Israelis released from captivity in Gaza reconvened in their ravaged border village on Tuesday to hold a solemn first birthday ceremony for the infant of a family still held hostage.
Kfir Bibas was eight months old when Hamas-led Palestinian gunmen stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7 as part of a cross-border killing spree in southern Israel and became the youngest of some 240 people taken back to the Gaza Strip as captives.
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Hamas has said that Kfir, his four-year-old brother Ariel, and their mother Shiri were killed in the Israeli offensive that ensued, while their father, Yarden, survived. But in the absence of Israeli corroboration, relatives, and friends back home have refused to let hope die for the whole family's safe recovery.
A bower of ginger balloons – a nod to Kfir's hair color – stood in the abandoned Nir Oz kindergarten, and his pictures signaled places at a table where celebrants should have sat. "We're marking a birthday to a kid who's not here. We make him a cake, we put balloons, pictures, and blessings and everything and he's not here," Shiri's cousin, Yosi Shnaider, told Reuters. "It's crazy."
Kfir would turn one year old on Thursday, at which point he would have spent a third of his life as a hostage. Meanwhile, Nir Oz has been frozen in time and trauma, with more than a quarter of residents either killed or taken captive, and survivors fleeing.
At the World Economic Forum at Davos, Israeli President Isaac Herzog placed a photo of Kfir Bibas next to him on stage. Herzog and his wife Michal, as well as the president's entourage, wore a lapel with the face of Kfir Bibas on it. Herzog told the crowd: "Our enemy is celebrating the kidnapping of Kfir Bibas ... I call on the entire international community to work for his release and that of all the abductees."
Video: Herzog speaks at the WEF in Davos
Israel recovered around half of the hostages in a November truce, among them Nir Oz resident Sharon Alony Cunio and her three-year-old twin daughters Emma and Julie. Cunio's husband remains incommunicado in Gaza, however, with 131 other hostages.
"Israel is ready for another humanitarian pause and additional humanitarian aid in order to enable the release of hostages," Herzog, whose public role is largely ceremonial, told a gathering of ambassadors, according to his office. "And the responsibility lies fully with [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar and [other] Hamas leadership," he said.
Worry for their fate grips a country that, after the worst attack in its history, has settled into the grim resolve of war – especially as Israeli officials, based on various sources of information, say at least 25 hostages have died in captivity. "I can't sleep. I suffer from nightmares. The girls ask about their father constantly," Cunio, who visited her now-burned-out home in the formerly placid agricultural collective, said. "I wake up in the morning with one purpose only – David made me promise him that I will fight for him. That I will scream his despair to the world as he is unable to do so."
Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been trying to cobble together a new truce that might free some more hostages, even as Israel presses on with its devastating offensive to destroy Hamas and the Palestinian militants vow to fight on.
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