The post read: “After 2 years of insisting that Hamas held the Bibas children (they should never have been taken) and then telling you that one day they were randomly strangled to death for no apparent reason.... Nitzan Alon, head of Israel’s Hostages and Missing Persons team, tells Israeli media that: 1) They were not taken nor held by Hamas. 2) They were not killed by Hamas, but were, in fact, killed by Israeli bombs”.
The MP added his own caption: “Lies. Damn lies. And Israel! There is no limit to Israeli lies, inhumanity, depravity and attrocities (sic)".
Alon, a retired IDF major general who served as head of the IDF’s Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters, gave an interview earlier this week but did not say that the Bibas family were killed by Israel.
In the interview he spoke about some of the operations he oversaw as part of the effort to find the living and deceased hostages.
He told Israeli news site ynet: “Take the Bibas family, for example. We knew who abducted them. We informed Hamas who the kidnappers were so they could locate the bodies and return them.”
Mohamed’s remarks were robustly criticised by the Jewish Leadership Council.
“For Iqbal Mohamed to share false claims that the Bibas brothers were killed by Israel marks a new low in an already appalling pattern of hostility towards the Jewish state. Spreading such disinformation fuels division and makes Israelis and Jews in the UK targets for violence”, a spokesperson for the group told the JC.
Labour MP David Taylor added that he was “shocked and disgusted that Iqbal Mohamed appears to be spreading conspiracy theories about a family tragically abducted by sick terrorists. He is not fit to be in the House of Commons.”
He continued: “I thought appearing to advocate against a ban on first-cousin marriage was the lowest Iqbal Mohamad MP could go. But clearly not.
“The fate of the Bibas family at the hands of evil terrorists is heartbreaking and unforgivable. No one should endure what they suffered. Mr Mohammed’s remarks on this family, who have endured untold trauma, do not reflect the views of this nation. Britain stands with the Bibas family and their loved ones."
[Missing Credit]
The images of the abduction of the Bibas family on October 7 shocked much of the world, showing Shiri shielding her children as she was surrounded by terrorists and subsequently abducted to Gaza.
In February 2024 the IDF revealed that they knew that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir had been taken to a terrorist outpost belonging to the Mujahideen Brigades.
In November 2023, Hamas claimed, without evidence, that the three of them had been killed by an IDF strike on Gaza. They also released a video of Yarden Bibas being told of his family’s killing in what the IDF said amounted to “psychological terror".
Yarden was released from captivity in Gaza on February 1 this year having spent 484 days as a hostage. Later that month, Hamas staged a ceremony in which they handed over coffins said to contain the bodies of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir.
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari told media that Israeli forensic findings suggested that Ariel and Kfir had been killed with “bare hands” while in captivity in Gaza.
The coffin which Hamas said contained the remains of Shiri Bibas contained those of another woman, which Hamas returned a day after.
Mohamed has been contacted for comment.
