On that horrific Saturday of October 7 I was supposed to visit my son Yarden and his family in Kibbutz Nir Oz. At 6:30am I heard the sirens blaring. I called Yarden, who assured me they were all in the shelter.
We thought it was just another round of rocket attacks from Gaza. But at 9:20am, I received a text from Yarden with three words that still haunt me: "I love you." Then, silence.
My young grandchildren, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, along with my son Yarden and daughter-in-law Shiri, have been held captive by Hamas since then. Every day I feel their absence, every day it crushes me, but every day I make the decision to continue to fight to bring them home. The horror of what unfolded was distributed through images and videos gleefully distributed by Hamas.
The entire world has surely seen by now my beautiful daughter-in-law Shiri, clutching the world’s most famous redheaded children, fear etched across their faces as they were dragged into captivity. My son Yarden was also violently kidnapped into Gaza on a motorcycle, shown bloodied and surrounded by terrorists and civilians in images. In the months since their abduction, we've all been victims of cruel psychological warfare waged by Hamas.
They forced my son to appear in a video, telling him his children were dead – to break his spirit. But we can’t help but cling to hope, even as each passing day makes it that much harder. Ariel, my eldest grandson, should be celebrating his fifth birthday today.
Instead, he marks this.
