To preface, I am autistic and some things that are self-explanatory to others need to be spelled out to me, and I cannot ask my family as they are all Zionists. I have noticed my cousins posting about the Bibas family and want to know why they are being highlighted so much by Zionists, especially compared to other Israelis who were taken by Hamas.

My understanding of the story is that the mother, father, and two young children were taken as hostages on Oct 7 2023. The father was separated from his wife and children and held separately. In Novemberish 2023, Hamas said that the mother and children were killed by an Israeli air strike, but Israel has denied this saying that Hamas handed the three of them off to other groups. Israel got pissed when the three were not released during the December 2023 ceasefire, despite Hamas offering to return the bodies, which Israel refused for some reason.

To my understanding, the bodies were sent to Israel recently, and the father was released alive. I read somewhere that Israel is claiming that the 3 bodies of the mother and children show evidence that they were not killed by an airstrike and that the children were killed with bare hands. I don’t know how they would determine this on bodies over a year and half old, as I’m assuming that Gaza does not currently have the facilities to preserve bodies because of the mass destruction.

Am I understanding the events correctly? If so, why is this family getting so much more attention than others? Is it because their relatives have been quite vocal? Is it because they’re more white-presenting and are therefore more “useful” for anti-Palestinian propaganda? I read that during the ReadHead festival in the Netherlands, their relatives tried to use it to spread awareness about them, even though they were already dead.

I’m just very confused and would appreciate if someone could explain. I’m also extremely pissed off that people aren’t giving the same attention to murdered Palestinian children. Basically why is this family being treated as more special than every single Palestinian that has been oppressed and murdered, or even other Israeli captives.

The captors of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the two Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 terrorist attack, "brutally murdered them with their bare hands," IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Friday, rejecting Hamas’ claim that the family was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

In a televised statement, Hagari emphasized that the two young boys, aged 4 and 10 months at the time of their death, were not executed by gunfire but were instead killed in an especially brutal manner by their captors, who then mutilated their bodies to conceal the crime. “The extremists committed a despicable crime, treating the helpless as ISIS did,” he said.

Hagari stressed that forensic evidence from the children's remains, combined with intelligence reports, confirmed their fate. The IDF has shared this intelligence with international partners, he added.

He also revealed that he had spoken with the boys' father, Yarden Bibas, who was himself abducted during Hamas’ October 7 attack but was released earlier this month as part of the ongoing hostage deal. “Yarden wants the entire world to know the brutal manner in which his children were murdered,” Hagari said.

Additionally, Hagari demanded the return of the body of their mother, Shiri Bibas, who was supposed to be returned to Israel along with her children’s remains. Instead, Hamas delivered the body of an unidentified Gazan woman, which the IDF has condemned as a major breach of the hostage-for-cease-fire agreement.

Hagari further disclosed that Oded Lifshitz, 83, whose remains were returned alongside the Bibas children, was executed by his captors in the early weeks of the war. His death, along with the brutal killings of Ariel and Kfir, underscores what Hagari called Hamas' “unimaginable cruelty.”