Eyes wide open

To say last Thursday was a dark day would be the understatement of the year.

It was a dark day that we could see coming, facing inevitable heartbreak that we could try to intellectually imagine yet still not emotionally prepare for, even after all this time.

It was one of the darkest days since Oct. 7, 2023, as it reopened old wounds of the pinnacle of evil that many pretended to not see, and reminded us of the astonishing betrayal that we can no longer unsee.

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It was a dark day, but it was also a blindingly bright one, as on Thursday, the world was finally forced to see what it refused to for over 500 days.

The story of the Bibases is perhaps one of the most well-known and widely watched horror stories of all of Oct. 7 and across all of the world, for the sheer display of the worst depravity that humans can offer: the indefensible, haunting abduction of a family in their pajamas, father bloodied, mother sobbing with horror and clutching her children that are too young to even comprehend the extent of the terror they are experiencing.

As a result, this family became a symbol for the entire community. Not simply because they were among the purest victims, and not just because they endured the darkest nightmare, but because they embody the ultimate microcosm for Oct. 7 itself, encompassing and exposing the absolute worst of all of its abhorrent devastation and searing truths.

It was always sickly ironic that the haranguing “all eyes on” crowd never could spare any eyes for the greatest war crime that has become the single most bizarre afterthought of the entire war: the hostages, whose very existence is so objectively criminal that it cuts through the falsest of narratives to the harshest of realities. Yet there simply couldn’t be any eyes on what no one could let themselves risk seeing: a truth that could never be defended, and therefore a truth that must be buried.

On a day that has become so perverted and propagandized, the Bibas family shines as a neon-orange marquee of the impossible to deny horror that took place. And the reason why it is was so easy to see the horror is the very reason why it had to be hidden from sight.

This particular family completely blew open the reality of the victims of the attack from which so many have turned away. They showed that these stolen hostages were peace-loving civilians, not genocidal colonizers. They were kibbutz dwellers, not war criminals. They demonstrated both the targeting of families and those of literally every age, as there was no discriminating when it came to stealing Jews. More than anything, they exposed the most denied truth of all: that they were fellow human beings. Humans, who were one moment sleeping soundly, and the next having their entire lives ripped from them.

And by exposing who exactly was attacked, the truth about the attackers was exposed as well.

The only reason we even knew the extent of the terror experienced that day is because someone made the choice to literally stand there with a camera, sadistically filming each moment of agony to publicize. Every second of horrific footage not only exposed the victims, but the true, irredeemable nature of the victimizers as well. Every second showed that these thieves were not freedom fighters when fighting and stealing the freedom of mere children. They were not passive, devoid-of-agency souls when actively seeking families to terrorize. And they were certainly not justified in their “resistance” when a mother can’t even resist because her sons are at gunpoint.

But perhaps even more damning than the truth of what they are not, is the truth of what they are. The Bibas’ abductors, like so many others that day, were not Hamas militants, but the civilians of Gaza that the world dotes on, exposing an insidious truth: that almost half of the Gazans who broke into and pillaged Israel were simply “civilians,” that there is no true delineation between labels of terrorist and civilian, and that terror through Jew hatred is not only woven into this society, but the core feature of it.

In revealing the bare truths of the hostages and the hostage takers, the Bibas family didn’t just shine a spotlight on the raw reality of the massacre and the timeless ideology of loathing behind it. It absolutely eviscerated the predominantly preferred and pushed Israeli-oppressor and Palestinian-victim narrative.

Therefore, like all such dangerous and unacceptable honesty, it must be hidden, gaslit and perverted at any cost. And so this particular family didn’t just reveal the vilest of the antisemitism that has lived among us…it unveiled the actual abyss of humanity.

In derangement seemingly reserved specifically for Jew-hate, hostage posters had to be grotesquely defaced and violently torn down, as it literally burned to see the faces of those who disproved everything. Lies were spun and narratives were spread, from “no evidence” of abduction to being fully deserving of it. A toddler was now guilty of being an ethnic cleanser. A literal baby was now a literal Nazi. And a mother bore the ultimate crime by daring to bear future racist Zionists.

As viscerally sickening as it was to watch the perverse propaganda play out, it was inevitable. This family’s story always had to be belittled and denied in its savagery, because to admit the reality of their suffering is to concede the existence of humanity. Obviously this is a completely unacceptable and dangerous truth to even flirt with acknowledging, as it clashes with the entire goal of severing Jews from the ability to possess humanity. And if one can reattach humanity to us, one is then left with the complication of pesky empathy for those worthy of compassion. Therefore, anything and everything became fair game in order to suppress the brutality that could never be allowed to be seen.

While this family brought the biggest bigots into full view, their perfect victimhood and hideous treatment should have elicited universal sympathy from the majority of the world. Their story had everything to tug at the human heart. It was the easiest, bare minimum way, served up on a silver platter, to provide some sort of sympathy or solidarity with those victimized by the depths of evil. And yet, despite all that, somehow the squeamish world simply could not bring itself to make the effort.

So in this, the family exposed an even greater truth: the height of global apathy and the rock bottom of societal failing, to levels we didn’t realize even existed.

As we’ve gravely learned over this time, there are a few sobering truths that have plainly surfaced. Many people’s internal concern and external support is contingent upon the political temperature of the victim, and many people simply do not care at all. When it comes down to it, too many simply expect this situation for Jews, both in Israel and abroad. Whether that is because they either are so numb to jihadist violence by now that they genuinely believe it is just a normal part of life “over there,” which requires toleration, or perhaps just assume that we must have had it coming — Jews are very simply not seen as full-fledged people deserving of complete and equal empathy, security, liberty and, of course, humanity.

But as time has moved along, the humanity of these hostages had to be ignored and denied for yet another reason: It would confess a gross void of one’s own if the choice were made to never act on knowledge of others’ dehumanization.

Even after Thursday, when the world was finally forced to see what it refused to for over 500 days, even after coffins of children were paraded around, labeled with “date arrested,” even after it was revealed that children were strangled, and a mother was beaten to death, the depressing truth is that the average person will still choose to not recognize the horror at this point, because it would mean admitting complicity in that they chose to ignore it for over 500 days.

This still is and will always be the most excruciating part of all of this madness.

Yes, there will always exist raging bigots of every variety in the human population and their actions will always be enraging. Yet hate is nothing new to any of us, and so we’ve all adapted our own ways of coping in order to lessen the blow of each time.

What is so much worse is the compounding apathy that is so much greater in size and in difficulty to fight. Yes, everyone has daily lives to live, but we all live them carrying the knowledge of this family and all the rest who were not allowed to live their own. No one within this comfortably Western world should get away without sharing the burden of those forcibly hidden from public sight, especially when those closest have to retraumatize themselves daily to have any shred of awareness shared.

Shame on the world for turning away from the pain and closing their eyes to reality.

Shame on the world for making a man have to eulogize his wife and children whom he should’ve had for decades more…and somehow be the one to ask for their forgiveness.

Shame on the world for tasking such a small community with the ridiculous onus of having to constantly stress that this family even existed as hostages…and as fellow human beings.

Shame on the world for placing more value and humanity on this family’s abductors, captors and murderers than the family itself ever received.

Shame on the world for abandoning not only the Bibases, but moral truth itself.

The same people who found it all too easy to look away for 500 days will more than likely continue to do so, as the blinding reality of both the horror and abandonment that this family represents can never be faced. They will hope to live down their moral shortcomings and ignore their part of playing no part in choosing truth.

But we can never look the other way on this.

People may have made the choice to turn away, yet we must always stare this straight in the face. And so in the end, the Bibas family has forced wide open all of our eyes as well to a reality from which we can never come back.

None of us can coexist, nor should ever have to, with those who deem stealing babies, families, or any human being as justified. Israel cannot tolerate living next to a society which has built its own entirely upon the desire for another’s demise. The West cannot accept living among people who not only cheer this evil in our streets but defend it in our government. Any innocent ideas otherwise sadly were murdered along with the innocent members of that family.

Jews around the world feel painfully and palpably connected to a family they’ve never met because this devastation truly means something, now and going forward. The only way that we can honor their short lives, find some meaning in their deaths, and respect their memory is to have respect for every and all Jewish life. To not only pledge but ensure that this inconceivable horror can never happen again, through tangible measures to guarantee security and an intangible shift in mindset…to fulfill a rightfully secure future for Jews to live unharmed in their Jewish homeland.

We owe it to this beacon of a family, to every hostage still waiting, and every Jew that could have been one. We owe it to every past generation that sacrificed to get us to this point, and every future generation yet to come.

Yarden said that his final decision with Shiri was to fight and not surrender, and that is what we must keep doing now.

Fighting until everyone knows these names and crimes despite their best efforts to cover their eyes…

…until these are not simply names and flyer faces of ignorable strangers, but real humans deserving of vital solidarity and undeserving of the brutal inhumanity that they have faced, both in barbaric terrorism and insufferable indifference…

…and until eyes are wide open to the truth that ignoring unbridled hate when it comes to Jews is no longer something that will be tolerated in any modern society.

The Bibases deserved better. All Jews deserve better. And, honestly, the whole world should want to deserve better as well. These truths are not something that should have needed to be exposed, but now that they are, it’s time for no one to ever look away from them again. PJC

Sarah Kendis is a musician living in Pittsburgh.