Where is Shiri Bibas?

What really went down in Israel on Thursday, February 20, 2025.

Editor’s Note: I am very deliberately not including any visuals of the grotesque Hamas theatre staged yesterday in Khan Younis. Nor do we need to see yet another rendering of the horror of the violent kidnapping of Shiri Bibas and her boys, Ariel and Kfir, or their elderly neighbor, Oded Lifschitz.

Instead, I leave you with an orange balloon.

And below, a few photos of the magnificent cactus garden tended by Oded for decades in front of his home at Kibbutz Nir Oz. It was his hobby for more than 50 years and is a masterpiece.

May their memories be a blessing.

On Wednesday night, there were warnings in the Israeli media that parents should monitor what their children see on television the following day. Thursday.

We were also told that it may not be possible to identify the remains of the hostages being returned to Israel by Hamas on Thursday morning. Speculation, of course, was immediate and focused on baby Kfir Bibas, who was 9 months old when kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. He didn’t have teeth, some said, and that would hamper the identification process.

But he has bones, I thought. We can extract DNA from bones.

I also knew that we were being softened for the next blow.

These “warnings” were not for naught. Israel was signaling to its citizens that it had reliable intelligence regarding two matters: that the theatrics surrounding the “handover” of bodies from Hamas to the Red Cross on Thursday morning would be particularly offensive; and that the purported bodies of one or more of the Bibas family members would not match their DNA. That Hamas would send back “fake” remains in at least one coffin.

If you live here long enough you begin to understand how the sick Hamas mind works.

In addition to baby Kfir, we expected the return of the remains of his four-year-old brother, Ariel, and mother, Shiri. I am sure you do not need reminding of the circumstances of their capture.

Plenty has been written about the grotesque theater staged in Khan Younis on Thursday morning. Civilian families came out to celebrate and enjoy the festivities. Children danced and sang. The four black caskets containing human remains were emblazoned with vulgar propaganda.

As the masked and armed thugs carried the black coffins to the Red Cross vans, we could see the labels on each one. Shiri Bibas, the 32-year-old mother of Kfir and Ariel, the label on one coffin read, had been “arrested” by Hamas on October 7. Her putative crime was having served in an intelligence unit during her compulsory IDF service. But we all know that her real crime was being a Jew. As was the case with Ariel and Kfir.

“Arrested.”

Also being repatriated were the remains of Oded Lifschitz, 83 years of age when kidnapped. He survived several months in Hamas Hell before being murdered.

The coffins were all locked. Hamas handed keys to the Red Cross workers.

Upon turning the black boxes over to the IDF, they were scanned to ensure that they had not been boobytrapped to explode when opened. That is a Hamas special. Following their spree of savagery in Israel on October 7, many bodies were left wired with bombs attached, so that anyone touching the remains would be blown up too. It takes a special evil to think to do that. And then to do that.

The keys provided by Hamas to open the coffins did not work.

Each coffin contained what appeared to be human remains. They were also stuffed with propaganda material. This has raised the ire of leading Islamic authorities, as well as UAE and Saudi leadership, condemning Hamas for having brought dishonor to Islam. “Hamas has brought shame to Islam on a level never seen before,” said the Grand Mufti of Dubai after watching the disgusting parade and celebration scenes with the Bibas coffins as the focus.

Of course, Hamas had the audacity to assure and declare that all that the bodies passed to the Red Cross yesterday had been treated with the utmost respect and dignity, in accordance with Islamic law.

On Wednesday night, after the warnings about television and identification of the deceased, I knew that the remains of the Bibas family would not return intact. And sadly, I have been proven correct.

A forensic process conducted on Thursday night and into this morning has determined that the little boys were murdered “brutally” approximately ten days after their kidnapping. Late Friday afternoon, just as Shabbat was coming in, the IDF announced that Ariel and Kfir had been murdered. The same pathologists who had worked on the remains of hundreds of people murdered so savagely on October 7 assessed the remains of these two beautiful children. And they were shocked by the brutality inflicted upon these innocent souls. One can only hope that he and Ariel were with their mother to the end.

This is an excerpt from the reported findings of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute: The terrorists strangled Kfir and Ariel to death, then brutally mutilated their bodies in an attempt to make it appear as if they had been killed by the Israeli Air Force. Despite the horrific condition of the bodies, forensic investigators unanimously determined that Kfir and Ariel were cold-bloodedly murdered approximately 10 days after October 7th, 2023.

The purported remains of Shiri Bibas that were in one of the coffins do not match her DNA—nor that of any of the remaining hostages in Hamas custody. It seems that Hamas grabbed any old corpse and threw it in. Respect for the dead, indeed.

This macabre sequence of events was carefully planned by Hamas.

Also on Thursday night, as Israel reeled from the most recent spectacle of evil, three buses exploded in towns adjacent to Tel Aviv. They were empty and parked overnight in a garage area. The Tulkarm arm of Hamas took responsibility immediately.

The explosives were meant to go off on Friday morning at 9 am, when they would be servicing routes of people doing last-minute shopping and errands before the weekend. Mass carnage of civilians was planned.

Ben Gurion airport went on high alert last night as well, and other emergency procedures were put in place on all public transit in central Israel. Additional explosive devices were found. One was planted in a children’s indoor water park.

What does it all mean? Here’s my take.

Recall that the bodies of the deceased were not scheduled to be released.

Suddenly, on Tuesday, Hamas announced they would return four bodies on Thursday.

And, they added, they would further release the final six men who are alive and slated to be freed in the first “stage” of this so-called “deal.” Hamas does nothing out of compassion. Or decency. This new plot twist was a clear sign of a trap.

We know the names of the six men who are intended to be released alive, on Saturday morning. We can also be certain that they are in dreadful condition. Hamas has learned that the torture and starvation they inflict on hostages is not applauded. Even the UN condemns such treatment, however reluctantly. So they are not keen to release six more tortured and starved men.

There is pressure building on Hamas to release every last hostage at once and soon. The Trump Effect. One can only imagine the phone conversations yesterday between Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Qatari officials after the shameful display in Khan Younis.

Today, Friday, Hamas admitted knowing that the remains in the coffin with Shiri’s image on it contained the corpse of another person. They don’t seem to be terribly concerned with the dignity of that individual, either. “Give us back what was in that coffin,” Hamas demanded of Israel.

Hamas knows that one way or another, sooner or later, war will resume, and they and Gaza will be pulverized. And if they had their way, that war would resume sooner...while they still hold Israeli hostages. That would inflict maximum psychological torment on Israel.

The actions of Thursday were intended to enrage and provoke Israel to attack Hamas and resume the war, meaning that the six living hostages would not be released on Saturday.

But that will not happen. Israel has not taken the bait. Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated that Hamas will pay the “full price” for this barbarism. But first, we want our hostages released.

In recent hours Hamas has indicated that it will proceed with the hostage release on Saturday.

Should that transpire tomorrow morning, I expect that the civilized world will be horrified by what they see and hear.

After that, Hamas will then do everything possible to avoid releasing any of the additional hostages still in captivity. It is believed that there are 70 and that 26 of them are alive. It is also known—based on current intelligence—that they do not have long to live.

Six terrorist factions were crowding the stage in Khan Younis on which the four coffins were displayed yesterday. Everyone wanted to share in the glory. They were proud. The people of Gaza brought their children to celebrate and play with toy guns, preparing to kill more Jews. It is reminiscent of the Taliban stadium events when families would cheer as they participated in the stoning death of a woman. Or a hanging. Or the chopping off of hands of alleged thieves.

Hamas is a barbaric, savage, Islamist death cult. It is no different from ISIS, which the West roundly condemned. And yet there is still this desperate urge on the part of so many in the west to sanctify Hamas. “Resistance fighters.” And the majority of “civilians” in Gaza support Hamas. In fact, Shiri and her boys were believed to have been kidnapped and held by a group of criminals. After the Hamas terrorists led off the October 7 murder spree they were followed by regular folks who came to rape, murder and loot. Many snatched a hostage or two to later sell to Hamas.

Some Hamas sympathizers have had the temerity to recall the video that Yarden Bibas was forced to record in late November 2023, immediately after he was told by his captors that Shiri and the boys had been killed in an IAF strike. He was told what to say to the camera. This broken man. In captivity.

Even the United Nations accepts that any video made by a hostage in captivity is, by definition, made in duress.

But not when it comes to Jews. No. All the “thank you notes” various hostages were forced to write before being released, the video of Yarden Bibas in his grief—these reflect the authentic views of Israeli hostages.

It is the filthiest propaganda.

Where was Shiri when her boys were murdered?

Where is Shiri today?