Israel-Hamas war: Agony as family fears hostage children have been handed to another group by Hamas

Published

2 years ago

November 28, 2023

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Shiri Bibas and her children, four-year-old Ariel and 10-month-old Kfir are yet to be released and there has been no word of them.

Their family has been told they might have been passed on by Hamas to another group in Gaza.

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Speaking to Sky News, Shiri’s cousin Yifat said the wait is agonising.

She said: “What are these groups? We reach a dead end every time we try to figure out why Hamas is having so much trouble getting them back or whether that means if they’re alive or not.

“It’s really frustrating. It feels very far away, although it’s really close by. Hamas is ruling over the strip, and I hope that whichever group is holding them will oblige and will give them [back]. They said that they’re going to move those hostages into Hamas hands, so I hope those groups will do that as well.”

If Shiri Bibas and her children have been passed on to another group, it will explain why they haven’t been released and complications.

“I think they’re playing games with the psychological games,” said Yifat.

“It’s brutal. But what can you expect from a terror organisation that did such horrendous things? It’s amazing that a baby became some sort of a card or, you know, a winning card or a trophy holding him hostage like this to get more arms or, I don’t know, fuel for their missile launchers.”

The extension to the truce is due to end late on Wednesday night. Intense talks are going on behind the scenes to extend it further and public statements by both sides suggest that might be possible.

Yifat says she would support an extension in the ceasefire if it resulted in more hostages being released.

She said: “Every last one, all 240, everyone should be back home with their families. We are only one story.

“There’s a lot of mothers, a lot of children waiting for their parents that are being held captive. Every family of someone who was abducted, lost someone, lost their grandparents, and they don’t know it yet.

“I can’t stop thinking about Kfir, what he is eating, is he bathing, is he hitting his milestones?

“You see those children coming back and hearing the stories about how they didn’t eat anything. Almost nothing. He needs his baby formula, he needs his nutritions. Every day counts in this matter. Every day counts.

“You know, if we wait another day, maybe we will lose him.”

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

2 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

8 hours ago

August 10, 2025