In a cruel twist to Thursday’s macabre handover of dead Hamas hostages, the terrorist organization has delivered to Israel the body of an unidentified person while contending it was that of Shiri Bibas, the mother of two toddlers who was kidnapped along with the children on October 7, 2023. 

An examination at Israel’s national institute of forensic medicine determined that “the additional body received is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage,” the Israel Defense Force said in a statement. “This is an anonymous, unidentified body.”

The bodies of Bibas’s children, Kfir, who was 9 months old when kidnapped, and Ariel, aged 4, were identified during the examination, according to the statement. While Hamas claimed without providing evidence that the babies were killed in an Israeli bombardment, the IDF’s statement said: “Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in November 2023.”

Transferring an unidentified body and claiming it was that of Ms. Bibas “is a violation of utmost severity by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is obligated under the agreement to return four deceased hostages,” the IDF said. “We demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all our hostages.”

Even before the latest twist, Israelis and the rest of the world were appalled by Hamas’s Thursday display of four coffins on stage, along with a grotesque cartoon of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was depicted as a vampire dripping blood over a picture of the Bibas family members, claiming he had murdered them.