Hamas hostage Yarden Bibas released from Gaza captivity after 484 days
Yarden abducted separately from wife Shiri and two young sons from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023; Israel has grave concerns for their fates as father freed on Feb. 1, 2025
On February 1, 2025, Yarden Bibas, 35, was released from Hamas captivity in Gaza as part of phase one of a mediated ceasefire-hostage release deal. He was handed over to the Red Cross, who delivered him to IDF soldiers who escorted him and fellow freed captive Ofer Calderon into Israel. Below is what we initially knew of his capture:
On the morning of October 7, Yarden Bibas, 34 (now 35), continuously texted with his sister, Ofri, letting her know what was happening in Kibbutz Nir Oz, where he lives with his wife, Shiri, 32 and their two boys, Ariel, 4 and Kfir, then 9 months.
“At 6:30 a.m., he wrote about the rockets,” said Ofri in a Kan interview.
Yarden wrote about the terrorists entering the kibbutz, and then he wrote, “‘Fuck,'” said Ofri.
He texted his sister that there was terrible fighting, and intense pressure to try and hold off the wave of Hamas terrorists who entered Nir Oz. The terrorists ended up committing a brutal massacre, in which some 180 of the kibbutz’s 400 residents were killed or abducted.
He told his sister that his little boys didn’t know how to keep quiet, and he told her it felt like the end.
In the Kan video, Ofri shows closed captioned TV footage of her brother’s house, as Hamas terrorists drilled open the front door.
Yarden wrote to his sister and parents, “I love you.”
At 9:45 a.m., he wrote, “They’re in.”
Some two hours later, the family saw a video circulating of Shiri, holding both boys in her arms, a look of terror on her face as she was surrounded by terrorists, her boys facing her chest, a blanket covering them.
Yarden, her husband, isn’t in any of the videos.
Neither are Shiri’s parents, Margit Silberman Shnaider and her husband Yosi Silberman, who also lived on Nir Oz and were presumed missing but whose bodies were since identified.
Eventually, the Bibas family found a video of Yarden, injured with blood around his head, surrounded by terrorists.
“He’s living death,” said another family member.
All four Bibas family members are presumed captives. Kfir, now 10 months, is the youngest of the 251 Israeli hostages in Gaza.
“We called them the first Yemenite redheads,” said Ofri in the Kan video, adding that Yarden and Shiri had been planning on leaving Nir Oz. They were tired of feeling fearful all the time, of the proximity to Gaza and the rockets. They were looking for a home near Ofri and her family, in the Golan Heights.