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Mourning the Murdered Hostages
Defenders of Hamas will have a difficult time explaining why a baby, a toddler, and their mother were returned to Israel in coffins last week.
“Ponder How the Bibas Boys Died,” invited Bernard-Henri Levy for the Wall Street Journal on February 20, 2025: “Imagine the life of a baby trapped in dark, damp tunnels, of a toddler ripped from his family.”
“I have spent my life witnessing and reporting on the most atrocious crimes, from Bosnia to Somalia, Syria to Algeria and now Ukraine,” Levy assured readers of the WSJ. “After Oct. 7 — after seeing the burned kibbutzim and gathering the testimonies of survivors — I was often asked if I had ever experienced anything similar. When I think of Kfir and Ariel Bibas and their mother, Shiri, I now answer: No, I’m not sure I have ever encountered such horror.”
“Consider those phrases ‘child hostage’ and ‘baby hostage,’” continued Levy. “In other wars, the death of a child is the ultimate shame, and some remnant of humanity — or rationality — generally prevents captors from bothering with an infant. They abandon the baby. They leave it behind or on the roadside. Someone less hardened might even leave it wrapped in a blanket outside a church, a mosque or a home. Here, they deliberately took the time to abduct these two terrified little beings clinging to their mother.”