Israel killed the Bibas. Now Netanyahu is using their death as a pretext to restart Gaza bombardment

The Israelis have known about the death of the three Bibas for 15 months.

Netanyahu depicted as a monster at the handover of the bodies of the Bibas.

On November 29, 2023 — a full 15 months ago — Hamas’s military wing, Al -Qassam Brigades, released a short statement:

Al-Qassam Brigades announce the killing of three detained Zionists as a result of previous Zionist shelling on the Gaza Strip. They are:

• Shiri Silverman Bibas

• Kfir Bibas

• Ariel Bibas

A day later, on November 30, Qassam released a video statement from Yarden Bibas, the husband of Israeli prisoner, Shiri, and father to their two children, Kfir and Ariel.

In the video, a disheveled and visibly distraught Yarden tells the camera, “Netanyahu, you bombed and killed my wife and my two children, who were the most important things in my life. Bring them back home so they can be buried in Israel. I beg you to bring me, my wife and my children back home.”

The dates are important. The brief ceasefire in the second month of Israel’s genocide in Gaza came into effect on November 24 for an initial four days. It was eventually extended to seven days, and as talks were ongoing to extend it further, the Israelis resumed their bombardment of the Gaza Strip on December 1.

On December 1, Hamas released a statement explicitly laying out the sequence of events and stating how Netanyahu torpedoed any chance of the continuation of the ceasefire and the return of the Bibas back to Israel, as Yarden wished:

The occupation bears responsibility for the resumption of the war and the Nazi aggression on the Gaza Strip, after its refusal all night to engage with all the offers for the release of other detainees.

We hold the occupation responsible for the resumption of the war and aggression on Gaza. Negotiations were held all night for extending the ceasefire, during which the movement offered an exchange of prisoners and the elderly. It also offered to hand over the bodies of the dead detainees resulting from Israeli bombing, including the bodies of the Bibas family and the release of their father, to enable him to participate in their burial ceremonies, in addition to handing over two Israeli detainees.

However, the occupation refused to deal with all these offers, as it had already decided to resume its criminal aggression.

With that went any chance of the remains of the three dead Bibas — killed by Israeli bombings — to be returned to Israel along with the surviving patriarch, Yarden, whom Hamas was willing to release as a humanitarian gesture.

Yarden next made an appearance on a January 7 Hamas poster. The poster depicted the crying visage of Yarden juxtaposed with Netanyahu digging graves of the Israeli captives. It was captioned in Arabic and Hebrew:

Will I bury them or will I be buried with them?

Yarden Bibas: “Will I bury them or will I be buried with them?”

In another video it released in September 2024, Hamas clearly identified the three Bibas among the dead Israelis in Gaza.

And yet, Israelis pretended for over 15 months that all four Bibas were alive and the Palestinian resistance was refusing to release them. They made a whole propaganda narrative around the capture of the Bibas babies and used their photos to dehumanise Palestinians and continue their genocidal assault on the inhabitants of the besieged Gaza Strip.

When Yarden was released as part of the ongoing Flood of the Free deal between the Palestinian resistance and Israel on February 1, the Zionists again ratcheted up the propaganda about the Bibas, deceiving — typical — the world into thinking that Hamas was withholding the other three alive and refusing to release them in the first phase of the deal. Up until late January, Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman and a certified liar who made a fool of himself trying to pass off an Arabic calendar as a list of Hamas fighters in the early days of the genocidal war, expressed “grave concerns” for the fate of Shiri and her two children. At the time, it appeared to be an Israeli ruse to kill the fragile ceasefire deal and restart the bombing campaign.

Now that all four Bibas are out of Gaza — the corpses of the three dead Bibas were released on Thursday after Yarden was released on February 1 — the Israelis have embarked on a new propaganda campaign to vilify the resistance in another likely bid to start raining hell on Gaza once again. Negotiations for the second of the three-phase ceasefire deal haven’t yet started in earnest. They were scheduled to start on February 3.

Netanyahu has said that the resistance failed to hand over Shiri’s remains and instead sent the corpse of a Palestinian woman. “In an unspeakably cynical way, they did not return Shiri to her little children, the little angels, and they put the body of a Gazan woman in a coffin,” he wrote on Twitter.

In what can only be construed as a declaration of war, Netanyahu further added that this marks a violation of the ceasefire agreement for which Hamas will pay the “full price”: “We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages - both living and dead - and ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and vicious violation of the agreement.”

On its part, Hamas has expressed surprise at the Israeli reaction and rejected Netanyahu’s threat. “The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, is surprised by the uproar caused by the occupation following its claim that the body of detainee Shiri Bibas does not match DNA tests,” the leading Palestinian resistance faction said in a statement on Friday. “Hamas rejects the threats made by Benjamin Netanyahu as part of his attempts to improve his image before Zionist society and amid internal Israeli disputes.”

Hamas further added that it will investigate the Israeli claim, while acknowledging the possibility of “an error or mix-up in the bodies”:

We have received the occupation’s claims and allegations from the mediators and will thoroughly investigate them, announcing the results transparently. There is also a possibility of an error or mix-up in the bodies, potentially caused by the occupation’s targeting and bombing of the location where the family was present alongside other Palestinians.

In the attack that killed the three Bibas, several Palestinians were also killed, raising the possibility of their remains being mixed-up with those of others.

Through the course of their 15 months of barbaric campaign in Gaza, the Israelis were dropping American-supplied 2,000 bombs indiscriminately all over the enclave. The firepower of those bombs were reducing Palestinians to ashes and shredded meat to such an extent that families were given bodies of their loved ones by the kilo in grocery bags. Some were buried with parts of their bodies missing. Many had their bodies devoured by stray dogs. Thousands still remain buried in the rubble.

In such a scenario, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the Bibas were unrecognisable in death and that their remains were mixed up with those of Palestinians due to Israeli savagery. Notably, the Mujahideen Brigades fighters in charge of the Bibas were all wiped out in the same attack that killed the three Israeli prisoners.

At the handover ceremony of the their bodies, one Mujahideen Brigades fighter spoke to a journalist and revealed the following details about the capture of the Bibas from occupied Palestine and their murder by Israel:

“She [Shiri] was working in the southern Gaza Division. She also worked in Unit 8200, and upon her capture, we reunited her with her children out of compassion for them. We provided them with a safe and comfortable home and treated them well, as our noble Islamic faith commands. However, due to the barbaric and indiscriminate bombing by this Nazi army — the Israeli army — they were killed along with their captors.”

So, until the very last moments, she was secured by your personnel?

“Yes, yes, she was kept safe in a secure home and was living a very comfortable life, as if she were in her own home. But this relentless bombing, which spared neither stone nor tree in Gaza and became a sword hanging over even civilians in their homes, also struck their captives and their captors.”

It is not news that living captives are a lot more valuable to the Palestinian resistance than dead ones. It is the sole reason why Israel deliberately tried to kill as many of them as they could to take the Palestinian bargaining chip for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange off the table. But to Netanyahu’s great dismay, he didn’t manage to kill them all and is having to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners back to freedom.

In a statement addressed to the families of the Israelis receiving their dead relatives, Hamas reminded them that the blame for their predicament rests entirely on the Israeli leadership:

To the Bibas and Lifshitz families: We would have preferred for your sons to return to you alive, but your army’s commanders and government chose to kill them rather than retrieve them. Along with them, they have killed 17,881 Palestinian children in their criminal bombing of the Gaza Strip, and we know that you understand who is truly responsible for their deaths. You have been victims of a leadership that does not care for its own people.

Any Israeli paying attention should have by now realised the truth of the Hamas statement. The Israeli leadership finds it kosher to bomb its own people into oblivion to prevent them from being taken captive and then it bombs them in captivity to avoid making deals.

One of the many lessons from October 7 for the Zionists should be that leaving their cosy Western countries to move into a stolen Palestinian home is not a deal any sane person would accept because when the natives come back to take what’s rightfully theirs the self-proclaimed Jewish state wouldn’t protect them.

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