A six-month-old baby has been named among Britons thought to have been taken captive by Hamas following the group’s attack on Israel.
The child, named Ariel, is believed to have been abducted along with three-year-old brother, Kfir, mother Shiri Silberman-Bibas, and her husband Yarden.
Harrowing footage circulated on social media is thought to capture the moment the family was dragged by Hamas from their home in the Nir Oz Kibbutz in southern Israel.
They were taking refuge in a safe room when Hamas launched its attack on Israel on Saturday.
Yarden texted relatives: “I love you all” with militants firing semi-automatic weapons outside their window, according to reports.
Half-an-hour later, he ominously wrote “They’re coming in’, before communication ceased. The family has not been heard from since.
Later, a video emerged showing distraught Mrs Silberman-Bibas, 30, clutching her two children as they were kidnapped, with no sign of her husband. Terrified bystanders screamed: “She has a baby.”
Mrs Silberman-Bibas’s parents Yosi and Margit Silberman, in their late 60s, are also missing and feared abducted.
Her children Ariel and Kfir were on Thursday named at an emotional Defend Israeli Democracy UK press conference in London.
Relatives told the media how they had not heard from their loved ones taken hostage by Hamas terrorists from Nir Oz kibbutz, and called for the world to do “whatever it takes” to return them home.
Noam Sagi, a psychotherapist who lives in London, has not heard from his 75-year-old mother Ada since Saturday’s attack after she called him from a safe room in her home at the kibbutz near the southeastern border with Gaza.
Shiri Silberman-Bibas, 30, Kfir, 9 months old and Ariel 3 were seen being dragged away from their home by Hamas militants. #Israeli women and her two babies are still missing, 3 days after being #kidnapped at #gunpoint by #hamasattack #Gaza #غزة_تحت_القصف #Palestine #Hamas pic.twitter.com/jjf8hosGZx
— Vikas Bailwal (@VikasBailwal4) October 10, 2023
Mr Sagi said he was holding out hope but said it was “heart-breaking” and “beyond difficult” grappling with the uncertainty of what had happened to his mother, a former Arabic teacher, and other members of the small community.
“What’s going on, is my mum alive, is she not? What was her crime - can someone remind me why she is a hostage? For being Jewish, living in her own home in Israel?,” he asked.
“It’s extremely difficult, I don’t have the words to look my son in the eyes and say, ‘This is why it happened’.
“Because I can’t comprehend and I cannot explain how we live in a world, in 2023, that this is still a reason for that kind of behaviour.”
He said that his mother did not have her epi-pens and her inhalers with her and that others taken hostage had cancer, dementia or were not mobile.
“What keeps me going is my son has one grandmother. I want him to be with her for his next birthday,” he told reporters.
“What keeps me going is that every one of these people, where you might look at the pictures, they are family.
“They wiped my bum as a baby, they taught me how to swim, and how to do one plus one, I know each one of them, we grew up together. It’s a very small community.
He added: “Over eighty people just from that community have been taken hostage. So what keeps me going? I will do everything I can for them.”
Sharon Lifschitz, an artist from Walthamstow said she felt “hollow” since her “frail” parents were thought to have been taken by Hamas from Nir Oz on Saturday.
She said her 85-year-old mother had been disconnected from her oxygen, and did not know whether her mother and father, a peace activist, had enough of the medications they need.
“My mum was taken out, she was disconnected from her oxygen, in order to be loaded onto a motorbike, or whatever it is, I don’t know,” she said.
“This is not about who is right and who is wrong. My father spent his life fighting for peace. I am his daughter but we are all his children when we ask for peace, when we ask to see the human within each of us.”
“I don’t have the luxury of politics. We now need to act together to fight the hatred with love.”
She urged help to bring those captive back. “Bring these people back home,” she pleaded. “There are mothers waiting for their children, these are my friends' children, these mothers are me.
“I am asking on their behalf, not on my behalf. There is not ‘I’ here, there is ‘we’.”
Sharon Shochat, the British-Israeli director of Defend Israeli Democracy UK, which organised the press conference, said “entire families were butchered in their homes” by the “modern day death squad” of Hamas.
“We have never before in Israel experienced such a brutal, horrendous and traumatic event, which will take years if not generations to overcome,” she said.
She added: “This is the biggest hostage crisis in the world that the world has faced in decades, and we must do whatever we can, whatever it takes, to bring these hostages home.”
Some 17 Britons are missing or feared dead since Hamas’ attack on Israel.
At least 100 people are thought to have travelled from the UK to Israel to serve in the Israeli military as it mounted a retaliatory campaign against Hamas after the attack.
The Israeli Embassy in the UK said it was understood those who travelled were “reservists and active duty soldiers” in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
Concerns remain high for the safety of British citizens in the region as the war has already claimed at least 2,400 lives.
Among those killed was Jake Marlowe, a 26-year-old former pupil at the JFS School in Kenton, north London.
