את זוכרת את ההחלטה האחרונה שלנו? בממ”ד, כששאלתי אותך אם ׳נלחמים או נכנעים׳. אמרת לי ׳נלחמים׳, אז נלחמתי.” ~ירדן ביבס, בהספד על משפחתו ב- 26.02.2025 “Do you remember our last decision together? In the safe room, when I asked you, ‘Do we fight or surrender?’ You said, ‘We fight’, so I fought.”   ~Excerpted from the eulogy delivered by Yarden Bibas to his wife, Shiri, and his two sons, Kfir and Ariel, at their funeral on Wednesday, February 26, 2025.   All of Israel stopped on Wednesday morning as the bodies of Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri Bibas made their way in procession to Kibbutz Nir Oz, where they were laid to rest. Thousands of Israelis lined the streets, resembling the double-lined corridor that is a Jewish custom when mourners make their way from the newly covered grave of their loved ones and are escorted out of the cemetery through a corridor of embrace and comfort. A similar procession and burial took place the day before for the 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz, a journalist and kibbutznik also taken from Nir Oz and murdered in captivity. These were ordinary people with extraordinary stories. It may be hard for any of us to imagine some of the decisions that had to be made on that fateful day – lock ourselves in a safe room or try and flee. Go down fighting or let our loved ones be carried off by Hamas to an unknown fate with the hope of imminent return? Maintain one’s values, like Oded Lifshitz, Vivian Silver, Ofer Libstein, and many others who fought tirelessly for peace, for a shared future, to see the good in people, and to fight for a better future for those across the fence. Yarden Bibas spoke of the courage to fight and not surrender. He lost 491 days of life in a Hamas dungeon, and he lost his family. He apologized for not being able to protect them. And if he had to do it all over again, faced with the same choice, would he have done the same thing? We have heard too many stories of people who showed up to fight and lost their lives defending themselves against an evil and barbaric enemy. There are too many stories of innocent Jews hiding in safe rooms or out in nature forced to surrender to the terrorist forces. The Bibas family is a symbol of that fight. As they were laid to rest on Wednesday, many vowed to continue the fight for all those still in captivity. As their bodies were returned to their soil, many were engulfed in rage at the brutality in which their memories were mocked and the cruelty in which Hamas forced two hostages to view the gross spectacle while their freedom was further girded. While many were still reeling from the Bibas funerals, the plight of the hostages was brought to life and made real with the Thursday tell-all interview with freed hostage Eli Sharabi with veteran journalist Ilana Dayan on Ch. 12’s investigative journalism show “Uvda.” The 53-year-old member of Kibbutz Beeri was kidnapped from his Kibbutz and held, shackled, and starved from October 7, 2023, until February 8, 2025. He shared a small room off a Gazan tunnel with four other men, of which only 25-year-old Alon Ohel remains in captivity.  He began the interview by telling Dayan that everything is fair game and that “with him, we talk about everything.” He was calm, collected, and willing to recall in vivid detail, the painful details of his abduction and captivity. He spoke about hunger and starvation – having lost 40 percent of his body weight, the dreams of his mother’s jachnun and cholent on Shabbat. He said plainly: “People should think hard when they open a fridge at home. It’s the whole world. It’s the whole world just to open a fridge. The concept of a free person who can simply take a piece of fruit. Or a vegetable. Or an egg. Or water. Or a slice of bread.” Eli was not taken out of shackles for his entire time in captivity, and he described the pain of the shackles searing into his flesh with each movement. Three details in particular standout from his story:
  1. Hersh Goldberg-Polin in the name of Viktor Frankl. Eli Sharabi spoke about his encounter with Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danin, and Almog Sarusi, who were taken from the Nova festival. “Even though I was only with them for 3 days,” he explained, “I feel like I knew them for my whole life.” He shared with great reverence that Hersh offered a line that stuck with him and gave him strength until his release. “One who has a Why [to live for] can bear almost any How.” Of course, Hersh quoted Viktor Frankl, who attributed it to Friedrich Nietzsche. When those three were moved, Eli thought that they were being released as they each had sustained significant injuries. He only discovered later that they were transferred to a different tunnel and then murdered in cold blood.
  2. בשורות איוב – The Tidings of Job. And in that moment, he knew. After surviving unbearable conditions to return to his family, he learned that they had been murdered, as was his brother, who was also held hostage. Eli – like Yarden Bibas – became like the biblical Job, like a Holocaust survivor returning to life while the most precious things were taken from him. In reflecting on this horrific tragedy, he said, “I hope it was quick and that they weren’t in pain.”
  3. Anger. In his closing words of the interview, he took a deep breath and said, “Despite what people may think, I am not angry.” “How could that be?” Dayan inquired. “I’m not angry,” he reiterated and then shared a list of things for which he was grateful and for which he felt fortunate.
Like Yarden and the Bibas’, Eli’s story is imperative for all of us to hear, learn from, and share widely with the world. It’s the story of survival against all odds and exposure of human brutality and cruelty. It’s a reminder that when faced with the choice of fighting or surrendering, we fight to live another day. While many of us in the Diaspora have not, and likely will never, take up arms in this existential fight, we are nonetheless engaged in a fight of our own. As Zionists, we are in a fight for the legitimacy of Zionism – the right to self-determination and our nation-state – to be a free people in our ancestral Homeland.  There are many in the world, however, who regard Israel not as a victim of an Iranian-Hezbollah-Hamas coordinated genocidal attack but rather as the aggressor, the interloper and colonial power that doesn’t belong anywhere in the Land of Israel. In response, we find ourselves in a fight to correct that false historical narrative and to push back against all who choose to distort the truth about our right to a Jewish state. We must do that for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren, and we must do that in the face of those who seek to de-legitimize us and deny our people the right to live in the only Jewish state in the world. It’s a reminder that what is done to us shouldn’t be done to others, for example, what is currently being done by the United States (and which Israel was pressured to support) in a disgraceful display of revisionist history, vis a vis Ukraine and President Zelensky. As we enter the month of Adar and are commanded to be happy, maybe we can at least control our anger and rage and turn it into acts of love and kindness. For the 59 hostages still in captivity and the many others suffering from this endless war, we must fight for them. Stay tuned for next week as we gear up for a fight of our own for the soul of the State of Israel in the World Zionist Congress elections! S