Hamas hands on Israel false women’s corpse: the agony of the Bibas family

The face distorted with fear, a woman holds two children in her arms. Armed people stand around them. The scenes were recorded in a video. It shows the moments when the Hamas Schiri Bibas and their little sons dragged into the Gaza strip.

Thursday, the radical Islamic terrorist group from the Gaza Strip handed over the remains of four people. It was the first time since the beginning of the ceasefire on January 19. In Chan Junis in the south of the Gaza Strip, a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (IKRK) took over four black coffins and drove them to Israeli soldiers nearby. It was supposedly the remains of Kfir and Ariel, her mother Schiri Bibas and Oded Lifschitz.

The remnants of the handed over the handed over the two Bibas brothers Kfir and Ariel, army spokesman Avichay Adraee explained in the online service in Telegram on Friday night. The two children were “brutally” killed by the Islamists.

The next shock for Israel: According to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hamas handed over the body of a woman from the Gaza Strip to Israel instead of the Geisel Shiri Bibas killed. “With an unimaginable cynicism, they did not hand over Shiri together with their young children (…), they put a woman’s body out of the Gaza Strip in the coffin,” said Netanyahu. “The cruelty of the Hamas monsters has no limits,” he added.

It is another low point of the bibas family’s agony. The youngest was still a baby in his kidnapping. At the time he was kidnapped, he was not yet able to walk and say “mom”, his mother’s cousin recently told the German Press Agency. His older brother still believed in superheroes, said Jimmy Miller. Kfir was only nine months old, Ariel for four years. They are the youngest hostages that Hamas and the Islamic Jihad allied with it delayed in their surprising attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

“In the past few hours we have been in turmoil after a Hamas spokesman announced the planned return of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir on this Thursday as part of the release of the hostages,” said a family statement on Tuesday. The family wrote about the reports that the hostages are dead: “We would like to make it clear that these reports are known to us, but we have not yet received any official confirmation in this matter. As long as we do not receive any final confirmation, our trip is not yet over.”

Now the children’s corpses are back in Israel. According to Israeli, the forensic investigation could take some time. The duration of the identification process also depends on the condition of the corpses, several media reported on Wednesday, citing health minister Uriel Busso. Busso therefore emphasized that Israel also wanted to determine the causes of death. But the woman’s body handed over must have little resemblance to referee Bibas. Otherwise the Israeli army would not have gone to the public so quickly with its result.

The staging of the corpse return already triggered international outrage. The Hamas had given photos of the four coffins and lined up on a stage before the handover, and armed fighters were also posted. In the background of the stage there was a large poster with photos of the hostages on which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was shown as a vampire.

The Israeli President Izchak Herzog said deeply after the handover. “Sand. Pain. The words are missing,” it said in a statement of Herzog. “Our hearts – the hearts of an entire nation – are broken.” He tends the head on behalf of the state of Israel and request forgiveness. “Forgiveness that we did not protect you on the terrible day. Forgiveness for the fact that we did not bring you home safely.”

The fate of the Bibas family has moved people far beyond Israel. The father of the children, Yarden Bibas, was also kidnapped from the Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7th and separated from the rest of his family. A video showed how he was dragged with a bloody head by armed men. Yarden Bibas’ mother -in -law Yossi and Margit Silberman were killed in the attack when their house was set on fire. The family became a symbol of the cruelty of the Islamists.

In January 2024, Hamas filmed the father after telling him that his wife and children had been killed in an Israeli air raid. The fighters forced Bibas to ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the return of their bodies to Israel.

“We will act decisively to bring Shiri home,” said Netanyahu in a video message after identification of the women’s corpses. “Hamas will pay a difficult price for this cruel and perverse violation of the agreement.”

The forum of the hostage families said that it was “horrified and shaken” that Shiri Bibas had not been handed over together with the corpses of her sons, “despite the agreement and our desperate hopes”.

At the beginning of February, Hamas Yarden released Bibas. Shortly afterwards he spoke up on X. He thanked all supporters and said: “Unfortunately my family has not yet returned to me. They are still there. My light is still there, and as long as they are there, everything is dark here.”

The father of the family has to tear it almost between grief, hope and anger.

Note: This text has been updated after identification of the women’s corpses.