Yarden Bibas is freed, but his family’s suffering continues. It should enrage us all

Senior Columnist
Rob Eshman
January 31, 2025

This moment calls for sadness. So how come I am so filled with rage?

As Yarden Bibas, 35, is set to be returned in a hostage release Saturday, the world still waits to learn the fate of his wife, Shiri Bibas, 34, and their sons, Ariel, 5, and Kfir, 2. And as it does so, it must seethe.

I’m seething. I’m enraged at Hamas. Its leaders and so-called soldiers bear 100% of the guilt for the unimaginable suffering of every hostage, and the deaths of the hostages who have died since Oct. 7. It was Hamas who planned and executed that massacre, and we know from materials captured by the IDF that those plans included the taking of civilian hostages in order to trade for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

That’s why Hamas terrorists attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz in the first place. And why when Yarden Bibas and his family hid together in the safe room, Hamas used drilling equipment it had brought to break in. The terrorists murdered Shiri’s parents, Margit Shnaider Silberman and Yosi Silberman, and even the Bibas family dog.

Terrorizing civilians wasn’t an accident of this battle. It was the strategy. Taking a baby less than one year old — as Kfir, the youngest hostage, was at the time — was part of the plan. No matter who you are, that should chill and enrage you.

“Kfir and Ariel aren’t enemies of Hamas,” Jimmy Miller, Shiri’s cousin, said last year when Kfir turned 1 in captivity. “The world is creating a legal precedent that allows the abduction of babies from their land, from their homes.”

I’m furious at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I know some people may object that this pulls focus from the real perpetrators, but I refuse to absolve him of his share in this tragedy.

For years, Netanyahu allowed millions in Qatari cash to flow into Gaza, propping up Hamas, because doing so advanced his aim of undermining the Palestinian Authority. He plunged the country into civil chaos by pushing a judicial overhaul that was a naked attempt to stay in power, giving Hamas the perfect opportunity to attack an Israel weakened by internal strife.

He kept the war in Gaza going beyond what his own generals said made strategic sense. His scorched earth strategy, which resulted in massive civilian death and destruction, failed in its avowed aim to destroy Hamas. That strategy prolonged the suffering of the hostages who have survived, and made it more and more likely that many of them would die.

The Kahanist Knesset members Netanyahu brought into his cabinet boasted of rejecting previous hostage deals — deals that could have helped the Bibas family return home before this grievous moment, in which we are still waiting to learn whether three of them are alive. And to this day — even as recently as last week — Netanyahu has thwarted every attempt to launch an independent investigation into Oct. 7 so that those responsible will be held accountable and future families won’t face the agonies of the Bibases.

He is a reverse Moses, who has brought plague after plague on his own people.

I’m angry at Israel’s knee-jerk American supporters. The people who never saw fit to speak against a government gone mad, one that’s unrecognizable to those who support a secular, peace-seeking state for Jews and all its citizens. They have helped by their silence to enable Netanyahu as he has sowed division at home and terror in the West Bank.

And, if this crowd dares to use the Bibas family’s pain — especially now, as it celebrates the return of one loved one, while yearning for others — as a reason to further oppress, occupy and terrorize Palestinians, they will be sealing the doom of Israel’s democracy.

I’m livid at those pro-Palestinian protesters who have justified Hamas. Since Oct. 7, we have seen them on college campuses and in public squares, echoing Hamas’ demand to eliminate Israel. All I can say to them is: Are you happy? Those who were celebrating on Oct. 8, 2023 — can you not see where terror leads? To the destroyed lives of children, on every side?

Your breathtaking self-certainty undoubtedly encouraged Hamas. Instead of saying, as many brave Palestinians did, that the hostages needed to be released, and that taking the Bibas children hostage fouled the Palestinian cause, you donned retro-Guevara wear and helped suggest that further slaughter would be, if not actively endorsed, at the very least overlooked by the global left.

And do not dare cite body counts of children killed by Israel in Gaza in response to agony over the Bibas children. Each young life marred or taken by war is a unique tragedy: Palestinian or Israeli; Jewish, Muslim or Christian.

There are, to be sure, heroes in this sad story, and to calm my anger, I look to them.

The Bibas family, which has endured the unendurable with steadfastness and grace — including in a Friday statement that welcomed Yarden’s imminent release, while striking a grave note in admitting they are “facing very complex days” ahead.

The hostage families, and others who have stood by and supported them and fought tirelessly for the captives’ freedom.

Former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump and their diplomatic teams, who put aside differences to finalize the deal that has freed many of the remaining hostages and will, if seen to completion, see all of them — living and dead — returned to Israel. The Israelis and Palestinians who have joined together to reject murder and kidnapping as a legitimate tactic in this conflict, and who are working toward a shared future in the land.

We have seen this week what the awful alternative is.

On my bookshelf, staring down at me as I write every column, is the spine of Serge Klarsfeld’s French Children of the Holocaust, his exhaustive 1983 compilation of the names and faces of 2,500 children deported and put to death in the Nazi camps. Klarsfeld spent some 20 years collecting the documentary evidence for the book, and photos of each child, all under age 18. He gave each one his or her own page, a final act of resistance to the Nazis who sought to obliterate whole families along with their documents and any record of their existence, including by killing at least 11,400 French children.

As I stare up at the book, wondering when we will know what has happened to Ariel and Kfir Bibas, it is too easy to imagine their faces among those of the Nazis’ young French victims, two more innocents destroyed by a genocidal campaign.

It is imperative that their story be remembered, and repeated. My prayer is that their family may find comfort, and that the rage we feel at their fate will lead us to fight, in their memory, for peace.

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