Bibas family toys donated to Assuta hospital after Hamas murders

For sixteen months, a pile of toys grew at Ben Gurion Airport, a quiet tribute to Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Travelers passing through would stop, adding a teddy bear or a toy car, each one a small hope that the boys—kidnapped with their mom, Shiri, during Hamas’s brutal attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023—might one day play with them. The Bibas family became a symbol of heartbreak worldwide, their faces—especially Ariel, four, and Kfir, just nine months, with their unmistakable orange hair—plastered across posters and flooding social media. People clung to the dream of their return.

That dream shattered earlier this year. Yarden Bibas, the boys’ dad, got out in February, and everyone held their breath, praying Shiri and the kids would follow. Instead, weeks later, the IDF delivered gut-wrenching news: Ariel, Kfir, and Shiri had been killed by their captors, beaten to death with bare hands. The country reeled, and the toys at the airport turned from symbols of hope into a haunting memorial.

Not long ago, Yarden visited that spot at Ben Gurion, surrounded by the gifts left for his boys who’d never come home. A dad crushed by grief, he found a way to keep going. “Kfir and Ariel came into this world at Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod,” he said in a statement the hospital shared this week. “Now that they’re gone, I want these toys—left to honor them—to bring a little happiness to the kids being cared for where my boys were born.” It’s a raw, beautiful thought: turning unbearable loss into something good.

Assuta’s director, Dr. Erez Barenboim, called it “an incredible example of human strength,” a way to take personal pain and spin it into kindness. Yarden sees it bigger than that. “Every kid born here, every kid who gets better, that’s us winning against the ones who tried to break us,” he said. It’s not just about the toys—it’s about defiance, about life pushing back. For Yarden, and for a nation mourning alongside him, those little cars and stuffed bears carry a weight far beyond playthings. They’re a quiet promise to keep going, one smile at a time.