Today is a hard day.

Israelis feel as if the horror perpetrated on the Bibas family happened to our own families, that it could have happened to any one of us personally, and that quite literally, it still can.

In a gruesome, celebratory ceremony this morning, Hamas released the bodies of Shiri Silberman Bibas and her children: Ariel (4) and Kfir (9 months)*. Their father, Yarden, whom Hamas held captive under brutal conditions for 483 days, was freed on February 1 as part of the ceasefire deal. As if his ordeal weren’t enough, Yarden must now mourn his wife and children, along with all of Israel. (*Ages at the time of their murder, which is believed to be October 7, 2023).

It’s hard to fully explain just how personal this is for Israelis.

The massacre of October 7, 2023 saw the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust. The Hamas terror organization, along with Palestinian civilians and U.N. staff, invaded Israel, killed over 1,200, took 251 hostage, and caused ten million Israelis to feel that this could happen any of us, or to our children. The Bibas children, with their tender age and striking red hair, have become a kind of symbol: we feel we know them personally, just as we feel we know many of the other hostages, terror victims, and fallen IDF soldiers.

To Israelis this isn’t a news story or a statistic: this is very real, very personal, and very close to home. The orange broken-heart icon, a reference to the Bibas children’s red hair (and to all of our broken hearts), is dominating Israeli social media, and today it bringing people openly to tears.

Abusers of all types commonly deny their own behavior, even as they absurdly accuse their victims of the same. I, myself, survived years of child abuse, before pursuing many more years of recovery. As a result, I find some of Hamas’s current behavior disturbingly familiar: in particular the terror organization’s gaslighting insistence that it never harms children (even as it turns over the bodies dead Israeli children) as well as its (often alarmingly successful) attempts to convince the world that Israel’s defensive military operations target almost exclusively women and children, a claim flatly contradicted by available data.

Painting of Shira, Ariel and Kfir Bibas during the October 7 massacre, via Wikimedia Commons.

Despite losing most of its forces, physical infrastructure, territory and international partners, Hamas is presently declaring victory, and not without reason. As part of the ceasefire deal, many Palestinians in Gaza are returning to where they used to live in parts of northern Gaza, a striking visual that Hamas claims is evidence of having forced Israel to make concessions, including giving up territory. The cruel hostage “release ceremonies,” in which Hamas creates a media spectacle of starved and injured Israelis, while Israel stands helpless to prevent it, provide additional striking visuals of supposed Hamas effectiveness and strength.

Hamas has declared numerous times that it intends to repeat the October 7 massacre, and Israelis believe it. We genuinely feel as if the horror perpetrated on the Bibas family happened to our own families, that it could have happened to any one of us personally, and that quite literally, it still can.

In the coming days I will be sharing the Israeli perspective on the “day after” vision for Gaza, including the Israeli view of Donald Trump’s plan to remove all of its current residents to other parts of the world.