The two tiny redheaded boys had captured the hearts of Israelis and became symbols of the long and emotional campaign for the release of the scores of hostages seized during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
On Thursday, under gray, stormy skies, an anguished nation marked an unofficial day of mourning after Hamas handed over three black coffins that the group said bore the remains of Ariel Bibas, who was only 4 when he was taken captive to the Gaza Strip; his baby brother, Kfir Bibas, who was not even 9 months old at the time; and their mother, Shiri Bibas, who was 32.
A fourth coffin bore the remains of Oded Lifshitz, an octogenarian grandfather, a peace activist and a founder of the pastoral Israeli village of Nir Oz, near the border with Gaza, where he and the Bibas family resided.
All were alive when taken.
At a grotesque handover ceremony in Gaza on Thursday morning, with loud music blaring in the background, the coffins were put on display on a podium bearing images from family photos that were also used in Israel for hostage posters: Ariel in a little white polo shirt; Kfir with a wide, toothless grin clutching a bright pink cuddly toy; and Shiri Bibas, smiling and radiant before the family’s world fell in.
The masked gunmen, though, appeared to have mixed up the children’s pictures and names.
In the early hours of Friday morning, the Israeli military announced in a statement that the remains of Ariel and Kfir had been positively identified by Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine and the Israel police.
Mr. Lifshitz’s body had been positively identified earlier on Thursday.
But in a shocking and gut-wrenching twist, the military said that the identification process had determined that the additional body received was not that of Shiri Bibas, and that no match was found for any other hostage. “This is an anonymous, unidentified body,” the military said, calling the apparent ruse a “violation of utmost severity” of Hamas’s cease-fire agreement with Israel.
The revelation, which came as most Israelis were probably sleeping, was likely to further jolt the country, jeopardize the cease-fire and prolong the collective agony surrounding the Bibas tragedy.
Yarden Bibas, Ms. Bibas’s husband and the children’s father, was abducted separately during the Oct. 7 assault, bleeding from a head wound. He was released alive this month as part of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect in January.
But the fate of the rest of his family has tormented Israelis, underscoring what many here view as the cruelty of Hamas. Ms. Bibas’s elderly parents were also killed in the October 2023 attack.
“Dear citizens of Israel, on this day we are all united in grief that is too heavy to bear,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, in a somber message to an aching nation. “Today, every home in Israel bows its head.”
A month after the war set off by the Hamas attack began, the group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, claimed that Ms. Bibas and her two children had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Fears grew in Israel when they were not among the other captive mothers and children released during a weeklong cease-fire that month.
But the Israeli authorities had not confirmed their deaths, let alone the circumstances, saying only that there was “grave concern” over the hostages’ fates.
Relatives held out hope until the very end.
After Hamas announced on Tuesday that it would release the Bibases’ remains, the family expressed anger over the early eulogizing in the news media of Ms. Bibas and the children before Israel had even determined that they had been killed.
“Should we receive devastating news, it must come through the proper official channels after all identification procedures are completed,” the family said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Israeli military’s statement on Friday said that the available intelligence and forensic findings indicated that the two Bibas boys had been “brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in 2023,” without elaborating. The Israeli government did not immediately provide details of the cause of Mr. Lifshitz’s death, but said he had been “murdered in captivity” by Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian armed group that has been holding a number of hostages. Hamas asserted that Mr. Lifshitz, too, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. None of the claims could be independently verified.
Hamas turned over the bodies as part of a series of negotiated exchanges in the first phase of the cease-fire agreement. In recent weeks it has released 19 living Israeli hostages.
The agreement provides for the release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinian imprisoned in Israel during the first phase, which, barring an extension, is set to expire in early March.
The Israeli government said last month that Hamas had provided a list indicating that 25 of the 33 hostages were alive and that eight had been killed.
Roughly 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led 2023 attack and more than 250 abducted, according to Israel. Nir Oz was one of the hardest-hit communities, with about a quarter of its 400 residents either killed or taken hostage. Kfir was the youngest to be seized.
The attack prompted Israel to declare war on Hamas and invade Gaza in a 15-month military campaign that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and combatants and left much of the coastal enclave in ruins.
On Thursday, groups of Israelis stood in the rain and held silent vigils along the route as the four coffins were transferred in a convoy from Gaza to the National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv.
Eylon Keshet, Mr. Bibas’s cousin, described Ariel in November 2023 as a boy who loved being the center of attention and playing with toy tractors and cars. Kfir, he said, was a “chill” baby who was just beginning to eat solid food.
The Hostage Families Forum, an organization advocating for the hostages and their families, described Ms. Bibas in a statement as “a dedicated mother and accountant, known for her boundless kindness.”
“They weren’t just names,” the forum said of the deceased hostages, adding, “They were beloved people, with families who cherished them, with dreams and futures stolen from them.”
