Israeli hostage baby Kfir Bibas turned one yesterday.
Kfir was taken hostage by Hamas in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, along with his four-year-old brother, Ariel, his mother, Shiri, and father, Yarden. Shiri is the mother clutching her redheaded babies in the now-viral photo. The family was first thought to be held by another terrorist organization; Hamas then claimed that the family was killed in an Israeli airstrike; days after that, Hamas made Yarden film a video blaming Israel for his family’s deaths (the IDF called it a “cruel act of psychological terror which Hamas is using against families of hostages”). Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir’s deaths have not been confirmed, and the family’s remaining members said at Kfir’s birthday party in Tel Aviv yesterday that they’re still holding out hope.
“There’s so much we haven’t been able to do with you,” Ofri Bibas, Yarden’s sister, said of her nephew. “Are you speaking any words? Are you walking? The biggest gift we could give you would be to bring you home.”
Around 132 hostages remain captive in Gaza — 27 of whom, the IDF says, are likely dead.
Sagui Dekel-Chen is one of the six American hostages still in captivity. Also in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, Hamas kidnapped Sagui, who had first made sure that his then-seven-months-pregnant wife Avital and two daughters were in the family’s safe room. Sagui’s new daughter, Shachar, is now five weeks old. “His two little girls are going to leap into his arms, and his wife and his new baby are going to hug him and never let him go,” Sagui’s father said of his son, whose whereabouts and physical condition are unknown.