Ever since the October 7 attack on Israel, there was one Israeli family that became the focus of apologists as so-called proof of Hamas being “human animals” in order to legitimize the Israeli genocide. That family is the Bibas family.
Its four members, father Yarden, mother Shiri, and the two small children, 4-year-old Ariel and 9-month-old Kfir, were taken hostage on October 7 at kibbutz Nir Oz. The mother and two children were reportedly held separately from the father by the Mujahideen Brigades (an offshoot of the mainstream Fatah movement). In late November 2023, Hamas claimed that the mother and the two children had been killed together with their captors under Israeli bombing, and offered to hand over their bodies. Israel rejected the offer as “propaganda” and would not confirm their deaths. The father was freed during the February 1 prisoner exchange, and at that point was “still clinging” to hope that the rest of his family was alive.
Last week, the bodies of the three dead family members were handed over to Israel. On Friday, the Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed that the two Bibas brothers were “brutally murdered while being held hostage in Gaza no later than November 2023.” Hagari was very explicit and precise in what he claimed was “confirmed”:
“Contrary to Hamas’s lies, Ariel and Kfir were not killed in an airstrike – Ariel and Kfir Bibas were murdered by terrorists in cold blood. The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys – they killed them with their bare hands. Afterwards, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities. This assessment is based on both forensic findings from the identification process, and intelligence that supports the findings. We have shared these findings, intelligence and forensics, with our partners around the world, so they can verify it, and [so] that the entire world will know exactly how the Hamas terrorist organization operates…”
That is some claim. But where is the evidence to confirm these findings? None appears to be forthcoming, aside from promises that such proof exists somewhere.
Israel’s lack of proof
On Saturday, the head of the Israeli Institute for Forensic Medicine, Chen Kugel, made a one-minute video to supposedly back the claims. Kugel’s presentation curiously did not focus on what he found, but on what he did not find. “There is no evidence of harm due to bombing,” he said.
Remember, these are bodies of people who died about one and a half years ago. How exactly one determines that one did not die under bombing (which does not always mean death from direct trauma) is unclear but certainly requires further explanation as to how it has been definitively ruled out.
The odd thing is that Kugel did not determine what they did die of. Instead, the doctor used his short presentation to wax emotional on how hard they are working to identify everyone, and added that “We have encountered abysses of evil and malice that we could not imagine existed”.
The latter is perhaps a statement for a politician, not a medical expert. The whole statement is so vacuous and devoid of forensic content (beyond the initial “no evidence”), that it simply reeks of political bias.
And this is supposed to be the confirmation of Hagari’s claim that the Bibas brothers were killed with “bare hands.”
In his statement, Kugel also said that his office positively identified the body of Shiri Bibas, the children’s mother. There had been an initial mix-up in delivery of her body which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed was a deliberate violation of the ceasefire agreement and that Hamas would “pay the full price” for it. Hamas corrected the error and returned the proper body, which Kugel was confirming.
Military spokesperson Hagari said that returning the remains of an “anonymous woman” was “further evidence of Hamas’ barbaric cruelty,” but as we know Palestinians in Gaza are already used to having delivered bags of flesh for burial, and it is not hard to guess the state of such a body under Israeli indiscriminate bombardment. But Hagari has a story to tell, and the atrocity propaganda cycle was already well underway.
Atrocity propaganda
Israel was already engaging in disgusting atrocity propaganda related to the Bibas family, when on Friday it changed the colors on the Foreign Ministry Twitter/X account to orange, meant to resemble the red-headed color of the mother’s and children’s hair. If this was a normal country, this detail would probably be seen as unnecessary to point out, but Israel is not a normal country and has been engaged in widespread and wholly discredited atrocity propaganda precisely focused on small children as a motor for its genocide in Gaza. From manufactured stories of babies baked in ovens, to 40 decapitated babies, to babies hung on a line, babies thrown in trash cans, and so on. This is why we should be extremely cautious with any official narrative coming out of Israel.
And yet this story without proof is already being spun into fact. See, for example, how master propagandist Fania Oz-Salzberger uses this claim to smear anyone who supports Palestinians:
“Unable to admit that the Bibas babies were strangulated by hand, they parrot the lie that the IDF killed them. Another ‘pro-Palestinian’ theory is that Shiri Bibas killed her own kids. Pity the nation that has such supporters.”
Now, it is just Palestinians who are “unable to admit,” while she parrots Israeli propaganda.
But we have seen this before. Israel makes sensational accusations against Palestinians without proof until the story takes on a life of its own. By the time people realize the claim is evidence-free, and news outlets “cannot confirm” the Israeli claim, it is already too late — it has become a story in its own right.
We are watching Israel use the Bibas family to manufacture consent for genocide yet again. Will anyone in the media stand up to call them on their lie?
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