The terrorists constantly jeered about the death of his wife and two young sons, whom he has not seen since being kidnapped.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Hamas terrorists psychologically tortured Yarden Bibas during his 484 days of captivity, constantly taunting him about his wife and two young sons who they said were killed in captivity, Hebrew-language media reported Saturday.
Bibas was captured on October 7, 2023, in Kibbutz Nir Oz separately from his wife, Shiri, and children Ariel, 4, and Kfir, nine months old at the time, and he never saw them again.
The video publicized by the terrorists of Shiri desperately clutching her two tots as they were being dragged away was one of the most infamous clips of the Hamas-led invasion in which they slaughtered 1,200 people and took 251 hostage.
Nili Margalit, one of the hostages freed during a week-long ceasefire in late November 2023, said soon after her release that she had been with Bibas when the terrorists told him his wife and children were dead.
She said they immediately forced him to record a propaganda video in which he charged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at fault for not succeeding in getting their bodies repatriated to Israel.
Israel has been demanding to receive confirmation of the mother’s and children’s fates since then, to no avail.
Bibas’s family alluded to his psychological distress when they asked the public to “please give him the space he needs for his body and soul to begin healing.”
A Maariv analysis of Bibas’s body language upon his release Saturday said that his “slumped shoulders” and “frightened eyes,” when forced to climb a stage in Khan Yunis to wave to a crowd of Gazans before being taken to a Red Cross vehicle, showed how deeply he was traumatized.
It noted out that even when he was safe on the Israeli side of the border, meeting IDF soldiers, “his steps remained measured and cautious, his head bowed most of the time, and even when he looked up, the movement was slow and hesitant from the bottom up – a movement that characterizes people under extreme fear who have lost the ability to look straight ahead.”
Bibas was also physically beaten by the terrorists, as was Ofer Calderon, who was held with him in small cages during the beginning of their captivity. They were released together.
They were starved, as was the third hostage freed Saturday, American-Israeli Keith Siegal, who spoke of having to eat whatever food was given to him to survive, including some meat on occasion even though he was a vegetarian.
Bibas and Calderon spent their captivity in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Bibas was moved many times, sometimes staying in people’s homes and other times in the tunnels that crisscrossed the entire city, the reports said.
Siegal was also frequently moved around but within Gaza City. He spent most of his captivity above ground with other hostages, although he was also moved underground at times.
Among other cruel psychological games the terrorists often played was telling the captives that they were “going home tomorrow.” Laughing guards would give them food and then snatch it away before the hostages could take a bite, their relatives said.
