Shiri Silberman-Bibas (32), Yarden Bibas (34), Ariel (4) and Kfir (9 months) lived in kibbutz Nir-Oz. They were happy together and had a beautiful little family, two little boys with flaming red hair. Shiri’s parents immigrated from Argentina 40 years ago, while Yarden Bibas is from Yemeni descent.

In the early morning of October 7, kibbutz Nir Oz was invaded by hundreds of Hamas terrorists, armed to the teeth. They went from door to door, killing entire families, shooting children in their beds, tying people up and torturing them, setting their houses on fire and burning them alive.

In a panic, Yarden, Shiri and the children hid in the safe room of their house, together with Shiri’s parents. They contacted their family, telling them what was happening. “It feels like the end,” Yarden texted to his sister. Then: “They are coming into the house.”

After that, there were no more texts. But Yarden and Shiri’s family saw their loved ones in the Hamas videos of that day. The little boys’ bright red hair was hard to miss. They had to watch as armed men escorted Shiri out of the house, sobbing and terrified, clutching her two babies. Then, they had to watch as terrorists beat Yarden with a hammer and took him away separately, wounded and bleeding from his head.

This video and the screenshots made the Bibas family the most famous hostages. Kfir, at nine months old at the time, is the youngest hostage of all. The following image has been shown all over the world.

People are also trying to find out the identity of the man in the light blue shirt behind them, the man whose face Hamas is trying to conceal. Is he a Western journalist? There is a theory that there were journalists and photographers with the terrorists, who had prior knowledge of the attack and who came along to film and photograph everything that happened. There are freelance Gazan journalists seen in other pictures, some of them with known ties to Hamas. The cruelty and callousness of people standing by and taking photos of a massacre is inconceivable.

For weeks, there was no news of the Bibas/Silberman family. Shiri’s parents, Jose Luis (Yossi) and Margit Silberman, were assumed to be hostages, until their bodies were identified in kibbutz Nir Oz. They had been murdered, not abducted.

After 7 long weeks, Hamas finally caved under immense pressure and agreed to release the minor hostages and their mothers. For a week, every night a small number of children, mothers and elderly women were released.

But Shiri Bibas and her redheaded babies were not among them. Every night, their family, along with the entire country, prayed that they would come home the next day. People held vigils and released orange balloons in honour of the children. Tomorrow… Tomorrow, the ginger babies will come home.

But they never did. On November 29, Hamas released a video of Yarden Bibas. They filmed his reaction while terrorists told him that his wife and children were dead, according to them, killed in an Israeli airstrike. They forced the sobbing and broken man to blame the Israeli government and to say that they had killed his family. There are no words to describe psychological torture of this level. The entire country is brokenhearted and just wants to bring Yarden and the bodies of Shiri and the children back to Israel.

There is no evidence that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir are really dead. It is possible that Hamas is using them as pawns in their psychological warfare tactics. Earlier, Hamas claimed to have passed them on (sold them) to another terror organization, and lost track of them. We have no way of knowing what is the truth. But the heartbreak and the pain is real, for all of us.

We keep on hoping for a miracle, and that one day, the Bibas family will return home. We love you, Kfir, Ariel, Shiri and Yarden.

#bringthemhome