Word of the deaths of four hostages—Oded Lifshitz, plus Shiri Bibas and her two little boys, Kfir and Ariel—was heartbreaking for Canadians who followed their plight in the 16 months since they were kidnapped by Hamas.
Israeli authorities subsequently said that three remains had been returned, but that the remaining body was not that of the boys’ mother.
Where is Shiri Bibas? pic.twitter.com/ftk7S6JeY3
— Israel ישראל (@Israel) February 21, 2025
The bodies were returned to Israel following a grim morning handover spectacle in which Hamas officials presented the four coffins on a stage.
The International Committee of the Red Cross—mockingly nicknamed “The Uber” on Israeli social media in recent weeks for its ongoing failure to visit the hostages or assist other than ferrying them between the warring sides—received and delivered the bodies to Israeli authorities Thursday morning.
Six more living hostages are expected to be released in another highly staged ceremony Saturday to complete the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage release, along with Palestinian prisoner exchanges, under the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
After more than 500 days of waiting, this wasn’t the news Vancouver’s Rutie Mizrahi hoped to hear about her 83-year-old uncle: Oded Lifshitz was captured with his wife Yocheved from their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023. Yocheved was released 16 days after she was kidnapped.
Rutie Mizrahi, whose aunt and uncle were kidnapped on Oct. 7, reflects on a year of losses https://t.co/vqGSqx2j8b
— The Canadian Jewish News (@TheCJN) October 7, 2024
Mizrahi says she has been checking regularly on the family WhatsApp group. “After more than 500 days, we were all very [aware] that his chances are not great, because of his age,” she told The CJN in an interview Feb. 19.
But with no updates for months, after other hostages in captivity in Gaza saw Oded Lifshitz alive in the first weeks following Oct. 7, the family had believed there was still a chance of better news.
“Nobody, at least on the group, nobody says too much. We are all in a lot of pain. I know it happened, but it’s hard to accept.”
Mizrahi said the family in Israel was waiting for the official identification process before they started to plan a funeral for her uncle.
Later on Thursday, the National Institute of Forensic Medicine reported he was slain in captivity more than a year ago, and his body was being held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group.
We are heartbroken to announce that the body of hostage Oded Lifshitz (85) has been identified.
— Israel ישראל (@Israel) February 20, 2025
A devoted husband to Yocheved for 63 years, father of four, journalist, kibbutz leader, and peace activist for six decades, Oded dedicated his life to the pursuit of peace.
He found… pic.twitter.com/OUn8oBMIcb
Oded Lifshitz was a former journalist who later helped found Kibbutz Nir Oz, where he lived. In his retirement he drove cancer patients from Gaza to Israeli hospitals as a volunteer with the group ‘Road to Recovery’.
“He fought for Israel. He really cared. He was a true Zionist. At the same time, this is the country [that] in a way abandoned him… [that] didn’t defend them [the hostages],” Mizrahi said.
“When I was a child, I thought that he’s the tallest person in the world. He used to pick me up and put me up on high places. He was amazing with kids! Any kids.
“His whole home, their home, was always open to everybody. He really cared about what’s going on with other people… he could not stand for any injustice,” she said.
“The world lost really very special and caring and amazing person. I’m missing him already.”
She hopes the forensic identification will reveal more about how and when her uncle died.
Another Israeli hostage, Hanna Katzir, reported that around the 24th day, Oded hadn’t been feeling well, and saw the captors take him away when she advised them of his condition. (Katzir, who was also abducted from Nir Oz, was released after 49 days, but later died, in December 2024, “after months of struggle and a complex medical condition that she faced after her release from captivity,” according to a statement from the kibbutz.)
By Katzir’s account, says Mizrahi, Oded was taken outside to speak with a commander, but she says the family had no updates on him after that.
“Did they murder him, right after that? I really want to have some answers,” she said.“I hope Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] won’t stop the negotiations. Those alive and dead people need to come back as soon as possible.”
Mizrahi last saw her uncle, aunt, and their family in Israel in 2023, before the Hamas attack. She had been set to visit her aunt and relatives for Oct. 7, 2024, but her flight was cancelled during Hezbollah-Israel fighting on the northern border.
Mizrahi says she’s received messages of support from near and far, and when asked what Canadians can do to help, responds they can spare a moment to think about those in pain.
“I really wish everybody can just stop for a couple of minutes and think about everyone that got hurt and keep us in their heart, in their thoughts, for even a couple of minutes,” she says. “We have a whole nation grieving.”
Mizrahi muses about her uncle, who helped Palestinians and criticized the Israeli government, including in Haaretz newspaper in 2019.
“What would he say now after what happened? [Would] he still drive those cancer patients to hospitals… still feel that we need to separate and have two different states? Yes, he will. But it’s just really painful to think that, I mean, no one’s life should end this way.”
Rutie Mizrahi, a Canadian-Israeli living in Vancouver, says she found out her aunt had been released by Hamas through messages in a family group chat and a phone call from her ex-husband — although she still remains deeply worried about her uncle.
— CityNews Vancouver (@CityNewsVAN) October 24, 2023
https://t.co/6bYlhTfL72
Even in grief, Mizrahi remains focused on advocating for the speedy return of the remaining 63 hostages, to be released in the next phase of the ceasefire agreement.
“We don’t have time. Two weeks ago [we saw] the three men that came back, and they looked like a Holocaust picture already,” she said, referring to the gaunt-looking hostages Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami released on Feb. 8, after 16 months in captivity.
Rutie Mizrahi has spoken twice at rallies in Vancouver organized to keep the hostages in the public eye and her son, Neta, a Grade 12 student at King David High School, attended in December and spoke about Lifshitz, his great-uncle.
Daphna Kedem, who organizes the weekly rallies in Vancouver says lately they have been a mix of celebration along with stress and despair. “In solidarity with the families that are grieving… [and] that are getting their loved ones back. It’s turmoil.”
She says it’s crucial to avoid normalizing the Israeli government’s failure to take care of its citizens.
“I’m sending a powerful message to say that enough is enough, and they have to bring them all home. That’s what we’re doing every Sunday and that’s what we are committed to… they cannot be forgotten. They cannot be left behind. The families cannot be left in a limbo. We will not rest, we will not be silent, until [they are all] safely home.”
Confirmation of the deaths of the youngest hostages left the global Jewish community in a stew of mourning, grief and outrage.
The two little boys, Kfir, who was nine months old, and Ariel, 4, were last seen in the arms of their terrified mother Shiri, as they were seized from their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz. The chilling scene was filmed by their Hamas captors.
Shiri Bibas’ parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, were killed during the attack on their kibbutz. Her husband, Yarden, was taken hostage when he left the family’s safe room in an effort to distract the terrorists. He was released Feb. 1, 2025, after 484 days in captivity.
The boys became symbols for the brutality of the Oct. 7 attacks. Orange ribbons, shirts and scarves were often seen at hostage rallies, a tribute to the children’s red hair. When their deaths were officially announced by the Israeli government, social media was filled with graphics of orange-coloured hearts broken in two.
“If you were to ask anyone at a rally to name a hostage, they’re going to name those three,” said Paul Seidman, one of the organizers of a weekly pro-Israel rally in Toronto. “Everybody is heartbroken.”
The group was planning to hold a vigil that evening at the corner of Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue. “It’s not a rally, we’re not playing music. It’s basically a shiva,” Seidman said earlier in the day.
Tonight, we stand at Bathurst and Sheppard and grieve. The red headed boys, Kifr and Ariel were a symbol of the horrific acts of October 7.
— Brad Bradford✌️ (@BradMBradford) February 21, 2025
Kifr Zichrono Livracha. Ariel Zichrono Livracha. Oded Zichrono Livracha. Their names will never be forgotten. pic.twitter.com/FZGjFkGtkc
Daphna Kedem, who organizes the Vancouver rallies says the Bibas children touched everyone’s hearts. “Because they’re kids, because they’re so small, they became a symbol… they had a really, really big significance.”
She recalls that Hamas had, early on after Oct. 7, said that the Bibas boys and their mother were already dead, but it could not be confirmed, and authorities were suspicious the information could have been a psychological trick.
While people were optimistic when the hostage release began and women were released, the hope faded.
“People have known that in their stomach for quite a few weeks. We saw them [the Bibas family] being kidnapped alive in a horrific video.”
Michelle Factor, who organizes a weekly walk in Thornhill, Ont., as part of the global Run for Their Lives project to keep the hostages’ names in the forefront, had just landed in Israel when she learned about the fate of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz.
Although there had been rumours that the young family was not alive, she had been reluctant to believe it, she says. Hostage Daniela Gilboa was forced to play dead in a video filmed by Hamas and seen by her family, as part of Hamas’ psychological torture, but in fact she recently returned alive after over a year in captivity, Factor said.
Factor recently wore an orange scarf to synagogue. It had a picture of Kfir on it to commemorate his second birthday.
“A little girl came up to me and she said, ‘Can you believe he’s been there longer than he’s been alive?’” Factor said. “It’s just an unbelievable trauma for everybody.”
Factor says she intended to go to Hostage Square in Tel Aviv to mark the painful news.
Although she won’t be walking with her group this Sunday, the participants are accustomed to grief. She recalled their horror and disbelief when the news came that Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages were executed in the tunnels of Gaza last summer.
“There was literally nothing we could say to comfort each other, other than we keep going… We keep going until every last hostage,” is released, she said.
Bronna Ginsberg has been inviting people in her Toronto neighbourhood to light candles and pray for the hostages weekly for over a year. The informal group of between 30 and 50 people meet at her home Friday before Shabbat, or for Havdalah. Hostages’ favourite recipes have been collected in a cookbook and the group often cooks one dish to recognize a particular hostage.
“It’s devastating, but I don’t think it’s anything we weren’t expecting,” Ginsberg said about the deaths. “But there isn’t one death that is more devastating than another. Oded Lifshitz is getting returned to his family also. It’s sickening that babies were taken, but a life is a life and a family losing a loved one is devastating regardless.”
The group tries to end with an uplifting song, video or new music from Israel. As she prepared to focus on the program for this weekend, Ginsberg says she was also thinking about six living hostages who were expected to be released on Saturday morning from Gaza.
“It’s very heavy but we also have to be grateful that six have returned alive and to their families. We’ll wake up Saturday and watch (the hostage release) as we usually do.”
When she started the candle lighting program, she asked a few friends to attend and she expected the hostages would be released that week.
“It’s just comforting for everybody to be together in a space that is community, with like-minded people… For me, it’s the most meaningful hour of my week,” she said.
Across the country, rabbis and Jewish organizations reacted to the news that the four hostages were returning to Israel in coffins.
“Their murders are yet another reminder of the sheer evil perpetrated by Hamas and its supporters. It is heartbreaking to realize that Yarden Bibas—himself held hostage for 484 days—now faces this tragic reality,” read a statement from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
“Hamas must have no role in Gaza’s future—for the sake of children in Israel, Gaza, and the entire world. This is a terror group that uses sexual violence and torture as tools of war, seizes hostages, and murders children, women, and the elderly.
“But words from the international community are not enough to stop Hamas. Canada and its allies must exert maximum pressure to secure the immediate and unconditional release of all remaining hostages, ensure that Hamas is held accountable for its atrocities, and prevent Hamas from ever returning to power in Gaza.”
In a social media post, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau extended his condolences to the families and placed the blame on Hamas, while once again emphasizing a call for the return of the remains of Canadian-Israeli victim Judih Weinstein Haggai.
Canada stands with the family of Oded Lifshitz — and all Israelis — in mourning the unimaginable loss of four Israeli hostages.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 20, 2025
Abducted by Hamas from his home in kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, Oded’s remains were returned today to Israel, along with those of three hostages yet to…
Judih and her American-Israeli husband Gadi Haggai were killed by Hamas terrorists as they walked near their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7. Their bodies were taken to Gaza, where they remain, despite their daughter’s international campaign for them to be returned for a proper burial.
In addition to weekly rallies and runs across the country, prayer vigils were organized for Feb. 20. In Montreal, a community gathering was organized by Federation CJA and held at Beth Israel Beth Aaron Synagogue, at 7:30 p.m. In Toronto, a community gathering was held at Beth Tzedec Congregation.
