Hamas Told Yardin Bibas His Wife, Sons Are Dead

February 13, 2025

by: Hagar Kochavi ~ Ynetnews

Thursday, 13 February 2025 | Ofri Bibas Levy was at a meeting when the IDF officer assigned to assist the family called her and cautiously alerted her that an unofficial list was circulating online with the names of the hostages expected to be released the next day, including the name of her younger brother, Yarden Bibas. An hour of rapid heartbeats passed before the phone rang again. It was the officer, and this time he announced to her: “Yarden is on the list. He’s coming home.”

The first thing she did was tell her children. “I told them that Uncle Dodgey was coming back,” she shares. There was great excitement and also a lot of concerns, which didn’t go away until the next day, when I saw him leave there and I began to understand what he had been through.”

Among the thousands of stories, footage and tragedies of the October 7 massacre, the Bibas family has become a symbol. Millions of Israelis have been following with concern, uncertainty and hope the fate of Yarden and Shiri Bibas, and their children Ariel and Kfir, the youngest in Hamas captivity. This cruel story remains open, since Shiri and the children have not yet returned, but the release of the father Yarden from the hands of Hamas terrorists is the beginning, perhaps, of the healing journey.

Nine days after he returned to Israel from captivity in Gaza, Bibas and his family are trying to complete the puzzle whose pieces have been scattered over the past 16 months. In an interview with Ynet, Ofri Bibas Levy, Yarden’s sister, who was released from the hospital on Monday, tries to explain as much as possible about his condition, his consciousness, the hell he experienced and the struggle that will continue as long as Shiri, Ariel and Kfir are still in the Gaza Strip.

“For us, nothing is over,” she clarifies. “We are at the height of the event.”

Ofri is indeed beginning to form a certain picture of what happened to her brother, but the details and gaps that need to be filled in are enormous. “Every day, Yarden discovers new things, good and bad,” she says. “There are 16 months that need to be bridged. Every day he finds out about a friend who was kidnapped or murdered. He mentions something and I fill in the details. We do everything slowly, at his own pace.

We surround him, protect him, with him all the time. And yes, there are times when he asks to be alone. He’s a modest and private man, and it’s hard for him to grasp and deal with the fact that he and his family are known to everyone. The photos, the details, the stories. “For someone who has come out of such a disconnection into all this, it’s a lot to absorb.”

You Are not Alone Anymore

 Bibas-Levy left her home in the north for the center that same Friday, after a phone call from the officer who told her that Yarden was returning. Early the next morning, she was already on her way to the meeting place with him in the Re’im camp.

As soon as she sat down in the family room at the Re’im base, she saw Ofer Calderon on the screen getting out of the terrorists’ vehicle to join the Red Cross teams. Two minutes later, Yarden also left.

“It took us a second to realize that it was him. Yarden is a relatively shy guy, and this is not a situation that was comfortable for him in any way. But he walked with his head held high, strong. Before he got on stage, they asked him to stop, take a picture and wave, but he didn’t listen to them and kept walking,” she said.

What did you say to each other in the first hug?

“I told him, ‘You’re not alone anymore.’ That’s what came out of me. The first thing Yarden said was actually a question, about Shiri and the children. I understood that he understood the situation as we understand it, that there is concern, but that we don’t know. We reassured him that there is no certainty, that we hope, and that despite the concerns, we are not giving up. It’s clear that, until his family arrives, he is still there, on October 7.”

What else remains with you from the hug?

“It was all so surreal. It still doesn’t sink in that he’s here. I still can’t believe he was there, and that Shiri and the children aren’t here,” she says.

“He also remembers in detail the day they told him they were supposedly not alive, before the video was released. Since then he’s tried to understand whether it’s true or not. Whether it’s psychological terrorism or if there’s truth to it. All this time he hasn’t stopped hoping. That’s what kept him going. We all still hope that it’s all lies and that they’ll come back to us. It’s a very complex struggle.”

A week after returning to Israel, Bibas sent a message through the media, in which he directly addressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said: “Bring back my family, my friends, bring everyone home. As long as my light is still there, everything is dark here.”

Which Yarden did you get back?

“Yarden came back and it’s him, but it’s not him either. We’re not who we were either. First of all, he’s very thin. I saw it when he got out of the car. H After the first meeting, we laughed at him for asking for a Bamba.

“The truth is that I can sit down and talk to him. After a year and four months I send him a text message on the phone. I am not afraid for him at any given moment. I know that he has eaten and slept and that he is showering. These are basic things that we did not know. There is still a lot of uncertainty ahead of us, and we will still have a lot to deal with, but Yarden is here and he is strong.

Getting Along with the Kidnappers

Throughout the entire period of captivity, Yarden Bibas was held in tunnels and was barely exposed to the media. Yet, his family was amazed by the details he knew and how informed he was. He tells quite a bit, but there are still a lot of things that we don’t know about what happened to him,” according to his sister.

Yarden was held at the beginning of the captivity with Ofer Calderon, during the weeks in which the conditions that they were held in was described as extremely terrible, in cages, under unbearable psychological terror. Later, they were separated, and before the release they were held together again.

Bibas Levy talks about conditions when they were held in the tunnels. “They were held underground. He described to us the humidity and the mold and the darkness. Their lives were in the hands of those who were guarding them. One way to deal with this was to try to get closer to them and, indeed, he came out of there speaking fluent Arabic. They spent most of the day sleeping, they simply slept most of the time and only woke up for food, when it was available.

After being released from the hospital, Bibas moved to Kfar Maccabiah. He will not be able to return to his home in Nir Oz, at least until the reconstruction of the destroyed kibbutz is complete. “Kfar Maccabiah is an intermediate stage, short or long, we don’t know,” explains Bibas Levy. “The physical rehabilitation is obvious, but it is also the easier part. We see them smiling and laughing, but the rehabilitation will take a long time.”

Peak of Fragility, Peak of Struggle

Bibas Levy, herself a mother of three small children, carries the weight of the struggle to return all the hostages on her shoulders. From her home in northern Israel, she has been everywhere: demonstrations, rallies, meetings with ministers, discussions in Knesset committees, marches, speeches at various events and, of course, numerous interviews with the media. Even now, just a few days after her brother finally returned from hell, for her nothing has stopped:

“I’m trying to find the balance between home and the public campaign and my desire to be with Yarden. It’s not easy, it requires a lot of concessions from all kinds of directions, but the struggle is still ongoing. Nothing is over. Everything is fragile, and the risks are very high,” she says.

“This reality is difficult and cruel for the families, the public, and of course the hostages who are waiting. The urgency to get everyone out as quickly as possible is obvious. Why would three released hostages be released in such a terrible state? So we’ll be shocked and realize again that they don’t have time?

“In the first releases in this deal, the hostages seemed fine, but it’s clear that they are not okay. The gap between the physical and what they are going through mentally is like an abyss. We must get everyone out of there as quickly as possible, both the living and the dead. We must end this nightmare.”

“Let’s finish this and bring everyone back, and then we’ll deal with whatever comes our way. The war with our enemies will never end.

Posted on February 13, 2025

Source: (Excerpt of an article originally published by Ynetnews on February 12, 2025. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: Nizzan Cohen/wikimedia.org

Photo License: Wikimedia