What Really Happened to the Bibas Family?
Or, another chapter in the saga of the Israeli government weaponizing tragedy to warmonger and dehumanize Palestinians.
Since the most recent Gaza ceasefire went into effect, there has been a concerted effort by Netanyahu and his craven allies in the Likud party to undermine the agreement and resume the campaign of bombardment and ethnic cleansing. Between Trump’s kooky redevelopment proposal that echoes longstanding desires from greedy developers (including his own son-in-law), and assurances very early on from Netanyahu to his extremist companions that the ceasefire would not be allowed to proceed as planned, the writing has been on the wall since very early on that the pause in fighting would only represent a temporary respite for the residents of the Gaza strip.
Most recently, dissatisfied with the terms of the ceasefire and what Israel has described as “humiliating ceremonies” in which seemingly well-nourished and well-groomed Israeli captives can be seen exchanging pleasantries with Hamas militants just before being released, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently announced a blockade of all humanitarian aid to Gaza in an effort to coax Hamas into releasing all of the hostages earlier than originally agreed upon (or suffer a complete and total collapse of the ceasefire). Raving fanatic and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (who just recently resigned over the ceasefire deal) expressed glee at the imminent collective punishment that will ensue as a result of the aid blockade, stating that “it is time to open the gates of hell” and “to return to war”, and Netanyahu states that this development has occurred in league with Trump and the United States.
One such captive release incident appears to have played an outsized role in bringing about this new aid blockade. On February 20th, Hamas released the deceased bodies of a young woman, Shiri Bibas, and her two small children, Ariel and Kfir, aged 4 years old and 9 months old at the time of their capture respectively. The Israeli government has long been using their story as a foil to justify their campaign of collective punishment against the roughly two million people in Gaza. Now, without providing public evidence and without independent third party investigation, Netanyahu is claiming that IDF intelligence and forensics has confirmed that the children were “strangled” to death in captivity. The situation was complicated further when Hamas had accidentally returned the body of an unidentified woman in place of Shiri Bibas. The mistake was corrected within 48 hours.
Looking back at the facts of the case, the official Israeli account about the alleged manner of the family’s death begins to fall apart very quickly. The family was not abducted by Hamas, but by the Mujahideen Brigades, an entirely distinct group. As far back as November of 2023, Hamas had maintained that the family were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Israel has publicly admitted to killing their own citizens previously, both in airstrikes and even in the direct line of gunfire. In spite of both of these facts, Israeli political and media officials continued to speak about the family as though they were still plausibly alive up until the release of their bodies. Additionally, Hamas attributed the initial mix-up of Shiri Bibas’ body as a consequence of misidentification, suggesting that Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment had caused bodies to become buried together under the rubble and difficult to identify. To complicate matters furthers, even according to Israel’s own forensics professionals, producing accurate forensics assessments of the bodies of slain hostages is becoming increasingly difficult and unlikely as time passes and the conditions of the bodies deteriorate.
Multiple things can be true at once. Ripping such young lives from a kibbutz to ultimately be killed can be understood as an immense tragedy, regardless of the exact circumstances of their death. Hamas’ macabre display of their caskets in front of a banner which squarely puts all of the blame on the shoulders of Netanyahu can be seen as insensitive and excessive. But even if so, then Israel parading their story around (against the wishes of their family) while playing fast and loose with the facts to channel widespread and natural societal grief into justifying restarting a punitive campaign on the innocent people of Gaza is many times more depraved and callous. Until there is an independent autopsy, there is no reason to buy into Netanyahu’s account of the facts, as the Israeli government has a history of muddying facts to further their agenda. For instance, in spite of numerous, well-documented atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th, Israel found the need to both boost the number, nature, and rates of both civilian casualties and incidences of rape, suggesting a widespread campaign of barbaric, systemic, and coordinated sexual violence that there has thus far been no real evidence for. Israeli military and media has also since reaffirmed the notion that the IDF employed a tactic called the Hannibal Directive on October 7th after previously decrying such allegations as baseless conspiracy theories. The Hannibal Directive enables IDF militants to prevent the capture of other militants by any means necessary, including friendly fire, and would be consistent with reports of indiscriminate shelling on October 7th.
In exploiting tragedies like that of the Bibas family, it appears that the Israeli government is once again laying the public relations groundwork in a hopeless attempt to justify imminent rampant violence, likely in the hopes of expunging Palestinians from both enclaves once and for all. Things are looking particularly dire at this time, with the Trump Administration sending billions of dollars in weapons and violence escalating in the West Bank. Participating in BDS, pressuring members of congress to support an arms embargo, and organizing other aid and protests are the most practical ways to take a stand. But also, staying vigilant and being equipped with facts in Israel’s war of information and propaganda can go a long way towards dispelling their aims to leverage tragedy to sell their campaign of wanton death and destruction for the Palestinian people.