A Love Too Pure to Lose: The Bibas Family and Humanity’s Reckoning
Tears start as a trickle, then spill freely. It’s hard to breathe. My heart throbs with an ache for what will never be—lives brimming with a love so pure and rare, an ineffable unity and joy few ever perceive. My heart mourns not just for what they lost, but for what they endured. I had clung to a fragile hope that good might prevail over evil. Now, that hope lies shattered.
I am not an Israeli. I am not a Jew. While I share a love of Divine Law, I am not of the Jewish faith. I am human and we are children of one God. Why does the Bibas family pierce me so deeply? Why does their abduction, hardship, and potential loss hit so hard? I see myself—or my daughter—in Shiri’s place: the terror of inability to shield your children, the gut-wrenching moment when your world inverts. A horror beyond comprehension has singled you out, targeting you and your little ones. I picture my own children or my grandchildren who are nearly the same ages as Ariel and Kfir. I see the same light in their eyes, the same innocence in their spirits. These are children whose parents poured life, love, and radiance into them—a family bound by an extraordinary spirit of unity, purity, and heart. The Bibas family represents the best of humanity.
I’ve never met the Bibas family, yet through the photos, videos, and clips they’ve generously shared, their spirit shines through. The purity of love captured in those moments is so rare, so genuine, that most of us only dream of such honest, unblemished bonds. Shiri gazes at Yardin with unguarded adoration. The children’s tender interactions with their parents radiate warmth: Kfir’s first giggles echoing with his father’s delight, Ariel’s wide-eyed wonder meeting his baby brother for the first time. These glimpses testify to a love that binds them, a harmony few families achieve. The Bibas family embodies an ideal we all yearn for: a sweet, untainted love that glows in every frame, every smile. It’s unfathomable that such innocence could be touched by evil. Yes, we’ve seen families ripped apart before, torn from one another during the Holocaust, children lost to gas chambers—but surely humanity has grown beyond such atrocities, have we not?
Now, as remains are returned today, the Bibas family pleads for patience until autopsies can speak their grim truth. Yet as this reality sinks in, anguished questions claw to the surface as I contemplate the past 500+ days. Did they meet their end together, or were they torn apart? Did they suffer? Were they tortured? Did their captors force Shiri to witness her children’s pain? These thoughts ignite not just grief, but a searing anger—an outrage that cries out for justice.
Over the past year, the returned hostages’ testimonies paint a disturbing picture of Gaza: children raised on hatred, families celebrating brutality. Parents holding rocket launchers in one hand and a child in the other as they teach their children to rejoice over the cruel torture inflicted upon their fellow man. I recall a 2014 interview with a Gaza mother whose child received life-saving care in Israel. She told reporters that in her Islamist view, death was preferable to life, hoping her child would grow up to kill the very doctors saving him.
Social media brims with undeniable evidence: children wielding weapons, chanting death threats. How can a nation ignore an enemy whose founding charter calls for its destruction? Yet the world has demanded exactly this of Israel. We turn a blind eye to our own coming destruction. An inevitable destruction thwarted only by returning to humanity’s only God. The God who holds the wicked accountable. While I once stumbled over the concepts expressed in Psalm 58, King David’s words now resonate with stark clarity: “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. They are like the deaf adder that closes her ear…” (Ps 58:3-4).
The poison embedded in violent Arab conflict extends beyond Israel’s borders. European nations grapple with similar challenges as violence targets native citizenry. Statistics from Switzerland and Germany show alarming patterns of violent crime among immigrant populations. This suggests a deeper issue: the transmission of hatred across generations and national borders. In Switzerland, 57.5% of all violent crimes like rape and homicide were committed by Arab immigrants. In Germany, close to 40% of violent offences were committed by Arab immigrants with a demographic crime rate 5-10 times the rate of other German populations (per Grok). Arab violence transcends being merely an Israeli concern; it is a battle of ideals that will shape the destiny of nations for future generations.
We stand at a solemn crossroads, compelled to face our fellow man with unflinching resolve. When a people’s identity is forged in hatred so deep it is woven into their very being from birth, we doom our nations to ruin by tolerating the malignant venom that seeps into humanity’s soul. When a group relentlessly embraces a covenant with death and imposes that creed upon others, we cannot turn away—we must confront it and demand its end. The righteous bear the harrowing burden of enacting justice, a duty as merciless as it is sacred, to reclaim peace for all nations.
When Hamas mocked President Trump’s recent diplomatic efforts to release hostages, they revealed a crucial miscalculation: they interpreted valuing human life as weakness. This is not weakness but strength. Unlike the Arab mother, Moses encourages us to “choose life that we may live” (Deut 30:19). Saving lives out of terrorist hands is a Divine call. But judgment cannot and will not delay. The only way to honor the memories of Shiri, Ariel, Kfir, and other victims of October 7th is through ardent accountability and justice. There must be consequences for such brutality. Judgment must be put on the line and righteousness to the plummet that the coming hailstorm may sweep away the refuge of lies and break the Islamic covenant with death (Isa 28:15, 17-18).
I cannot hold back tears when I imagine a father grappling to endure without his cherished family, knowing that a love so rare and pure—now lost forever—will never grace his life again. The only way to heal the wounds inflicted on his family and to ensure that neither Israel nor other Western nations endure such horrific acts of terrorism again is to avenge each life lost. Only by fulfilling King David’s vision of justice for the wicked can the memories of the innocent lives lost become a blessing for future generations.
“Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O YHWH. Let them melt away as waters which run continually. When he bends his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be cut in pieces. As a snail which melts, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath. The righteous shall rejoice when he witnesses the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. So that a man shall say, Surely there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judges in the earth.” (Ps 58:6-11)