At times, she added, Yarden “wonders how Shiri would respond to all this, and Shiri is not here to go through it with him.”

She said Yarden had asked to tell the public that “you don’t need to apologize. The forgiveness should come, first and foremost, in the return of all the hostages.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far held off on negotiating a second stage of the hostage deal. Netanyahu’s right-wing flank has threatened to topple the government should it proceed to the second phase, which would see remaining living hostages released from Gaza and require Israel to withdraw from the Strip.

Speaking at a military ceremony on Sunday, Netanyahu — whom Bibas Levy has accused of failing to apologize for the Bibases’ abandonment — hoisted a photo of the slain mother and children as testimony to “what we are fighting for, and whom we are fighting against.”

The gesture provoked protests in the audience. According to Hebrew media, crowd members yelled: “Why didn’t you get them out?”

The Bibas family’s fate has sparked an outpouring of grief, with public landmarks in Israel and around the world lit orange in honor of the red-headed Ariel and Kfir.

Argentina has announced two days of mourning for the boys, who, like their parents, were dual Israeli-Argentinean nationals. Yamil Santoro, a lawmaker in Buenos Aires’s municipal legislature, has said he was seeking to have the city replace the name of its Palestine Street with that of the Bibas family.

The family’s 400-strong community of Nir Oz was ravaged on October 7, 2023, with roughly every fourth member being murdered or kidnapped. The community has since been displaced to a designated community in southern Israel’s Kiryat Gat.

On Saturday, speaking at the displaced community’s weekly rally, the mother of one of Ariel Bibas’s classmates said her son, Yoav, had difficulty understanding that his friend was gone and wouldn’t come back.

“Yoav said that maybe they liked Ariel so much, because he’s so funny, that it was hard for the terrorists to let him go,” said the mother. “I had to explain to Yoav that whoever dies can’t come back to life.”

Cecilia Lazzaro Blasbalg contributed to this report.