Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari suggested Friday that red-headed Israeli infant Kfir Bibas; his four-year-old brother, Ariel; and their mother, Shiri may still be alive as hostages in Gaza.
The Times of Israel reported that the Bibas mother and children were meant to have been released and handed over to Israel — and that Hamas’s failure to do so helped scuttle a seven-day truce, which Hamas violated Friday morning.
The Times of Israel noted:
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says Hamas was supposed to release members of the Bibas family from the Gaza Strip, as part of the temporary ceasefire deal.
…
“We demanded today, like every day during the framework, to return the women and children as agreed-upon in the deal, which Egypt and Qatar had a commitment to. Hamas decided to violate the framework,” Hagari says.
Earlier this week, the IDF said that it believed that Hamas had transferred the mother and her children, abducted from Kfar Aza during the October 7 terror attack, to another terror organization.
Hamas then claimed that they were dead, killed in an Israeli airstrike.
The IDF said it would investigate that claim, and then Hamas released a propaganda video in which the father of the family, Yarden, was made to blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their fate.
Hagari’s statement Friday suggests that the IDF still believes the family may be alive.
If so, the Bibas children would be the last children known to be in Hamas custody.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
