The Bodies of Children

The faces of the hostages have pierced my heart. They look down from the walls of many synagogues I know, reminding us that October 7 isn’t over, that none of the “issues” have been resolved, least of all their own liberation or retrieval. Their faces on the posters are relaxed and happy, fully occupied by civilian concerns, as familiar to me as the members of my family. Alon and Itzik. Matan and Ziv. I do not know a single one of them, although I know plenty of people who do. I wonder if I have run into them at a bar mitzvah, some celebration in Boston or New York. The faces of the dead are the most painful of all.

But none so much as the Bibas Family. Seized on October 7 from a settlement called Nir Oz, they quickly became a symbol of loss, an entire family swept into the furnace of Palestinian rage and retribution. Yarden, the father, was released shortly afterward in the very first return of captured hostages. That left Shiri and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, in the hands of Hamas, under the destruction of Gaza. I remember thinking if Yarden is gone, who will protect little Kfir in the tunnels? As if Yair could have done anything to protect his family.

Now the moment of reckoning has come. By this time tomorrow, the Bibas family will be reunited. But this is a moment that no one could have wanted. Months ago, Hamas disclosed that Shiri and her children had been killed in an airstrike, an Israeli airstrike against their prison place in Gaza. Against that likelihood, I held fast to the hope that the Bibas family had somehow escaped harm, that the announcement of their deaths was some special kind of torture designed to induce torpor and despair. If Kfir Bibas is gone, all is lost.

But that now appears almost certainly to be the case. The Bibas family has in fact been erased, as completely as in any pogrom or liquidation. Shiri is dead and so are Ariel and Kfir. His round little face has probably been eroded by months of captivity and the long wait for burial. His father will probably want one last look and be scarred by the image for the rest of his life, as if the loss itself would not be enough.

I don’t have the power to think this through. My great fear is that the Shiri and Ariel and Kfir will become a rallying cry for those bent on revenge. In the Middle Ages, the Jews of England were targeted by those who accused them of a blood libel. Graphic engravings circulated for decades, depicting the supposed child Martyr of Lincoln, surrounded by Jews draining his blood. The bodies of children can be counted on that way, to stir up people against their identified enemies.

If I have a prayer, it is that all of this be different. Yarden should not be expected to forgive. That is too much to ask of a grieving husband and father. We should not be expected to set aside our rage that blameless Jewish children have once again been killed, either by their captors, or because of the circumstance of their captivity. I grieve for dead children under the rubble of Gaza, but I am still shaken to the point of madness by Kfir Bibas.

But there is a difference between that and killing others in turn. This moment of sorrow calls for the courage of restraint. The alternative is a world drowning in its blood.