1. Matti Friedman: The Family that Never Came Home

For Israelis, October 7 is a slow-release catastrophe. Hamas has bargained not just over every Israeli hostage and corpse, but also over scraps of information about their fate, meaning that the precise death toll from the war’s first day is still not clear. Some of those we hoped were still alive turn out to have been dead from the very beginning—like Shlomo Mantzour, a grandfather taken at age 85 and thought to be the oldest Israeli hostage until last week, when new information revealed he was killed 16 months ago.

No captives have focused public sentiment like the Bibas children, the youngest Israeli hostages. Footage from October 7 showed a terrified Shiri Bibas cradling a baby and a toddler as they were taken at gunpoint from their home. The two redheads quickly became symbols of the 250 Israelis taken hostage—icons not just of the inhumanity of the Palestinians who kidnapped and murdered civilians and celebrated this barbarism as a victory, but of the unthinkable weakness of the Israeli state that allowed this to happen.

After their capture, the Israeli military said Shiri and the children were in the hands of a small and previously unknown Gazan faction. Video footage showed the children’s father, Yarden, covered in blood on the back of a motorcycle, surrounded by dozens of men as he was taken away separately. He survived 15 months in captivity and was recently returned as part of the current ceasefire deal.

Later, another video surfaced showing Shiri and the children being herded into Gaza by a half-dozen men. This was the last glimpse of them.

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Dana Silverman Seaton is the only sister of Shiri Bibas. Their parents were murdered by Hamas on the morning of October 7 in Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Shiri, brother-in-law Yarden, and her nephews Ariel and Kfir were kidnapped—only Yarden returned home alive.

In an interview to… pic.twitter.com/WmaaEyVV90

— Ori Miller🇮🇱 (@orielishamiller) February 20, 2025

4.

#BREAKING Statement from the family of Oded Lifshitz:

“We received with deep sorrow the official and bitter news confirming the identification of our beloved Oded’s body.

503 agonizing days of uncertainty have come to an end. We had hoped and prayed so much for a different… pic.twitter.com/1BAOTDUgeC

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) February 20, 2025

5.

Oded was such a gifted pianist.

This is how we will remember him: Sitting at his piano, lost in a state of flow, breathing life into every note.

The sound of him playing will live in our minds and our hearts for the rest of our lives. pic.twitter.com/jeDdTZhU6J

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) February 20, 2025

6. Bethany Mandel: Brooklyn’s depraved pro-Hamas fiends back the slaughter of babies

7. Seth Mandel:

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