Yarden Bibas marks son’s birthday with heartbreaking message

“Kfir, I’m sorry I brought you into such a cruel world. I hope you know how much I love you and how much I miss you.”

By World Israel News Staff

Their image is seared into a nation’s heart. Shiri Bibas, a young mother, and her two redheaded boys, Ariel and Kfir, were torn from their home and from a life that should have been filled with safety, laughter, and ordinary childhood moments.

Today, January 18, marks what would have been the third birthday of Kfir Bibas, the youngest hostage taken on October 7. His father, Yarden Bibas, marked the day with a heartbreaking post on Instagram, remembering the brief milestones his baby managed to reach, and the ones he never got the chance to celebrate.

“Kfir, my beloved,” Yarden wrote, recalling how they had to evacuate their home during fighting in Gaza just months after Kfir was born. He remembered Kfir tasting solid food for the first time, starting to crawl, and being there to celebrate his older brother Ariel’s birthday.

“You didn’t get to celebrate your first birthday, so how can I mark your third?” he wrote. “Kfir, I’m sorry I brought you into such a cruel world. I hope you know how much I love you and how much I miss you.”

Yarden added that he imagines Kfir’s mother and brother celebrating him in heaven. “I’m sure Mom, Ariel and Tony are celebrating you in paradise,” he wrote, picturing Shiri giving him “the best and happiest birthday possible, just like she knew how.”

He ended with words that captured a father’s love in its purest form: “I love you more than anything in the world, always.”

Yarden, his wife Shiri, 32, and their two young sons, Kfir and Ariel, who were 10 months old and four years old at the time, were taken from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’ October 7 onslaught, when 1,200 people were massacred and some 250 were taken hostage.

Yarden was wounded and taken captive, while his wife and children were abducted separately.

Footage of Shiri, visibly terrified and clutching her children as she was dragged away, became one of the most widely circulated and unforgettable images from that day.

Yarden was released in a hostage deal in early 2025. Several weeks later, the remains of the rest of his family were handed over and returned to Israel for burial.

Israeli intelligence and forensic findings later concluded that Ariel and Kfir’s terrorist captors brutally murdered them with their bare hands. Officials said their bodies were then mutilated in an attempt to support the false claim that they were killed in an airstrike.

Today, on what would have been Kfir Bibas’s third birthday, Yarden is left to carry a father’s love and a grief beyond words, marking a day that should have been filled with joy and laughter.