Baby Kfir Bibas kidnapped by Hamas handed over to another terror group: IDF

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The aunt of 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, who is being held captive by Hamas along with the rest of his family, on Tuesday pleaded for their release.

Kfir has been held hostage in the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7 massacre, when he was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz along with his father Yarden, 34, mother Shiri, 32, and brother Ariel, 4. Kfir was just 9 months old when he was captured.

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“We’re talking to you today because tomorrow is the last day of the current ceasefire,” Ofri Bibas-Levy told reporters. “At the moment they are the youngest hostages still remaining in Hamas captivity.”

“We don’t know where they’ve been held. From what we know, they are kept underground,” said Ofri. “We’re really worried about the 10-month-old baby with formula as the main diet.”

Ofri continued: “We call upon the Israeli government and Qatar and Egypt, everybody who is involved in these negotiations and this deal, to do whatever they can to include our family in this deal and to release them as soon as possible.”

The Israel Defense Forces said on Monday that the Bibas family had been transferred by Hamas to another terrorist group in Gaza and that they were being held in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

The Saturday of horror

His grandfather clings to the hope that the family will be released soon.

“This is my whole life now,” Eli Bibas, 66, said in an interview with JNS earlier in November about his son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons being held by Hamas. “We have got to get them home.”

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That fateful Saturday, Eli was supposed to visit the family at 10 a.m., at their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, but the air raid sirens went off at 6:30, warning of incoming rockets from Gaza, sending everybody to their protected rooms. Eli, who lives about 20 minutes away, texted Yarden, 34, to be sure the family was OK.

“Like the rest of the Gaza border communities, he was in the sealed room,” Eli said. That morning, Yarden kept texting his sister Ofri, letting her know what was happening in Nir Oz, where he lived with Shiri, 32, Ariel and Kfir. But by 9 a.m. the air raid warnings kept coming and coming, and Eli knew something was astray. At 9:20 his son texted him “I love you,” the same message he sent his mom and sister. Just two months earlier, Yarden’s sister had moved from a nearby Gaza border community to the Golan Heights, to get away from the rocket attacks. Her brother had been thinking about making a similar move, his father recounted, and had also bought a handgun.

“Imagine what it would have been like for me now if my daughter had not moved,” he said in the interview. Yarden told his sister that there was noise outside and that they were having difficulty keeping the kids quiet but he was afraid to use the gun since the terrorists had automatic weapons. At 9:45 a.m., he texted, “They’re inside.”

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Family abducted

A video would soon come out of the Hamas terrorists drilling open the front door.

Hours later, a video circulated of Shiri holding both boys in her arms, a look of terror on her face as she was surrounded by terrorists, her boys facing her chest, a blanket covering them. Three days later, another picture would emerge, of a bloodied Yarden Bibas, a terrorist holding his throat with one hand and a hammer in the other. Shiri’s parents were burned alive in their homes in the kibbutz, their daughter was held in Gaza still unaware of their fate.

One in four members of their kibbutz was kidnapped or killed. Ofri, who has been to London and Cyprus to speak out for her brother’s family and the other hostages after a fruitless meeting with the International Red Cross in Tel Aviv, will travel to Geneva on Monday to speak at the U.N. Human Rights Council, Eli said.“No one could have imagined such a nightmare,” he said.

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