Harrowing footage of Shiri Bibas being dragged into Gaza on October 7 along with her angel-faced children — Ariel, aged four, and his nine month old brother, Kfir — makes for unbearable viewing. And now it carries a tragic footnote. For today, 16 months later, we know how this terrible story ends — with the return of their bodies as part of the ceasefire deal.
In sorrowful anticipation of reclaiming its dead, Israel had pleaded with the Bibas’ brutal Hamas captors for a private and respectful handover. But the fetid mind of the Jihadi never sleeps, its twisted mentality forever seeking ways to prolong suffering and platform its evil ideology.
And so in what The Hostages and Missing Families Forum described as “the most cynical, cruel, and stomach-churning display of inhumanity since October 7”, Hamas today ensured one last violation before returning the bodies of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir – along with 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz, a peace activist who, ironically had dedicated his life to helping Palestinians. By staging a macabre ceremony to propagandise and glorify their vile cause.
During this depraved spectacle, rifle-toting Hamas gunmen – so ‘brave’ in their anonymising masks – unveiled four coffins, each one bearing a picture of the victim within. (In a stroke of gut-wrenching cynicism, the terrorists opted for smiling photos previously used by the Bibas family in their campaign to bring them home.)
Before making the handover, caskets were placed on a stage, overlooked by a huge banner depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire. Blood dripped from fanged teeth while curls of red hung down his cheek bones – a demonic inversion of Hasidic sidelocks. Clearly the aim was to dredge from the sewer the imagery of ancient blood libels so effectively used by the Nazis to showcase Jew-hatred.
Most cynical of all, slogans on the banner blamed Israeli leadership for the deaths of the hostages. Given the level of antisemitism unleashed since October 7, it`s a message which will, in all likelihood, be greedily consumed by those looking for any excuse to demonise the Jewish state. (Only recently the Met police revealed that the first request for a national demonstration against Israel came on October 7, 2023, at 12:50pm – just hours after the Hamas attack and before a single retaliatory shot had been fired.) When it comes to attacking Israel and the Jewish people, inclination is ready to optimise any opportunity.
Yet even if the Bibas family were killed in an airstrike, what difference does it make? These four fallen hostages were only in Gaza because they were brutally kidnapped and in all likelihood used as human shields – as has been the fate of many innocents living in the strip.
After Hamas`s grotesque and manipulative sideshow, anger and outrage should be reverberating across the civilised world. Yet as ever the silence of double standards is deafening.
We cannot allow it to be so. Above the din of politically expedient denialism, we must shout again and again that there was no justification for the evil of October 7. That it was a pointless expression of profound hatred. That the word “but” ( beloved of bleeding hearts keen to support the Palestinian cause and find ways to explain, sorry, excuse Hamas atrocities) has no place in the retelling of what occured on that hellish day. Failure to condemn is willingness to condone.
So look into the eyes of the little Bibas children who were so undeserving of their fate. Remember the brevity and brutality of their lives. Together we must stop their innocence being politicised by a death cult that murders babies and makes sport with their bodies. Baulk at Hamas` disregard, even in death of human dignity. Let the bile rise and let your heart break. Anything less and you will have been manipulated too.