Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire on Tuesday inaugurated a memorial pathway named for Ariel and Kfir Bibas, two children who, along with their mother, Shiri, were murdered by Hamas terrorists after being abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023.
The mother and her two boys, aged 4 and nine months at the time of their abduction, were “cowardly murdered by terrorists in what is the deadliest pogrom in recent history,” Grégoire said at the ceremony, alongside Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), and others, Le Parisien reported.
The plaque marking the Ariel and Kfir Bibas Pathway also mentions Shiri and describes the three as “victims of Islamist terrorism and antisemitic hatred.”
The Paris City Council observed a minute of silence on Tuesday at a separate ceremony ahead of the third anniversary of the Hamas massacre.
“The violated innocence of Ariel and Kfir Bibas has become a symbol of the antisemitic hatred of the mass attacks perpetrated on Oct. 7, 2023,” read a resolution unanimously adopted by the council.
The pathway named for Ariel and Kfir is in Parc Monceau, which the city describes on its website as “one of the most beautiful gardens in Paris” and a “particularly peaceful” corner of the city.
Yarden Bibas, Shiri’s husband and the father of the two boys, attended the inauguration and recalled the last time he saw his family alive.
“I asked you: Do we fight or do we surrender? You said we fight, so we fought. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. If I’d have known what would happen, I never would’ve fired,” he said, referring to his decision to open fire with his sidearm on terrorists who invaded the family’s home.
Yarden Bibas was wounded, captured and taken to Gaza, where he was held hostage until his release.
“We won’t forget and we won’t forgive,” Jimmy Miller, Shiri Bibas’s cousin, told JNS. “The fire may have died out long ago, but the light of Ariel and Kfir will continue to burn forever.”
For Miller and his family, as well as the country as a whole, Oct. 7 is a day of mourning.
“Anyone who does not feel this way is disconnected from reality. What happened in Israel on Oct. 7 was the worst tragedy to befall the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and that day must never be forgotten,” he said.
“The grief for my family is immense. The wounds will remain open. I don’t believe that I or my family will ever be able to live like we used to, because of what happened in general on Oct. 7, but also because of what happened to our family—to Shiri, the children and Shiri’s parents, Uncle Yossi and Aunt Margalit, who were both murdered.”
The pathway in Paris was a particularly significant gesture, Miller said, because such names endure for generations.
“It’s a gesture of remembrance, so that they won’t forget Ariel or Kfir or Shiri and what happened to them,” Miller told JNS. “They will remain in the minds of the people of this generation, and I hope also in the next generations.”
