Hamas did not hold Bibas family says Israeli general exposing Israel’s propaganda

A senior Israeli general has admitted that the Bibas family was not abducted by Hamas during the 7 October attacks, but by a separate Palestinian faction. The disclosure has prompted fresh accusations that the Israeli government weaponised the family’s suffering to justify its genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Major-General Nitzan Alon, outgoing head of Israel’s Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters, revealed to Yedioth Ahronoth that the Bibas family had in fact been seized by the Mujahideen Brigades, a smaller group unaffiliated with Hamas. Alon stated that Israeli authorities had even informed Hamas of the kidnappers’ identity in a bid to locate the hostages.

“Take the Bibas family, for example. We knew who abducted them,” Alon said. “We informed Hamas who the kidnappers were so they could locate the bodies and return them.”

Shiri Bibas, 32, and her two sons, four-year-old Ariel and nine-month-old Kfir, died while in captivity. The family’s father, Yarden, was also held and later returned, along with the bodies of his wife and children, during a prisoner exchange in February. Israel had previously accused Hamas of killing the family “by hand”, a claim that now appears to directly contradicts Alon’s remarks.

Hamas said the Bibas family had been killed in Israeli air strikes, not by its fighters.

This latest revelation casts serious doubt on the Israeli government’s narrative, which portrayed Hamas as being responsible for the family’s deaths and leveraged the Bibas case to inflame public sentiment and sustain its genocidal campaign. The Israeli claim that Hamas murdered the children has never been substantiated by forensic evidence, and no such evidence has been made public.

The Bibas family’s ordeal was prominently featured in Israeli media and government messaging to justify the scale of its military onslaught, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians since October 2023, most of them women and children. Legal experts and genocide scholars increasingly argue that Israel’s campaign in Gaza constitutes a deliberate act of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Of the 251 captives taken on 7 October, 168 have since been returned alive, most through negotiations or ceasefire deals. Another 87 were either killed in captivity or returned dead, many by Israeli fire. In exchange, 3,985 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons.

Currently, at least 9,250 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, including thousands detained since October. Nearly half are being held without charge or trial under administrative detention orders, a practice condemned by international human rights groups.