Ariel Bibas was supposed to celebrate his sixth birthday on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. Instead, his life was cut short by Hamas terrorists.
Ariel, along with his parents Shiri and Yarden and his baby brother Kfir, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
Ariel, Kfir and Shiri were murdered in captivity.
“The first birthday without Ariel. Close your eyes and think of Ariel’s sweet smile. Ariel was a mischievous child full of love with a smile that immediately melted everyone he met,” read a post on the Instagram page commemorating the Bibas family.
The page invited the public to light a candle or release an orange balloon, to “dedicate a moment to create a good moment with your loved ones that will bring a smile to their faces—send a message, give a hug, offer to help someone.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry tweeted: “Ariel Bibas should’ve turned 6 today. Instead, he was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas with his mother Shiri and baby brother Kfir.
“Stolen from us all, we will never forget you. 50 hostages are still in Gaza. Let them go now,” the ministry added.
Yarden Bibas, along with Ofer Kalderon and Keith Siegel, was freed on Feb. 1 after 484 days in Hamas captivity.
Hamas returned Ariel and Kfir’s remains on Feb. 20 as part of a ceasefire deal, alongside the body of an unidentified Gazan woman. After DNA testing found that the body was not Shiri’s, Hamas returned her remains two days later.
To countless Israelis and others, the Bibas family personified the plight of the 251 hostages that Hamas abducted on Oct. 7, and the brutality of its terrorists. Hamas claimed the mother and her children were killed by Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip, but forensic evidence has refuted that claim.
“We identified Shiri Bibas two days after confirming the identities of her two young children, Kfir and Ariel,” Dr. Chen Kugel, director of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine (Abu Kabir) in Tel Aviv, said. “Our examination found no injuries consistent with a bombing.”
Forensic analysis of Kfir and Ariel showed that they were murdered in cold blood by their Gaza captors. The IDF said that the Palestinian terrorists committed the crime “with their bare hands” weeks after being taken captive on Oct. 7, 2023.
