Any remaining doubts of the barbarity that underpins Hamas were dispelled by the events of 20 February. Not content with making a show of the release of each small group of hostages kidnapped in Israel on 7 October 2023 – from parading them in front of crowds, to reportedly forcing them to smile in front of cameras as they are handed “goody bags” as a sick memento for their hundreds of days in captivity – these terrorists have even made a spectacle of the bodies of dead children.
Caskets said to be containing the bodies of 84-year-old Oded Lifschitz, 33-year-old Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, were displayed on a stage in central Gaza. Behind them was a banner with an anti-Semitic image of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, depicted as a vampire with blood dripping from his mouth. Beneath the image were photographs of the four murdered hostages, alongside the words: “War criminal Netanyahu & his Nazi army killed them with missiles from Zionist warplanes.”
Ariel was just four years old when he was kidnapped with his mother and nine-month-old baby brother Kfir from the kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel. Hamas reported in November 2023 that both boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, but their deaths were never officially confirmed by Israel. Their father, Yarden Bibas, who was held separately, was released earlier this month – one of 19 hostages who have so far been traded as part of the first stage of an attempted ceasefire.
It’s believed that Kfir Bibas was too young even to have dental records that can be checked by Israeli authorities. The pictures of these beautiful red-headed boys have become a symbol of indiscriminate murder and hostage-taking on 7 October. The image of the fear on their and their mother’s faces as they were snatched away from their home, posted with pride by Hamas on social media, is something no one can unsee.
As the coffins containing these tiny bodies were then paraded through the crowds, Palestinians who had gathered in Khan Younis in Gaza cheered. It bears repeating: they cheered at the sight of caskets with dead children in. The videos, which Israelis have been advised not to watch on television and Israeli state media did not broadcast, show hundreds of people celebrating the fact that two children have been killed alongside their mother. There is whistling. Some even try to break through to the front of the crowds to get a better photo of the coffins. Perhaps most grotesque is that in video clips of the macabre ceremony, children can be heard playing. Some men are clearly seen with babies strapped to their chests. Too young to walk, perhaps, but old enough apparently to attend this parade of the dead.
Even in death, these poor people have been afforded no dignity. Kfir and Ariel’s locked coffins were labelled incorrectly – the photos on the side accompanying the other sibling’s name. Netanyahu’s face is also on the side of each of the caskets, with the words “the killer”. On 21 February, Israeli officials said that the body in the casket for Shiri was not that of Shiri Bibas but an unknown Palestinian woman.
Across Israel, it became an unofficial day of mourning. This was the first time that hostages were returned dead. Some schools closed and activities were cancelled. But none could be more devastated than the Bibas and Lifschitz families. As one person wrote on social media, “Pray for Yarden Bibas. I don’t believe any human on this Earth suffers more pain than him today.”
In a statement, the Lifschitz family said: “We received with deep sorrow the official and bitter news confirming the identification of our beloved Oded’s body… Now we can mourn the husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who has been missing from us since October 7. Our family’s healing process will begin now and will not end until the last hostage is returned.”
Perhaps we should not have been shocked. “It came as no surprise that the terrorists chose to make a gruesome pantomime of the handover of the bodies this morning,” a statement from the lawyers of the British hostage families said. “Hostage-taking is inherently abusive and undignified – that is why it is a war crime.”
War criminals should be punished. The United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Turk, has rightly labelled the entire process as “cruel” and “inhumane”. Regardless of anyone’s view on the wider conflict, Hamas’s parading of the dead bodies of innocent children and civilians is a disgrace.
[See also: The DEI trend cycle]
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