Hey everyone, I’ve been looking at some sad stuff online lately, and one story really got to me. It’s about Ariel and Kfir Bibas, two little kids who were taken by Hamas from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023. I saw a picture of them, looking so cute and innocent, and it said something awful: the Israeli military thinks these kids were killed by Hamas people, choked to death while they were being held.
It’s tagged with #BibasFamily and #Israel, showing how this has become a big deal in the ongoing war in Gaza.
I started reading more because it made me feel really upset—how could anyone hurt babies like that? From what I found on places like Wikipedia and news sites, Ariel and Kfir, along with their mom Shiri and dad Yarden, were grabbed during the bad attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023. That day started a big fight between Israel and Hamas, with lots of rockets hitting Israel and attackers coming into towns and bases.
It’s been the worst fighting for Palestinians in their history with Israel, and the Bibas family’s story is one of the hardest to hear about.
Some news said Hamas first said in 2023 that Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir died in an Israeli bomb attack. But Israel didn’t agree, and no one was sure what happened until now. Then, on February 20, 2025, as part of a peace deal and prisoner swap, Hamas gave back coffins they said had Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir inside. DNA tests in Israel showed the boys’ bodies were there, but the woman’s body wasn’t Shiri—it was someone else from Palestine.
Hamas later said the kids and their mom were killed by Israeli bombs before the peace deal, but now Israel says the boys were killed by Hamas hands.
The story also talks about “Islamic Mujahidin of Hamas,” which I didn’t get at first. I looked it up, and it seems to mean groups like the Mujahideen Brigades, a bad group tied to other fighters in Palestine. They’re not exactly Hamas but work with them, and both are seen as dangerous by the U.S. and other places. It shows how complicated the fighting is, with different groups involved.
What bothers me is the different stories—Hamas saying bombs killed the kids, and Israel saying Hamas did it by hand. Either way, it’s so sad, and it shows how tough this whole situation is. People all over have noticed the Bibas family, with groups and family asking leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden to help get hostages back. Yarden, the dad, got out alive in February 2025, but finding out what happened to his wife and kids must be terrible.
This story made me think about how hard this war is on people. Ariel and Kfir, just tiny babies, have become a sad example of the hostage problem, and their deaths, no matter how they happened, show how awful war can be. I’m still trying to understand it, but I wanted to share what I found because it’s such a big story, even if it’s really sad to read. If you’ve seen more about this or know anything else, let me know—I’d like to learn more.