TEL AVIV — On lampposts, in store home windows and on smartphone screens throughout Israel, the posters present a smiling, red-headed child boy clutching a pink elephant.
And now the nation is bracing to be taught Kfir Bibas’ destiny.
The youngest hostage nonetheless in captivity in Gaza, Kfir was simply shy of 9 months outdated when he was kidnapped in the course of the Hamas-led terrorist attack Oct.7, 2023. On Saturday, he turned 2, having by no means identified a birthday outdoors captivity.
Alongside together with his 5-year-old brother, Ariel, and his mother and father, Yarden and Shiri Bibas, Kfir is among the many 33 hostages anticipated to be freed in the course of the first section of the ceasefire deal, based on the Israeli authorities. However it’s unclear if the toddler remains to be alive.
Kfir Bibas, who was taken hostage at 9 months outdated from Nir-Ounceskibbutz.
“Not figuring out is so exhausting that generally I simply wish to scream,” Ofri Bibas-Levy, Kfir’s aunt, instructed NBC Information earlier this week. “Simply inform me, even when it’s the worst factor,”
Clutching her two sons, as fighters bark orders, Shiri Bibas looked terrified in a video taken near their home in kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel on the day of the Hamas assaults.
Footage of the trio being herded by gunmen by way of Gaza’s southern metropolis of Khan Younis later that day would show to be the final identified sighting of them.
Whereas all different little one hostages had been launched in trade for Palestinian prisoners throughout a one-week ceasefire in November 2023, the Bibas household by no means emerged from Gaza.
On one of many last days of the temporary pause in combating , Hamas launched an announcement claiming that Shiri Bibas and the youngsters had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. It stated Yarden Bibas was nonetheless alive and in captivity.
On the time, Israel’s army stated the declare couldn’t be confirmed, however in February 2024 it acknowledged its fears for the household.
Video exhibits the kidnapping of Shiri Silberman-Bibas and her kids.
“Based mostly on the data out there to us, we’re very involved and frightened concerning the situation and well-being of Shiri and the youngsters,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israel Protection Forces’ chief spokesperson, instructed a information convention.
Now, the Bibas household is daring to imagine that greater than a yr of agonizing uncertainty could quickly be coming to an finish a method or one other. “We all know will deliver us some sort of certainty, however we’re very scared as nicely,” Ofri Bibas-Levy stated of the ceasefire deal. “It might be certainty or a foul one.”
The 38-year-old occupational therapist stated she was nonetheless holding out hope that Shiri Bibas and her two sons may be alive, “however we all know the situation the hostages are being stored in.”
“So for a toddler and a child, it’s troublesome even when they survived the assault that Hamas stated they had been killed in,” she added. “We’re very frightened, very, very frightened.”
Kfir’s father, Yarden Bibas, was kidnapped individually from his spouse and youngsters and held in a special a part of Gaza, in accordance hostages who had been with him in captivity and since freed.
Nili Margalit, a neighbor in Nir Oz, stated she final noticed Yarden Bibas on Nov. 30, 2023, simply earlier than she was launched within the first ceasefire.
A Hamas guard ordered her to inform Yarden Bibas that his spouse and youngsters had been useless, however “I refused to do this,” she stated. As a substitute she instructed her captor that “if he needed to say such a horrible sentence to Yarden, then he’s the one which has to look him within the eyes and inform him.”
Hamas did inform Yarden Bibas and the subsequent day launched a video of the distraught father. Ofri Bibas-Levy stated: “I believed: I’m dropping Yarden now as a result of I couldn’t suppose that he might bear and survive this factor they instructed him.”
Yarden, Ariel, Shiri, Kfir Bibas.
Yarden Bibas can also be slated for launch within the first phase of the ceasefire deal, which came into effect Sunday after nearly 15 months of Israel’s army marketing campaign within the Gaza Strip. Well being officers within the Palestinian enclave greater than 47,000 individuals have been killed for the reason that begin of the warfare, which started after Hamas launched multipronged assaults on Israel, killing 1,200 and taking round 250 individuals hostage, based on official tallies.
Bibas-Levy stated she thinks continuously of her youthful brother, “each second of daily; I don’t know if he’s useless or alive, if he ate immediately, if he showered, if anyone’s torturing him, if he’s sick, if he’s nicely. I don’t know something.”
She was talking on the fringe of the so-called Hostage Square, the plaza in central Tel Aviv the place households of these held in Hamas captivity have rallied for 15 months demanding their launch.
Many within the crowd alongside her had been carrying stuffed animals in honor of Kfir’s second birthday, an echo of the pink elephant he’s holding in his hostage poster.
The household had searched the wreckage of Nir Ouncesmany instances within the hope of discovering Kfir’s elephant however with out success. After which, simply days earlier than the newest ceasefire was signed, it turned up within the nook of a nursery.
“It was actually very emotional,” Bibas-Levy stated. “And hopefully signal, perhaps.”
This text was initially printed on NBCNews.com
