Today was a defining moment for Israel.

We watched a husband and father forced to bury his wife and two children, who should have been safe in their home, not torn from it by terrorists. In this war, we have no choice but to win.

The whole nation stands with the Bibas family in silent grief. (photo: Israel/X)

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Today, Israel stood as one in grief as we bid farewell to Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, whose lives were cruelly stolen from us while in captivity in Gaza.

Their funeral procession, stretching from Rishon LeZion to Tzohar (more than 100 kilometers), near their home in Nir Oz, was lined with hundreds of thousands of Israelis, a powerful testament to how deeply this family had touched our nation.

Today, a husband and father was forced to bury his entire world — his wife and two children who should have been safe in their home, not torn from it by terrorists. Their return to Israeli soil, dead instead of alive, is an agonizing reminder of the cruelty they endured and the price we continue to pay simply for existing in our homeland.

Hamas and its enablers knew exactly what the Bibas family represented, not only to Israel, but to Jews worldwide and to all those who stand with us. They became the human face of this hostage crisis, which is precisely why they were executed in captivity — a final, calculated act of inhumanity meant to shatter our spirit.

But their brutality has only reinforced our determination. The murder of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir was not just a crime against one family; it was an assault on the very foundation of human decency. It revealed yet again the depravity of Hamas — a death cult that exults in the suffering of innocents, glorifies slaughter, and shows no regard even for its own people.

Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri did not choose to become symbols of our time. But they have. A symbol of unfathomable cruelty beyond our borders. And a painful reminder to ourselves — that we were not there for them. Not when they were attacked. Not when they were kidnapped. Not when it became clear that the immediate release of a 9-month-old baby and his 4-year-old brother should have been an urgent, uncompromising priority.

Today, we grieve not only the loss of a mother and her two sons, but also for our own failures. For the moments we did not act fast enough. For not immediately understanding that the most basic human value — the protection of children — should have been non-negotiable.

Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri must be our “never again.”

The nightmare began on October 7, 2023, when the Bibas family was abducted from Nir Oz in the Hamas-led barbaric attacks of that surreal day. For months, we held onto hope that they would return alive. Instead, their bodies were returned to us after their captors had taken their lives. The pain is immeasurable, but their memory stands as a testament to Israel’s resilience and unwavering unity.

Our nation is wounded, but we are not broken. As the funeral procession passed, a man stood in prayer, wrapped in tefillin and a tallit. Beside him, a young secular woman waved an Israeli flag. The banners carried throughout the crowd read “Free in our land,” alongside the emblem of Jerusalem’s lion.

People stopped their cars, stepped out in silence, and stood by the roadside to pay their respects. They came from across the country — young and old, families and single folks, religious and secular. An elderly woman handed out heart-shaped stickers, a small attempt to offer warmth in the face of unbearable loss.

This is the essence of Israel: a people united in grief, bound by an unbreakable commitment to one another. The Bibas family’s story is not theirs alone; it is the story of every Israeli family. Their endurance in the face of unthinkable horror mirrors the strength that has carried Israel through decades of adversity.

But today, Israel was different. A country normally overflowing with noise and energy fell silent. No one shouted, no one rushed. People waited patiently for the convoy to pass. The only movement came from flags fluttering in the wind. This was not a scene of a nation defeated, but a people remembering, mourning, and refusing to let grief turn into forgetfulness.

The Bibas family is part of a much larger tragedy. In the October 7th massacre, 38 children were murdered. Three of them were infants, and four more were between the ages of 3 and 6. Twenty children lost both parents, and 96 children lost one. This is a disaster of incomprehensible proportions, and its consequences will affect Israeli society for the foreseeable future.

All in all, more than 1,800 Israelis have been murdered since the start of this war that, we must continue to remind ourselves, was flagrantly started by Hamas and its accomplices. But the image of a mother cradling her two red-haired boys has become the defining symbol of this war — a war not just of rockets and tunnels, but of the most profound moral stakes. There is not a single person in this country who has not internalized the tragedy of the Bibas family as part of their own story. Their blood is our blood. Their fate is our fate.

Yet even amid profound sorrow, we have seen an extraordinary outpouring of solidarity. From Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to the most remote corners of the country, Israelis have stood together in mourning. This is not just about one family; it is a collective grief, a national pain, a shared refusal to let our enemies dictate our future.

And it is not only about heartbreak. The reason a mother, a baby, and a toddler became national symbols is because of what their murder revealed — what we are truly up against. The evil inflicted upon them was a wake-up call to those who still harbored illusions.

And so, today, as we laid them to rest, we buried more than just a beloved mother and her sons. We buried a piece of ourselves: the belief that peace is possible in our time, the illusion that coexistence was within reach.

The reality we now face is an ancient one: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a dispute over land, borders, or resources. It is a fundamental war of ethno-religious identities, a clash between those who cherish life and those who worship death.

There is a reason the 1990s Oslo Accords collapsed, why Camp David failed in 2000, why Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza was met not with incremental peace, but with genocidal warmongering. There is a reason why, when our enemies gained control of their own territory, they did not build a thriving society like that in Dubai, but instead turned it into a launchpad for Islamist destruction.

Let us not deceive ourselves. This has always been a brutal conflict. A hundred years of war, of attacks and counterattacks, of massacres and military victories. But at some point, the conflict mutated — no longer just a war between two national movements, but a war against an enemy that has so obviously abandoned its own humanity.

We must be clear-eyed about what we are facing. This is not a negotiation over land. It is not a political dispute. It is an existential battle between civilization and barbarism, between life and death.

And in this war, we have no choice but to win.

We will bring every hostage home. We will fight until our enemies can never again inflict such horror upon us. And, in doing so, we will grieve, but we will not be broken.

And we will never, ever let the memory of Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri fade. They will be our motivation, along with the others who have died as a result of this conflict. Their faces will be etched into our national consciousness, their stolen futures a constant reminder of the stakes before us.

We will say their names, tell their stories, and carry them with us in every battle we fight — on the battlefield, in diplomacy, in the struggle for truth. Their memory will drive us forward, ensuring that their sacrifice was not in vain.

Because the promise we make today is not just to mourn them. It is to honor them with our strength, our resilience, and our unwavering commitment to a future where no Israeli family will ever have to endure such loss again.

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