Grief Amid Holiday Season
Yarden Bibas' Holiday Message: “Without You, the Holidays Are Not Holidays for Me”
Former Hamas hostage Yarden Bibas shares an emotional Rosh Hashanah message remembering his murdered wife and children, highlighting the ongoing trauma of October 7 victims.
Yarden Bibas, who survived 484 days in Hamas captivity, shared a deeply emotional post on Instagram ahead of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, accompanied by a photo of his late wife and children who were murdered in Gaza.
“Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir, I love you more than anything in the world, forever in this world,” Bibas wrote. “Without you, the holidays are not holidays for me. Dates and days have no meaning.”
The Bibas family’s abduction became one of the most harrowing symbols of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz. Yarden was kidnapped first, wounded and bleeding, dragged by militants in scenes later broadcast worldwide. Soon after, his wife Shiri, 32, was taken with their two young sons, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, only 9 months old, the youngest hostage abducted that day.
Yarden himself was released on February 1, 2025, after 484 days in captivity. Only weeks later, on February 20 and 22, the bodies of Shiri and the children were returned to Israel. Forensic examinations and intelligence assessments concluded that the three were murdered by their captors soon after the abduction, with attempts made to disguise the killings as casualties of an airstrike. Evidence indicated the children were killed with bare hands in late November or early December 2023.
Their funeral, held on February 26, 2025, drew thousands and became a moment of international attention, underscoring the brutality of Hamas’s assault on “Black Saturday.”
When the children’s bodies were brought back to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “May God avenge their blood, and so will we.”