They Changed History

As I wrote my review of Richard Lowy’s book on Auschwitz it was not hard to see how the dehumanization and ultimate destruction of Jews is replaying itself in real-time at this very moment. Everything that Hamas and its supporters have engaged in find their match - and even possibly exceed - in what the Nazis meticulously executed eighty years ago. To use the most extreme forms of starvation and torture, to withhold medical care and operate without anaesthesia, to dehumanize the victims and then ensure that their last moments are as gruesome as possible. Or to strangle babies. There are few terms to accurately describe it and I do not use the word ‘abyss’ lightly here. But so far I have done it in only two circumstances on these pages. Two chapters, eighty years apart.

There is one crucial difference with the Nazis though, Hamas happily uncovers it all and livestreams everything onto your phone and laptop. And in doing so they manage to find willing and cheering audiences in what once were the beacons of the free and liberal world order: cities like New York, Toronto and Amsterdam. Today’s Auschwitz has been converted into a politically correct show on social media, like it is now fine for many people to accept these massacres as an integral part of political progress. The end somehow justifies any means.

Last week it was hard to find the words to talk about the fate of the Bibas family. With their funeral earlier today the story has come full circle and we have had the time to hear and digest it all. How Shiri Bibas and her sons Ariel and Kfir were taken as trophies by Gazan citizens - not Hamas forces - only to be brutally murdered about a month later. How the lone and bereaved father Yarden Bibas, separated from his family on that day, tortured and abused, is now a man scarred for life. He gave one of the most heartfelt eulogies of his young family at the funeral. Do you have an analogy for a father who loses his wife and children in this way? The one historical equivalent that comes to mind is Otto Frank, who lost Edith, Margot and Anne.

The world stood by silently then and despite pockets of support and grief things are not much different now. Or maybe even worse given the access that we now have to the sobering facts. The last thing you would expect is some mainstream media talking about the ‘deceased’ Bibases. They ‘died’ in captivity. Really?

There is no nation on this planet that is so unified and resolved in the face of all this horror as is Israel. Yet as the funeral procession wound its way through the country’s streets and roads the signs of the deep rift that the hostage drama has cleaved into Israeli and diaspora politics is omnipresent. The Bibas family did not want government representatives at the ceremony, making it clear as to how abandoned they have felt over the past sixteen months. Slow walking the release of hostages, poor or no communication with the families, its prime minister using details of Bibas murders against the family’s explicit wishes, it all chipped away at an already fractured relationship between the people and its leaders. The vast majority in Israel prefers a hostage deal before continuing the inevitable war with Hamas. An easy concept on paper, in practice a near impossibility that has been dragging the nation down for sixteen months now. And it is far from over.

The fissures are not limited to the issue of war and hostages, they indicate that more than ever before the idea of a two-state solution is dead. And while there are multiple ideas from Trump’s much debated Gaza plan to a more sanitized Arab counter proposal, the notion that Israelis will live next door to a savage society that will not rest until every last Jewish baby is killed, is a fantasy. That is also why Europe’s role here has pretty much ended, the only ‘diplo-speak’ they have on endless repeat is about the one thing that no one believes will or should work. No Israeli politician will touch it, there is no interest in it in Washington or Moscow and most Arab nations have gradually come to that realization as well.

The Bibas family, a symbol of many things. The unabated global Jew hate, the horrors of October 7th, the inept handling of the hostage crisis, the West’s moral ambivalence, the future map of the Middle East. Yarden, Shiri, Ariel and Kfir have changed history. A route they never chose, a route they never asked for. All they cared about was the deepest human sentiment and live it out in peace. Love. A love that was denied. The only person who could articulate that was Yarden, the lone father. A heroic and dreadful task, but he did it. We should all listen and never forget the Bibas family.

Photo: five murdered people all part of one family. Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas with Shiri’s parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, who were killed on October 7th. And a funeral procession to remember: