A newly surfaced video shows missing Israeli hostage Yarden Bibas being brutally beaten by a crowd of Hamas supporters and driven into Gaza on a motorbike on October 7.
The 40-second footage shows a frenzied mob beating and punching Yarden. The blood-soaked 34-year-old man, who’s wife and two kids were also taken captives by Hamas, is seen paraded though the triumphant crowd of Gazans as they appear to shout ‘Allahu Akbar’.
Yarden is father of the youngest Israeli hostage in Hamas captivity. He was separated from his 32-year-old wife Shiri, and two young sons; 11-months-old Kfir, and 4-year-old Ariel. The family of four was abducted by Hamas terrorists from Kibbutz Nir Oz, when they stormed their tiny community in southern Israel.
Despite conflicting claims made by Hamas about their well-being, relatives are still hoping for their return. In recent month, Hamas has been refusing to handover the names of the living hostages in its custody, suggesting that most of them may have been murdered by the Gaza-based terrorists.
The Israeli news website YNET reported Wednesday:
In the harrowing footage, he’s seen surrounded by terrorists beating and shouting at him, being led by another armed terrorist riding a motorcycle. At one point, the video cuts off – and then starts again, with Bibas’s head and face covered in blood.President Issac Herzog shared the disturbing video on his X account. “The world must not remain silent in the face of such crimes,” he wrote.In February, the IDF made public a security video in which Shiri Bibas and her two young children, Ariel and Kfir, are seen, apparently in southern Gaza, on the day of their abduction, on October 7. In the video, the three are seen alive, but it is unclear what their condition is now, 194 days after their abduction.Hamas claimed at the end of November that Shiri and her two children were no longer alive. The terror organization didn’t provide any evidence to back their claim, leading Israel to reject them. Later, Hamas even released a video of Yarden from captivity, allegedly after being informed of their death. (…)On January 18, Israel and the world marked Kfir’s first birthday, which became known as the saddest birthday in the world. “I searched Google to know what a nine-month-old baby should do until the age of one. He should see a lot of colors, but instead, he sees only darkness,” Shiri’s cousin Yossi Schneider said at the time.
The video not only reveals the widespread complicity of Palestinians in the October 7 massacre, it also exposes how deeply the so-called Gaza journalists were embedded in the Hamas-led terrorist operation. Some of these ‘journalists’ and ‘photographers,’ who drove in with Hamas on October 7, were awarded international prizes for their coverage.
The media watchdog Honest Reporting noted:
While [the] identity [of the journalists] remains unclear, their presence amid a blood-thirsty mob of terrorists proves a disturbing truth: Gaza-based journalists covering Hamas atrocities that day did not bravely risk their lives, as declared by institutions that recently granted them awards, but operated easily without any objections from the perpetrators.In the video, a professional camera hovering over a Palestinian mob can be seen as its operator nonchalantly tries to focus on the terrified Bibas, who is tightly held on a motorbike in the middle of the chaotic scene.34-year-old Bibas — whose wife Shiri and two young sons Ariel and Kfir have been abducted in a separate incident — is seen surrounded by armed men, bloodied, beaten, abused, and yelled at.But the cameraman, as well as whoever films the video footage and others who hold up their phones, care only about capturing Bibas’s suffering, most likely in order to sell the footage to local and international news outlets.That they could operate freely amidst the barbarity suggests that they were there with, at the very least, tacit approval from the mob. In fact, including journalists as part of the invading force was always part of Hamas’ plan.
Besides the Bibas family, nearly 130 hostages in Hamas captivity are still unaccounted for. After 6 months of fighting, the terrorist group has largely retreated to the southern stronghold of Rafah. Most of the Hamas’s terrorist fighting force and living hostages are believed to be in the bastion on the Egyptian border. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has pledged to enter Rafah despite opposition from the Biden administration.
The Biden administration appears to have given Israel the greenlight for an operation against the Hamas stronghold of Rafah if Jerusalem refrains from a counterstrike against Iran, the Jerusalem Post reported Thursday citing Arab sources.
The news comes as U.S. and Israeli official hold talks over a possible Israeli military mission in Rafah. “U.S. and Israeli officials will hold a high-level, virtual meeting on Thursday about alternative plans for an Israeli military operation in Rafah, a White House official confirmed to ABC News,” the U.S. broadcaster reported Thursday.
Iran on Saturday fired around 300 drones and missiles towards Israel, 99 percent of which failed to breach the Israeli air defenses. Prime Minister Netanyahu and senior IDF officials have vowed a retaliatory strike in response to the biggest aerial attack on the county since 1991 during the first Gulf War
The Jerusalem Post reported:
The US has approved a potential Israeli Rafah operation in exchange for the Jewish state not conducting counterstrikes on Iran, according to a Thursday report from the Qatari newspaper The New Arab.A senior official told The New Arab that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to obtain American approval for a military operation in Rafah, in exchange for [Israel] refraining from carrying out a wide military operation against Iran in response to its recent attack.”He claimed that “discourse of an Israeli response to Iran contradicts the desires of the American administration, and is not realistic, given the Israeli claims that the United States played the major role in repelling the Iranian attack and preventing its success.”
After withdrawing most of the ground forces from Gaza in recent weeks, the Israeli military continued operations against Hamas. Israeli air strikes destroyed close to 100 terrorist targets and eliminate around 40 terrorists in a raid on central Gaza, the military disclosed Thursday.
“In a targeted operation, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have successfully concluded a raid against Hamas in the central Gaza Strip,” the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported. “The operation resulted in the destruction of over 100 sites linked to terrorist groups, the elimination of approximately 40 Hamas operatives, and the expansion of crucial military corridors controlled by the IDF.”
The raid led to the killing a senior Hamas commander affiliated to its spying wing. “IAF aircraft struck and eliminated the terrorist Yussef Rafik Ahmed Shabat, responsible for investigations in Hamas’ Internal Security Department in Beit Hanoun,” the IDF said in a press release Thursday. “Shabat served as a security officer in Hamas’ military intelligence wing of the Beit Hanoun Battalion, and his elimination significantly damages the terrorist organization’s investigations department.” The high-value terrorist was located based on the intelligence gathered by the IDF’s southern command, the press statement noted.
Emboldened by Iran’s massive aerial strike on Israel, Lebanon-based pro-Iranian Hezbollah terror militia stepped up rocket and drones attacks on northern Israel. On Thursday, the Shia-Islamist group fired more rockets towards Israel, resulting in an airstrike on its terror compound by the IDF.
“Earlier today, IDF soldiers identified several Hezbollah terrorists via a drone. The terrorists operated in a military compound in the area of Blida in southern Lebanon. Upon the identification of the terrorists, IAF fighter jets struck the compound from which they operated,” the Israeli military said in a statement Thursday.
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