Once the country’s grief is replaced with embittered resolve, how will Israel respond?

In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, the Bibas family quickly came to symbolize the inhuman barbarity of which Hamas was capable.

Within hours of the attack, Hamas footage spread on the internet featuring Shiri Bibas in captivity cradling her two sons, Ariel and Kfir, who were four years old and only ten months old, respectively, at the time of the attack. The look of existential horror on their faces galvanized Israeli society ahead of what would prove to be the longest war in the country’s history. When the Bibas family patriarch, Yarden, was released in early February, he recalled how his Hamas captors would beat him while tormenting him with tales of how his wife and children died in an Israeli air strike.

It’s hard to overstate how invested Israeli society was in the Bibas family’s fate. A Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch from late January, in which Israelis celebrated “Orange Day” in honor of the Bibas children’s bright-red hair, paints the portrait of a country steeling itself for the worst:

“Orange Day,” in honor of Kfir and Ariel Bibas and their parents, Shiri and Yarden, is just the latest activist initiative to keep the world’s eyes on the family of four, who were taken captive on Oct. 7, 2023, and have become symbols of the hostages’ plight.

Graffiti of the family — including one piece in Tel Aviv showing the older brother pushing a stroller with the words, “Ariel will never be the same again” — has appeared all over Israel’s streets. Fueled by the passion of mothers who too easily can see their own children in Kfir and Ariel, posts about them routinely go viral on social media around the world. They have inspired art, songs, prayers and even, briefly, a fruitless digital detective hunt after a video showing two red-haired boys among a crowd of Gazan children circulated last summer.

“The family’s symbolism has endured even as reasons for optimism have dwindled,” the JTA dispatch read. “The Israeli government seems to be priming the public for tragedy.” That calculation has proven tragically prudent. This week, Hamas’s representatives confirmed that they are holding the bodies of the Bibas children and their mother, which will be returned to Israel for burial.

Israel’s deep emotional investments in the Bibas family’s fortunes will come to nothing. The pain of it will wash over a country still reeling from its losses suffered over a year and a half of war. An examination of the Bibas family’s bodies will determine if there is any truth to Hamas’s claim that they were killed by Israeli ordnance, but there can be no doubt that Hamas is nevertheless responsible for their deaths. The question now is how Israel responds, once its grief is replaced with embittered resolve. With “Phase B” negotiations of the cease-fire deal stalled and patience with Hamas near a nadir, Israeli society may be less reluctant to see hostilities resume.