The lost innocents: Why Hamas killed the Bibas boys

On October 7, 2023, the world bore witness to an incomprehensible horror: Hamas-led terrorists and Gazans stormed southern Israel, unleashing a wave of violence that claimed 1200 lives, including 725 civilians—36 of them children. Among the youngest and most heartbreaking victims were Ariel Bibas, age 4, and Kfir Bibas, just 9 months old, abducted from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz alongside their mother, Shiri. More than a year later, conclusive forensics shows our worst fears have come true: Ariel and Kfir were murdered in November 2023, cruelly.

Hamas has claimed that the Bibas boys, along with their mother, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the site where they were held captive in Gaza, but it's just another one of their vicious and despicable lies. The sheer brutality inflicted upon these innocents defies comprehension. How does one reconcile the deliberate targeting of a toddler and an infant—children who posed no threat, who could barely speak or crawl—with any semblance of humanity? The world recoils, but it also forgets.

The Bibas family’s tragedy is not an isolated incident but a stark emblem of the violence Hamas and other Gazan fighters unleashed on Israeli children that day. In Kibbutz Be’eri, a nine-year-old girl’s desperate plea—“I’m just a child, I have school tomorrow”—rang out as militants tore through homes, killing over 100 residents, including children burned alive or shot in their beds. At Kfar Aza, families huddled in safe rooms only to be gunned down or taken hostage. Across the attack sites, 36 children perished—two of them infants under one, like 10-month-old Mila Cohen, killed with her father and grandmother. At least 42 Israeli children were abducted, ripped from their families, some forced to watch their parents die before being dragged into Gaza.

The details are unbearable. A Hamas propaganda video showed a boy, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the leg, being bandaged by terrorists after they killed his mother and rigged her body with explosives—then tried to kidnap him and his sibling. A pregnant Bedouin woman was shot in the abdomen, her unborn child’s life snuffed out alongside hers. Human Rights Watch, in a exhaustive 236-page report from July 2024, confirmed these acts as war crimes and crimes against humanity, documenting willful killings and cruel treatment across nearly every civilian site attacked. The evidence—survivor testimonies, photos, videos—paints a picture of deliberate savagery.

And yet, the Bibas boys stand out. Kfir, with his red hair and wide eyes, became a symbol of the innocent lives stolen that day—his first birthday marked in captivity on January 18, 2024, with no cake, no freedom. Ariel, his protective big brother, was last seen in grainy footage, clutched by their terrified mother as Hamas gunmen closed in. Hamas’s claim that their bodies were “lost among others” after an airstrike—insipid phrasing for a grim reality—offers no closure, only questions. The truth is that their tiny lives extinguished by the same hands that took them?

Hamas denies targeting civilians, insisting deaths were accidental amid clashes with Israeli forces or the collapse of defenses. They’ve called allegations of systematic violence against children propaganda, urging independent probes—probes Israel has blocked, citing security. Some initial claims, like widespread beheadings of babies, were debunked, sowing doubt. But the documented toll—36 dead children, 42 abducted, 20 orphaned—cannot be dismissed. The Bibas boys’ horrific fate is a tragedy rooted in the chaos of that day, a chaos Hamas ignited.

The world’s outrage flared briefly. Leaders condemned, vigils were held, Kfir’s image plastered on posters. But as Israel’s retaliation leveled Gaza, killing tens of thousands—including thousands of Palestinian children—the narrative shifted. The Bibas boys faded from headlines, their story buried under the rubble of a war that shows no end. Hamas’s stated motives—retribution for occupation, the blockade, Al-Aqsa—do little to justify targeting a baby and his brother. The attackers’ own words, captured in videos boasting of their deeds, belie claims of restraint.

How can the world tolerate this? A 9-month-old and a 4-year-old, stolen from their cribs, subjected to horrors no child should know. The 20 orphans left behind, the 36 young lives snuffed out, the 42 taken—all demand remembrance. Yet tolerance creeps in through apathy. iations stall and attention wanes.

We cannot comprehend the evil that took Ariel and Kfir, nor the indifference that lets it fade. Their silenced voices scream for justice, for memory, for a reckoning that has yet to come. But come it must.