The following is the full text of freed hostage Yarden Bibas’s letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, read from the Knesset podium on March 3, 2025, by National Unity MK Chili Tropper, as the prime minister listened in the plenum.

The Knesset was holding a debate on calls to hold a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and massacre in southern Israel. Netanyahu, during the debate, reiterated his opposition to such an investigation. After reading the letter, Tropper walked over to Netanyahu, spoke in his ear, and placed the letter in front of him.

Mr. Prime Minister,

My name is Yarden Bibas, and as my words are being read to you, I am sitting shiva for my wife, Shiri, and my children, Kfir and Ariel. Innocent, pure children who were taken from their home and murdered in captivity. They could have been saved and should have been saved.

The accursed terrorists stormed Nir Oz in flip-flops. My family and I were violently abducted from our home and dragged to Gaza. That cursed morning, the state was absent from Nir Oz. The only ones there were the local heroes — members of emergency response teams and brave soldiers who did everything in their power, and even paid with their lives.

And now, 514 days later, I have returned from Gaza to an unimaginable reality in which I had to bury my entire family in a single day. No one should ever have to endure such a nightmare.

Yet despite my unbearable grief, I ask you at this moment to stop. This is not the time for........

© The Times of Israel