The Israel we believe in should have protected you.
The Israel we believe in should have brought you home alive.
There are losses so cruel, so unbearable, that they defy all sense of reason. The deaths of Shiri Bibas and her two precious sons, Ariel and Kfir, are not just a personal tragedy, not just a moment of grief for Yarden and those who knew them, or people like us who feel like we knew them; they are a wound in the heart of our people. A wound in Israel. A wound that should be felt by all sensible humans.
For generations, Israel has been more than a country to Jews in the Diaspora. It has been a dream, a lifeline, a place where history and hope converge. It is not merely a state; it is the embodiment of our collective memory, our survival, and our home. Like home, it was meant to be a place of safety—a place where children could grow up free from fear, where mothers could hold their babies in peace, where no one would ever again have to beg the world to care about Jewish suffering. No one ever said it would be easy, but we did our best.
In April 1956, 21-year-old Roi Rotberg was lynched and murdered by Palestinians at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where he lived. It’s a 20 minute drive from Kibbutz Nir Oz, from where the Bibas family was taken. In his now infamous eulogy for Rotberg, then-IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan said,
We are the generation of settlement; without a steel helmet and the muzzle of the cannon we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home. Our children will not have a life if we do not dig shelters, and without barbed wire and machine guns we will not be able to pave roads and dig water wells. Millions of Jews who were exterminated because they had no land are looking at us from the ashes of Israeli history and ordering us to settle and resurrect a land for our people. But beyond the border’s furrow an ocean of hatred and an urge for vengeance rises, waiting for the moment that calm will blunt our readiness, for the day that we heed the ambassadors of conspiring hypocrisy, who call upon us to put down our arms.
For 67 years, Israel did all that, and so much more, anticipating the hatred, the loathing, that lay just beyond the border, on the other side of the field. But Dayan’s warning all but foreshadowed that dark day in October, when so much of our dream came crashing down.
The Israel we believe in is a miracle
It is the Israel of new beginnings—the land that took in refugees, survivors, and dreamers and gave them a future. It is the Israel where Jewish children play in the parks of their neighborhoods, their laughter rising above the hills of Jerusalem and the fields of the Galilee. It is the Israel where mothers cradle their newborns and rock them to sleep, whispering words of comfort in the ancient language of our people. It is the Israel of resilience, of homecomings, of unbreakable hope.
That is the Israel that Shiri and Yarden should have been able to raise their boys in.
That is the Israel that Ariel should have grown up in: the Israel where little boys learn to ride bikes on kibbutz pathways, where they run barefoot in the grass, where their biggest worries are scraped knees and lost toys. That is the Israel that Kfir should have known. The Israel of warm sunlight on red curls, of arms that hold you tight, of lullabies sung in peace.
But that is not the Israel they experienced.
Many will never look at a red haired child the same way again. There will always be two names on our lips when we do so.
The Israel that Kfir experienced in his first nine months were an aberration. Judicial overhaul protests began a week before he was born, and lasted until the second stage of his life - however long that lasted. For nine months, the Israel he grew up in, wrapped in the warmth of his family, was teetering on the edge of uncertainty, unsure where its future would lead.
Sure, we take consolation that he was too young to realize what was amiss at the time, but any comfort ended the day he was ripped from his home, kidnapped in his mother’s embrace. Instead of waking to songs and laughter, he heard gunshots and terror. Of his weeping mother and screaming father, of being moved across borders, and of a fate that, as yet, is unknown. The youngest hostage in history, Kfir could not spend his remaining days surrounded by love, but immersed in hate. Alone in a sea of utter madness; of monsters so pathetic in their hatred that they exercised their strength by kidnapping a child. In captivity, we may only find comfort in knowing that he was too young to understand. That he was a symbol of a violent hatred. That Jews will always be a target. No matter their age, their rank in life.
Ariel was just four years old—old enough to be scared, too young to understand why. A boy who should have been giggling in playgrounds, running to his father’s arms after a long day of playing, sleeping in his own warm bed, not in the hands of those who showed no mercy.
And Shiri - Shiri, who lived for her children, who should have been watching them grow up, teaching them, guiding them - was instead forced to spend her final days shielding them from a world that so utterly failed them. Separated from the embrace of her loving husband. She should have been home, with family, laughing, loving, living. Instead, we imagine she stared down men in masks, cowards, who stole children. She protected them to the best of her ability.
We have held the Bibas family in our hearts for so long that we have forgotten, in some ways, how utterly abnormal their plight was. They should never have been taken, they should never have been held, and they should never have been returned to us this way. Our enemy kidnaps babies. And their support grows still.
In the moment, one is reminded of Chaim Nachman Bialik’s 1903 poem On the Slaughter, in which he writes, “No such revenge - revenge for the blood of a little child - has yet been devised by Satan.”
Indeed. But I am certain, in fact I pray, the moment will come.
They were taken—a mother and her children, stolen from their home, ripped from the safety of their father’s arms—and dragged into the nightmare of captivity in Gaza. The world watched as posters with their faces were plastered across cities. As those same posters were torn down and vandalized. Where sociopaths, seething with a violent form of antisemitism we know all too well, could not help themselves but draw swastikas on the face of a 9-month old child. A perfect example of the way the world has ceded its humanity. The victims, once again, were Jewish children. They are not entitled to the world’s pity.
The world watched as their father, Yarden, pleaded for their safe return. As he returned home in disbelief that his family was gone.
The world watched, and did nothing.
The Israel we believe in should have saved them
For over 500 days we whispered their names in our prayers. We marched in the streets with their images printed on posters, refusing to let them be forgotten. We held our breath every time a hostage release was announced, hoping - praying - that this time, this time, they would be among them. Each hostage returned alive was a miracle, but the Bibas family perhaps stood for the idea that there may be some humanity left hiding in Gaza’s rubble. Alas.
They never came home.
And now, there is only silence. The silence of the cribs that will remain empty. The silence of a house filled with toys, that will no longer be played with. The silence of a world that should have screamed in bloody outrage, but instead looked away. It’s not that they were so horrified that they could not stand to look; whereas we care for our children and theirs, they look away because they care not for ours. They are more… selective. No pictures of Michelle Obama advocating to #BringBackOurBoys; she is picky when it comes to which children deserve rescuing. We will remember.
The Israel we believe in is not the Israel that buries its babies
It is not the Israel that must beg for the world’s empathy while grieving its dead. It is not an Israel that watches its children murdered in captivity, while the world debates the "complexity" of terror. It is not an Israel that should ever have had to endure this pain.
The Israel we believe in is stronger than any evil. It is the unity that emerges in the face of horror, the thousands who drop everything to volunteer, to fight, to rebuild. It is the young reservists boarding planes from every corner of the world because they know that Israel is not just a country; it is their family. It is the grieving fathers who, even in their unbearable pain, still believe in the future of a Jewish state.
The Israel we believe in does not surrender to despair.
And now, with the truth of their fate known, we must allow Israel’s true face to be seen once more.
The Israel that cherishes life.
The Israel that lifts up its fallen and carries their memory forward.
Old and young, as today we also remember Oded Lifshitz, taken from his wife, family, and our world, far too soon.
Our Israel is the Israel that will honour Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri not only by mourning them, but by refusing to let their deaths be in vain. We celebrate their lives - however short - while adding them to the seemingly endless list of Jewish martyrs. Among the youngest, they now join a tragic yet esteemed list of heroes.
The Israel we believe in will rise again
This is not the first time our people have walked through fire. We have known exile and destruction, a grief deeper than words can describe. Our cheeks are sadly familiar with the dampness of our tears.
And yet, we are still here.
We will always be here.
We are still singing, still praying, still holding our children close and promising them that one day, they will know an Israel of peace, of safety, of hope. That they will grow up with Kfirs and Ariels, Shiris and Yardens, Odeds and Yocheveds, the future children of Israel.
That is the Israel that must be reborn in the wake of this loss.
The Israel where no mother has to wonder if her child will be safe in his bed at night.
The Israel where no father has to carry the unbearable weight of a life stolen.
The Israel where no baby - no baby - is ever again taken from his home and forced to endure what Kfir and Ariel endured.
We could not save them. But we will never forget them.
Our future will honour them.
We will hold their names in our hearts, in our prayers, in the wind that carries across this land.
The Israel we believe in will live on, because they will live on.
To Shiri, Yarden, Ariel, and Kfir
Until 500 days ago, we did not know you. But now, we will never forget you.
May your souls be bound in the bond of life. May your names never fade from our lips. And may the day come when no child, no mother or father, no family ever faces such evil again.
The Israel we believe in will never stop carrying your memory forward.
And one day, the world will see it again - the true Israel, the one you should have known.
To Yarden and to Yocheved: May God console and comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. The entire Jewish world is with you.
You are never alone.
Adam, your ability with words is amazing. You express the feelings of not only Jews but also those sympathetic, humanitarian non Jews. I am so sad and emotionally overwhelmed by your eulogy and so angry that you had to write it. Life, it seems, is not fair. Am Israel Chai
Adam- There are no words that can capture our grief and pain, our fury, our disbelief, our absolute horror at the slaughter of our beautiful Bibas family- but you convey so much of our collective angst and rage...no words. But your words certainly help. AmYIsraelChai. They will live forever in our hearts and minds and souls.