To say that last February 20 was a dark day would be the understatement of the year.

It was a dark day that we could see coming, facing inevitable heartbreak that we could try to intellectually imagine yet still not emotionally prepare for, even after all this time.

It was one of the darkest days since 10/7 itself, as it reopened old wounds of the absolute pinnacle of evil that many pretended to not see, and reminded us of the astonishing betrayal that we could no longer unsee.

It was a dark day indeed, but it was also a blindingly bright one, as on 2/20/25, the world was finally forced to see what it refused to for over 500 days.

The story of the Bibases, Yarden, Shiri, and their two very young boys, Ariel and Kfir, aged four years and nine months, is perhaps one of the most well known and widely watched horror stories of all of 10/7 and across all of the world, for the sheer display of the worst depravity that humans can offer: the indefensible, haunting abduction of a family in their pajamas, father bloodied, mother sobbing with horror and clutching her children that are too young to even comprehend the extent of the terror that is happening to them.

As a result, this family became a symbol for the entire community. Not simply because they were among the purest victims, and not just because they endured the darkest nightmare, but because they embody the ultimate microcosm for 10/7 itself, encompassing and exposing the absolute worst of all of its abhorrent devastation and searing truths.

It was always sickly ironic that the haranguing “all eyes on” crowd could never spare any eyes for the greatest war crime that quickly faded into the single most bizarre afterthought of the entire war: the hostages, whose very existence was so objectively criminal that it cut through the falsest of narratives to the harshest of realities. Yet there simply couldn’t be any eyes on what no one could let themselves risk seeing: a truth that could never be defended, and therefore a truth that must be buried.

On a day that became so perverted and propagandized, the Bibas family still shines as a neon-orange marquee of the impossible to deny horror that took place. And the reason why it is so easy to see the horror is the very reason why it had to be hidden from sight.

This particular family completely blew open the reality of the victims of the attack from which so many had turned away. They showed that these stolen hostages were peace loving civilians, not genocidal colonizers. They were kibbutz dwellers, not war criminals. They demonstrated both the targeting of families and those of literally every age, as there was no discriminating when it came to stealing Jews. More than anything, they exposed the most denied truth of all: that they were fellow human beings. Humans, who were one moment sleeping soundly, and the next having their entire lives ripped from them.

And by exposing who exactly was attacked, the truth about the attackers themselves was exposed as well.

The only reason we ever even knew the extent of the terror experienced that day is because someone made the choice to literally stand there with a camera, sadistically filming each moment of agony to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)