For most, Rosh Hashanah is a time of renewal, of looking forward. But for Yarden Bibas, it’s a yearly reminder of a future that was tragically stolen on Oct. 7.
In a heartbreaking Instagram post on Monday, Bibas shared a photograph of happier times: himself beaming alongside his wife Shiri and their two young sons, 4-year-old Ariel and baby Kfir, just 9 months old. His caption is brief but devastating: “Without you, the holidays are not holidays. Dates and days have no meaning. Shiri, Ariel and Kfir — I love you more than anything in the world, always in the world.”
The Bibas family’s tragedy began on October 7th at Kibbutz Nir Oz, where Hamas-led terrorists stormed their home. In the chaos that followed, Shiri and the boys were captured and taken into Gaza, their abduction caught on video that would later become seared into Israeli collective memory. Yarden was seized separately as he tried to protect his family.
For more than a year, their fate remained uncertain. The family became perhaps the most recognizable faces of the hostage crisis—particularly the haunting image of Shiri clutching her red-haired children as they were led away. Hamas eventually claimed the mother and children had died in an Israeli airstrike, but families and officials held onto hope amid the uncertainty.
Yarden was freed in February after 484 days in captivity, but any hope for Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir was quickly extinguished when their bodies were returned to Israel in a Hamas propaganda ceremony just a few weeks later.
The Israeli military announced in June that it had eliminated senior operatives from the Mujahideen Brigades, the Hamas-aligned group responsible for the family’s kidnapping and deaths. But for Yarden Bibas, no military victory can restore what was taken from him on that fateful October morning.
Yet just like the eternal story of the Jewish people, Yarden’s Instagram post stands as both a memorial and a declaration—that love persists even when everything else has been destroyed.
