ROME – Remembering the Bibas family

Hundreds of people and numerous associations gathered in Rome to remember Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the young Israeli mother and her two children who were abducted by Hamas on October 7 and whose bodies were returned to Israel last week. In their memory, the Great Synagogue in Rome was lit orange on Monday and participants brought something orange, the color that has become the symbol of the two red-haired littleboys. “We have never seen before what Hamas has done,” said Victor Fadlun, President of Rome’s Jewish Community. “A mother torn from her home, in front of the terrorists’ cameras, with her two children, four years and nine months old, in her arms. A mother who tries to cover them with a white veil, in a last attempt not to allow her children to see the evil, the horror that leads them to a destiny.” Fadlun called on Europe and Italy “to wake up,” noting that part “of public opinion, opinion leaders, and politicians” treat Israel with culpable indifference. Indifference, Fadlun said, is “the opposite of love, indifference is a choice,” and “to leave alone the only democracy in the Middle East alone in a struggle that concerns all of us about Western and European values means abandoning it to its future.”