By Zachary Benjamin

 

Last month, I reflected on the excruciating price of—and the rightly incalculable value that we place upon—Jewish life. At that moment, the Jewish world awaited with mixed emotions the release of the first October 7 hostages to be freed under “Phase I” of Israel’s ceasefire agreement with the terrorist organization, Hamas. In that moment, a flickering of hope remained that baby Kfir Bibas and his brother, Ariel—aged nine months and four years, respectively, at the time of their abduction—might be delivered alive from the hellscape of Hamas’s Gaza terror infrastructure and returned to their surviving family in Israel. We prayed that, for Israel’s compliance in releasing hundreds upon hundreds of Hamas terrorists from its prisons, perhaps Kfir and Ariel might receive the opportunity to return home and be healed by the simple joys and wonders of childhood.

Five weeks later, just a few hours prior to my writing these words, the eyes of humanity bore witness to the final chapter for Kfir and Ariel as they did indeed return to the bosom of their homeland and the expectant arms of their father, Yarden Bibas. Tragically, they returned not as joyful children, but rather as deceased bodies encased in coffins. Hamas then doubled down on its cruel and deceitful psychological warfare against the Bibas Family, the State of Israel, and the Jewish people, first claiming to have released the body of Kfir and Ariel’s mother, Shiri, which, upon examination by Israeli authorities, was determined not to be the remains of any hostage, but rather those of an unidentified Gazan woman. Shiri’s fate remains unknown.

The souls of those of us who are parents or who have raised or are raising children—as well as, one hopes, the soul of any human being capable of even the slightest quiver of empathy—are heavier and with less light today for these atrocities.

Unthinkable as the realities of these crimes, compounded in layers of utter depravity over the course of the past 503 days, must be for all of us to process, it is important to understand the unspeakable inhumanity of these acts. The story arc of the Bibas family is October 7 and its aftermath in microcosm.

Consider that the “rules of engagement” call for parties in conflict to take every possible measure to preserve innocent life. It is understood that, among innocents, women and children’s lives are sacrosanct and are to be protected at all reasonable costs.

Now consider the tactics of Hamas. Yarden Bibas walked free weeks ago, having been separated from his family since October 7, 2023. The status of his wife and two children remained unclear, largely by the design of Hamas’s psychological torture tactics. After well over a year in isolated captivity, he had no choice but to cling to hope for nearly a month that his wife and sons would return to him, alive, at some point during the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.

Similarly, Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi was abducted to Gaza on October 7, separated that morning from his wife, Lianne, and his 13- and 16-year-old daughters, Noiya and Yahel. Eli was released on February 9, 2025, and prepared by his captors to return to the family that he had not seen in nearly 500 days. He was informed that he would be reunited with Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel upon crossing back into Israel. Instead, he was met upon his return with the news that one group of Hamas terrorists had slit Lianne’s, Noiya’s, and Yahel’s throats as another was leading Eli to captivity in Gaza more than a year earlier.

All that remains of these two vibrant, young families are the husbands and fathers who, we might assume, would have rushed to lay down their own lives to preserve those of the children and women that they loved. Four children and two wives are, instead, either long-ago buried or returning as corpses, leaving these men as walking ghosts sentenced to live with the guilt and emptiness of survival. While all of us wish them every possible measure of peace and comfort, the reality is that they have merely walked out of one prison and into another.

This is the essence of Hamas. This is not an aberration, nor is it some rogue, depraved minority of an otherwise rational movement. The members of Hamas have lost the privilege of being regarded as human. Humanity should have no space for any creature that would so gleefully inflict such anguish on the innocent. By every measure, Hamas must be accordingly disposed of.

So, too, are the hands of the United Nations and the International Committee for the Red Cross dripping with the blood of little Kfir and Ariel, of Noiya and Yahel, and of Shiri and Lianne. We now know that Hamas stashed many of the October 7 captives in “United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees” (UNRWA) schools. Upon their release, representatives of the Red Cross—who made not a single welfare check of the hostages in captivity—stood in solemn complicity beside Hamas terrorists as they carried out grotesque ceremonies celebrating the murder and rape of babies, women, and other innocents as “victory for Palestine.”

Perhaps Torah and Talmud offer insights to help us come to grips with the horrors that we are witnessing as they unfold in real time. Those insights are, sadly, beyond the capacity of my limited Jewish literacy. Perhaps the only agency that remains for us as observers in diaspora is to collectively channel every ounce of our humanity and our compassion to Yarden, Eli, and all who must now live as prisoners of their own anguish.

May the memories of Kfir, Ariel, Shiri, Noiya, Yahel, and Lianne be for eternal blessings, and may their tormentors know no peace or safe harbor.

עם ישראל חי