A minute of silence for each of the Bibas children would be appropriate,” said Daniel Levy, “as would a minute of silence for each of the more than 18,000 Palestinian children murdered in Israel’s devastation of Gaza. That silence would extend to over 300 hours.”
It was 25 February 2025, and Levy, a former Israeli government adviser, was addressing the United Nations Security Council. His words were carefully chosen, measured to salvage a ceasefire that was teetering on the brink, and they appeared to be aimed at the Israeli ambassador Danny Danon, who — as Levy knew — was a proxy for the fresh round of rage and grief that had just engulfed the Jewish state.
Four days prior, on 21 February, Hamas had returned the bodies of four hostages, including those of Ariel and Kfir Bibas. At the time of the handover, Hamas claimed that the boys — along with their mother Shiri — had been killed in an Israeli airstrike during the first weeks of the war. But within hours of receiving the bodies, the Israelis had claimed the opposite: according to their own forensics, the children had been strangled to death by their captors. ….more
