The Mystery Corpse

On that very dark day last week when Hamas released the coffins of what they claimed were the three Bibas family members, Shiri, 32, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months, and Oded Lifshitz, 84, Jews, Christians and many others throughout the world were horrified. As if that were not tragic enough, Hamas appeared to do everything in its power to make the transfer of the dead babies and their mother and an octogenarian as gruesome as possible.

They staged a ceremony in which they proudly behaved as if they were the victors in this hideous exchange. They created a giant poster featuring Prime Minister Netanyahu as a ghoulish monster with blood pouring from his face and the words, “The War Criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi Army Killed them with Missiles from a Zionist Warplane.” They blasted celebratory music. Those in the audience could be seen cheering as if at a soccer match whereby Hamas was the winning team.

As if that were not malicious enough, what came next was something out of a horror movie that was painfully realistic: it was determined after forensic scientists examined the bodies of the two sweet little boys, that they had been brutally murdered literally at the hands of these monsters. And if that wasn’t horrendous enough, the fourth casket was found to contain, not the body of their mother, Shiri Bibas, but a random corpse that they placed in the coffin for whatever evil intent their depraved minds could fathom.

Let’s think about that mystery corpse for a minute… We don’t know much about this unidentified woman other than that she was a Palestinian woman. We don’t know the extent of her injuries, how she died, her age, if she was a Hamas sympathizer, an active Hamas fighter or just a bystander in Gaza who had been left behind in a demolition zone.
But here’s what we do know. We know that the New York Times recently published a front page story very sympathetic to the Palestinians in Gaza (With Fighting Stilled, Gazans Face New Trauma: Searching for Loved Ones, Feb.14, 2025). They wrote about how Gazans were desperately trying to recover the remains of their loved ones amidst the rubble of destroyed buildings. They decried the lack of equipment necessary to recover the bodies and give them the dignity of a proper burial. Clearly, this article was meant to generate sympathy for these victims. (Of course, nowhere in the article did the authors write about the trauma of Israelis who also can’t retrieve the bodies of their loved ones.) But who are the ones who have turned them into victims? Left unsaid, was that Hamas, which still has some equipment left, hasn’t considered it a priority to recover these bodies. Their one and only goal remains to inflict as much pain on Israel as possible even at the expense of their own people (especially if it promotes propaganda they can use to fuel anti-Israel sentiment).

Here’s one quote: “Some searched and searched only to find nothing at all.”
Well maybe that’s because Hamas leaders had something else in mind when they retrieved at least one of these corpses.

So let’s go back to the body of the woman Hamas cynically substituted for that of Shiri Bibas. This mystery woman most likely had family members and loved ones who desperately would have wanted to know about her fate and to bury her with dignity. To have closure, so to speak. The fact that Hamas chose to use her body instead as a pawn should be ringing alarm bells if not sirens among Palestinians that Hamas doesn’t care about them. Hamas leaders deliberately chose to disrespect her memory and her family’s rights in order to score cheap political points. It was more important to them to inflict psychological torture upon Israel than it was to honor her as a human being.

Where is the outcry in Gaza. Where is the outcry among those throughout the world who claim to support “the Palestinian victims”?
Israel, of course being Israel, returned the body. We didn’t celebrate this woman’s death.

Corpse X should become a symbol throughout the world of the disregard Hamas has for its own people.