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One year ago, two brothers under the age of five were taken prisoner by Hamas terrorists. Their parents were taken hostage as well. Two of their grandparents were killed in that Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust.
The brutality that Ariel and Kfir Bibas experienced that day, and have experienced for the past year as captives, is nothing short of evil. What else can you call it when a 1- and 5-year-old are seized as hostages, their loved ones are murdered, and their little lives become attempted leverage in a centuries-old conflict that has now ensnared a new generation of innocents?
Ariel Bibas recently turned five in captivity, a milestone that family members had to recognize without him.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s something we never imagined, that Ariel will turn five as a hostage,” Tomer Keshet, a cousin of Ariel’s father, told the Associated Press in August.
This is the type of anguish that Hamas unleashed with its attack one year ago, killing around 1,200 Israelis and taking roughly 250 hostages back into Gaza. Approximately 100 hostages are still believed to be in Hamas custody, though some are expected to be dead. Hamas has claimed that the Bibas boys and their mother were killed in an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli officials have not confirmed that claim and accused Hamas of “psychological terror.”
This week’s anniversary of that gruesome day, and the recognition of the year of suffering that has followed, requires mourning, reflection and remembrance. It also requires determination to ensure that, even as hostilities escalate and expand to other parts of the region, the Bibas family and other hostages are not forgotten.
We continue to believe that the best (though admittedly unlikely, at the moment) avenue for release of the hostages and the end of hostilities that the Hamas attacks unleashed is a durable cease-fire achieved through negotiation — not more destruction in the name of peace.
“Wars do not end in absolute victory or a clear decision, wars end in agreements,” said Merav Svirsky at a rally in Israel on the one-year anniversary, according to NPR. Svirsky’s brother Itay Svirsky was taken hostage on Oct. 7 and later killed in Gaza. “The question is, with how many human lives will we pay by then? The lives of soldiers, the lives of civilians and the lives of civilians including our people who are currently hostage in Gaza and have been in immediate life-threatening danger for a year.”
Of course, we cannot and must not speak of the human cost of Oct. 7 and the last year of conflict without also recognizing and mourning the thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians who have been killed by Israeli forces in the response that followed. Yes, Hamas surely wanted Israel to overreact and undermine its standing around the world. And yes, Hamas puts its own citizens at risk by design by using them as human shields. But Israel does not need to persist with such disastrous and disproportionate consequences for the innocent Palestinians caught in the middle.
A Palestinian father, Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan, should not have returned from registering the birth of his new twin daughters only to find that the girls Aser and Ayselm, along with their mother and grandmother, had been killed in a reported Israeli airstrike. As we continue to mourn the lives so outrageously taken on Oct. 7 a year ago, we must also be able to hold space in our hearts for the innocent Palestinian people — thousands of them children — whose lives have been taken in the Israeli response.
Do we as witnesses around the globe care differently depending on whether the children are Israeli or Palestinian? We must not. An innocent life taken must be an outrage to us all, whether that young life is lost in southern Israel or Rafah or Beirut. The solution, if it is to truly stop the horrific chain of killing, must be a negotiated peace that finally returns the remaining hostages and places innocent lives above political calculations.
In addition, we must move beyond the simplistic and divisive thinking that someone cannot be a supporter of Israel while at the same time questioning the soundness, and disproportionate human carnage of Israel’s response. That someone cannot be a supporter of Palestinian people while recognizing the destructive self-interest that propels Hamas at the expense of the safety and wellbeing of the people it claims to represent.
The roots of this long conflict are complex. The solution, at its core, is not. The conflict needs a negotiated peace that recognizes the rights and dignity of Israeli and Palestinian people. Reaching this solution, of course, is no easy task and many leaders have failed, but that is where attention must be focused, not on spreading this deadly conflict throughout the Middle East.
A year after unspeakable tragedy, and after a year of additional death and destruction, it is past time for all leaders involved to pursue peace above all else.
Billy Miller, a prominent member of the Bangor community and longtime member of Congregation Beth Israel, provided moving perspective in a BDN story to start the week.
“Do I have a special place for Israel in my heart? Of course I do,” Miller said. “But when I see children lying in the street dead, my heart bleeds.”
And so must all of our hearts bleed, on this terrible anniversary and on every day, until this ancient conflict stops claiming innocent lives and robbing people of a peaceful future.
