This isn’t the ending we wanted for Shiri Bibas and her children, but after 16 months, Shiri’s body is finally home and will be laid to rest with her two beloved children, Ariel, 4, and baby Kfir, less than a year old when he was murdered. Shiri was 32 when she was killed, 32 when she became a harrowing symbol of the October 7 Hamas attack, holding her sweet redheaded boys while being taken into Gaza.
Shiri’s body was meant to have been returned on Thursday along with the bodies of her boys and Oded Lifshitz, one of the founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where they lived. However, the body that was found inside the casket meant to be hers turned out to be that of an unknown woman from Gaza, agonizingly prolonging her family’s uncertainty and anguish. In the late hours of Friday evening and early Saturday morning, it was announced that a body believed to be Shiri’s was on its way to Israel. Despite the time, dozens of Israelis gathered at Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine with flags and yellow ribbons, hoping to give Shiri all the love and solidarity they could on that final journey, making sure she wasn’t alone. And in the early hours of Shabbat, the news we all dreaded about her death became official.
“Tonight, our Shiri has returned home,” the Bibas family revealed in a statement. “After the identification process at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, this morning we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest. Despite our fears for their fate, we kept hoping we would get to hug them again, and now we are broken and grieving.”
“For 16 months, we sought certainty, and now that we have it, there is no comfort in it, but we hope for the beginning of a closure,” they continued. “Shiri was a wonderful mother to Ariel and Kfir, a loving partner to Yarden, a devoted sister and aunt, and an amazing friend. In this difficult time, we continue to demand the immediate return of all the remaining hostages. Nothing is more important than that. There will be no healing without them.”
“The details of the funeral and shiva will be published in due course,” they shared. “Please give the family the space to process and mourn. Thank you all for your support and love during these past 16 months. We only wish Shiri had lived to see it.”
Her beloved Kibbutz Nir Oz community shared a moving eulogy for the woman who touched so many of them.
“Shiri, who was kidnapped when she was 32, was born and grew up in Nir Oz,” it reads. “Through the years, she was a devoted caretaker of the children of the kibbutz as part of the Department of Education and was deeply loved by anyone who knew her. In the past two years, she worked as an accountant for the kibbutz, but before everything, she was a doting mother, who devoted herself to parenting with endless love.”
“Shiri, Yarden, Ariel and Kfir loved their home in Nir Oz,” the statement continues, “the patio, the grass, where they spend countless happy moments as a family and from which they were all taken hostage on October 7. Shiri’s parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, were killed that terrible day. Today, after 16 unbearable months, the impossibly painful circle has closed for the family, and in the next days, she will be laid, together with her little boys, to eternal rest in Israeli soil. Shiri leaves behind a husband, a sister, nephews, family and friends who love and remember her always through her smile, her kindness, the joy of life that she spread everywhere. May her memory, and Ariel and Kfir’s, be a blessing.”
While that video of Shiri’s capture will be impossible to forget, so are the other images of her we’ve seen in the past 16 months. Shiri smiling, wearing matching Batman pajamas with Yarden, Ariel and Kfir — Batman was little Ariel’s obsession. Shiri with her baby in a carrier, filled with that serene joy. Shiri on her wedding, beaming and radiant. Shiri showing Ariel his little brother for the first time, her heart melting with joy when she sees him lean in to hug his brother in that baby carrier. Shiri laughing along with her sweet baby, lovingly tickling him. I think of the pictures of Shiri and her late parents, Margit and Yossi, them holding her. A beautiful family that deserved a better world.
The Nir Oz community is still waiting for so many of their loved ones to return home, including David Cunio, who along with his wife, Sharon Aloni Cunio — who returned from captivity with their daughters Yuli and Emma back in November of 2023 — was the one who set Yarden and Shiri up. In an old video, you can see Shiri talk about how long she’s known David and his twin brother Eitan, who are almost impossible to discern from one another, saying she can tell them apart by voice. David’s brother Ariel is also being held hostage in Gaza. His partner, Arbel, was recently released as part of this most recent hostage deal. One of the recently released hostages brought with him a sign of life from David, who Shiri would certainly have wanted to see reunite with his wife and daughters.
May Shiri Bibas’ memory be for a revolution, for a better world, and most immediately, may it spur on the return of every last hostage to Israel. It is a small comfort that she will be brought to rest along with her two precious little boys. We are thinking of and grieving with the Bibas family who fought so hard for their loved ones return. And our thoughts and broken hearts are with Yarden Bibas, who deserved to hold his wife and children again.
