The fate of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas and Oded Lifshitz are symbolic of the failure of the State of Israel to protect its people on October 7 and in the 15 months of fighting in Gaza that followed. This tragedy must lead to a renewed focus on the state’s mission to protect civilian life and deter enemies.
On February 20, their bodies arrived in Israel from Gaza. The National Institute of Forensic Medicine is conducting a final identification procedure on the remains.
In life, they had been failed by the IDF and the Red Cross. These were Israeli civilians kidnapped from the community of Nir Oz on October 7.
Lifshitz was born in 1940 in what was then British Mandate Palestine. He would have known the lack of security during the years leading up to the state’s founding. He would also have seen the state rise in the 1950s and 1960s, defeating enemies in decisive, short military campaigns.
He would have seen how Israel secured its borders in the past and protected its children. Children are the most vulnerable in times of war, and this is especially true of a baby, a toddler, and their mother. Kidnapped on October 7 from Nir Oz, Shiri and her two children were abandoned in Gaza for far too long.
A period of change is needed
Their deaths should lead to a period of introspection. We should pause and stop with the empty statements about Hamas being “destroyed” and ask ourselves what is the meaning of the State of Israel and the mission that Zionist leaders have sought for the last 150 years.
For many years, the words “never again” have been intoned by Israeli leaders and officials at ceremonies and events. After October 7, these words too often ring hollow. They ring hollow because thousands of people near the border with Gaza were left at the mercy of murderers on October 7. The state was supposed to prevent people from ending up as victims like Jews in a pogrom in the 19th century or Jews in 1941.
It’s not enough to say “we failed” on October 7. This has been a refrain among some officials and generals. Israel has failed in the past, such as in the first days of the 1973 war. What makes October 7 different is that in the past it did not fail in its basic mission to defend the Jewish people.
On October 6, 1973, hours before the Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack began, defense minister Moshe Dayan discussed with prime minister Golda Meir the possibility of evacuating children from Jewish communities in the Golan. Meir decided to evacuate the children immediately, rather than wait. Her instinct saved them from being caught in the maelstrom.
That was a basic decision to put the lives of children first. A country can fail on the battlefield, as Israel did in 1973 for several days, but it must not let its civilians be carted off by enemies.
On October 7 the leadership of Israel did not act with enough urgency to protect children and civilians on the border of Gaza. In the days that followed, officials did not act with urgency to make sure the most vulnerable of the kidnapped children, Ariel and Kfir, were immediately released.
US President Joe Biden arrived in Israel on October 18, 2023. Why didn’t he act with the same urgency that the Trump administration acted to bring the hostages home? Days after Biden came to Israel, on October 21, two adult American women were released by Hamas.
On October 23 two elderly hostages, Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper, were released by Hamas. Why weren’t the Bibas children released at this time?
Zionism in the 21st century
The same behind-the-scenes process that led to the release of four adults could have led to the baby and toddler being released prior to the Israeli ground operation, which began on October 27. Why didn’t Israel’s leaders and Jewish leaders around the world work to find a way to get the baby and toddler released?
Jewish leaders in the West have often acted to help free Jews, whether it was campaigning for Soviet Jewry or Ethiopian Jews. Why, after October 7, weren’t the same networks put to work freeing people from captivity in Gaza?
This larger failure hurts us all. Most progressive Jewish organizations and their leaders rarely mention the hostages. A decade or two ago, progressive Jewish rabbis in the US would have protested daily to free Jewish children held hostage. They were silent because the Bibas children were Israeli.
In November 2023, during the first hostage deal, Hamas claimed that the Bibas children and mother were dead. Why didn’t the international community work harder to get Hamas to release a baby and toddler at this time?
THESE QUESTIONS require answers and their answers go to the root of questions about what is the mission of the State of Israel and what Zionism will look like in this century. In the wake of the mass murder of October 7, the worst since the Holocaust, there has been a sense in Israel that life has become cheap and that the only thing to do is be resilient.
This sense among the public is not in line with the statements the public is told about the war. On February 16, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that “we decimated much of Hamas. We haven’t finished the job, we will. Israel will destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.”
However, the reality is that in 15 months of fighting with more than five IDF divisions in Gaza, Israel couldn’t free the Bibas children, it couldn’t save them, and it freed very few hostages and left Hamas in charge of Gaza.
Since the Gaza ceasefire began, Hamas has declared victory and broadcast humiliating videos parading hostages around. Hamas leaders abroad have been holding court in Qatar. The fact is that never in Israel’s history did Israel’s enemies parade Jewish women on stage as Hamas has done, and hold an Israeli baby and toddler hostage for fifteen months.
The difference between Israel today and in the past is not that Israel didn’t suffer massacres and hostage-taking in the past. It’s how Israel behaved differently.
On October 12, 1953, a Jewish woman named Suzanne Kinyas and her two children were killed when terrorists threw a grenade into her home in Yehud. Prime minister David Ben-Gurion and his defense minister Pinhas Lavon immediately ordered retaliation, sending Ariel Sharon and Unit 101 to attack the village of Qibya.
Ben-Gurion’s Israel didn’t just exact a heavy price for these types of attacks, it didn’t let Jewish children get kidnapped. The same ethos informed the decision-makers who launched the raid on Entebbe to bring home hostages. They believed it was worth risking lives to bring people home, not leave them for 15 months at the Entebbe airport.
Israel’s willingness to sacrifice resulted in tough choices. When terrorists took more than 100 children hostage at Ma’alot in 1974, a raid led to the deaths of 31 Israelis, including 22 children. Would it have been preferable to let the terrorists take the 115 Israelis to Lebanon and then leave them there for a year and a half and let the terrorists declare victory while parading the hostages and their bodies in a long series of returns?
Israel in those days preferred quick victories and the rapid end to hostage-taking, reducing long-term suffering; and was willing to sacrifice to achieve this mission. Wouldn’t it have been preferable to return the bodies of the Bibas children in November 2023 rather than have a year of enduring trauma?
A lack of seriousness regarding the hostages has underpinned too many policies over the last year and a half. On December 14, 2023, Israeli officials said they were providing the Red Cross with medication for the hostages. It was delivered in a flimsy cardboard box, barely sealed with black tape and “medication and first aid for hostages” scrawled on the side in a black marker, as if it was a prop in a B movie. Why?
The trauma of the October 7 attack requires a denouement. Since the 1980s it has become Israeli policy to do hostage deals, however, these have also resulted in leaving hostages for too long in the hands of the enemy. Gilad Schalit was left in Gaza for five years. After 2014 the bodies of soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin were left in Gaza and two Israeli civilians were held by Hamas since 2014.
It became the norm for Israel to leave the bodies of its soldiers and its civilians in Gaza. Hamas understood this and chose to kidnap so many people that Israel wouldn’t be able to look away and leave them all in Gaza. This requires a policy change. Hostage-taking must be prevented in the future.
We need to say “never again” not only in response to the Shoah but in response to the kidnapping and murder of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas.