‘There’s no celebration’: Thousands rally as redhead hostage Ariel Bibas turns 5
Tel Aviv birthday march features orange balloons, Batman paraphernalia; relatives of 2 youngest hostages’ parents call on Netanyahu to sign deal: ‘Don’t hesitate and don’t delay’
Thousands of people sent orange balloons into the air in Tel Aviv on Monday to mark the fifth birthday of redheaded hostage Ariel Bibas, 304 days after he was snatched from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, along with his baby brother and parents.
Protesters marched from Habima Square to Hostages Square, where the family’s relatives and various celebrities took part in a rally and lit birthday candles for Ariel. Many wore orange accessories, representing Ariel’s bright red hair. Others donned Batman paraphernalia to honor the absent birthday boy’s favorite superhero.
“I try to imagine the moment you come back to us,” said Pnina Bibas, mother of Ariel’s father Yarden. “Will you still call me Savta Nini? Will you still want to play piggyback?”
Ahead of the rally, the grandmother wished a happy birthday to her “dear Luli” in an open letter published by The Daily Mail.
“The world around us continues to turn, but time seems to have frozen without you. You’ve grown a year older, but there’s no celebration,” she wrote. “Five years… Do you even know that this big day is approaching?”
Speaking at the rally, Pnina’s daughter Ofri, Ariel’s aunt, appealed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Their fate is in your hands. There is a deal [on the table] that you agreed to. Don’t make amendments, don’t set new red lines. Don’t hesitate and don’t delay. Bring them home.”
Netanyahu has been accused of derailing negotiations mediated by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar to secure the release of the hostages.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s something we never imagined, that Ariel [would] turn five as a hostage,” Tomer Keshet, a cousin of Yarden Bibas, told The Associated Press.
On January 18, family members marked what they dubbed “ the saddest birthday in the world ” as Kfir turned 1 year old. Keshet said he believed there were major differences between how Kfir and Ariel were experiencing their time in captivity.
“The difference between a child and a baby is that a child understands. A child knows that the situation is terrible. A child knows what a birthday is,” he said.
Jimmy Miller, a cousin of Ariel’s mother Shiri, wore Batman gear. He showed a picture of a beaming Ariel at his nursery school before his kidnapping, with a photo he drew of the Batman symbol.
One of the best-known photographs of the family shows the four wearing Batman apparel. In April, 50 creators of the iconic Batman television show signed a petition urging mediators Egypt and Qatar to press for the Bibas family’s release.
Kfir and Ariel Bibas, two of some 30 children abducted on October 7, are the youngest remaining hostages in Gaza.
Video of their abduction, with their mother Shiri, 33, seen swaddling her two redheaded boys in a blanket and being whisked away by armed men, ricocheted around the world in the hours after the attack.
Shiri and her sons were not released during the weeklong November ceasefire in which Hamas released 105 hostages, including women and children.
Hamas claimed the three were being held by a different group. In February, the Israel Defense Force released footage of them said to have been filmed at an outpost belonging to the Mujahideen Brigades terror group.
The video, found during the army’s operations in Khan Younis, showed Shiri and her son Ariel surrounded by gunmen, with baby Kfir assumed to be strapped to her body, under a cloth, as he was seen in the earlier video.
Yarden Bibas, 34, was kidnapped separately, and appears in photos to have been wounded during the abduction.
Nili Margalit, who was released in the November truce, said she saw Yarden’s Hamas captors tell him that his wife and children had been killed, and ordered him to film a video in which he blamed Netanyahu for refusing to return their bodies to Israel.
The IDF has said that Hamas’s claims that Yarden’s family was killed have not been verified, describing them as “psychological terror.”
Hamas’s October 7 assault on southern Israel saw thousands of terrorists kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages. It is believed that 111 hostages abducted on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF.
