Mourning two young brothers, the Bibas family of Israel awaits fate of their mother

JERUSALEM (AP) — Until the end, the Bibas family refused to lose hope that their loved ones held captive in Gaza — Shiri, a young mother, and her two red-headed boys — would return home to Israel alive.

Even when Hamas said the three had been killed in an airstrike in November 2023, even when Israel's military expressed “serious concern” for them — and even as coffins labeled with their names were trucked back to Israel — they held on. The family asked the public to “refrain from eulogizing our loved ones" until a government autopsy was completed.

Then, on Friday, came two crushing pieces of news: The boys were dead, their remains identified through DNA at Israel’s forensic institute; and Shiri’s body was nowhere to be found. Inside the coffin labeled with her name was a Palestinian woman from Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

To Israelis desperate for the hostage crisis to end, the announcement was a gut punch. It triggered fresh anxiety for the Bibas family and for the families of some 60 remaining hostages who are unsure if their loved ones — or their remains — will ever make it out. Netanyahu's vow Friday to avenge the Bibas family's deaths only heightened those concerns.

“We waited for certainty, but it brings no comfort — only profound grief,” Ofri Bibas Levy, the boys' aunt, said. “For Ariel and Kfir’s sake, and for (their father) Yarden’s sake, we are not seeking revenge right now. We are asking for Shiri.”

The image of Shiri Bibas, from a video taken during Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, is seared into the country's collective memory as one of the most haunting of that day: A look of terror on her face, she clutches her two sons — Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months old — as armed militants cart them away to Gaza.

Some 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the attack, and 251 were taken hostage, igniting the devastating war in Gaza.

On Thursday, over 16 months later, Hamas militants displayed coffins on a stage labeled with Shiri's name and those of her two boys. Behind them hung a panel where their pictures hovered beneath a cartoon of a vampiric-looking Netanyahu.

Hamas says the three were killed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023, while Israel says they were killed by their captors, though neither side has yet produced evidence to support their claim.

In response to Israel's conclusion that the body of Shiri was not returned, Hamas said it was looking into the matter and suggested there may have been a mix-up of remains in the aftermath of Israeli bombardment of the building where Shiri, Kfir and Ariel were being held.

“We have no interest in retaining any bodies,” Hamas said in a statement. “We have demonstrated full compliance with the agreement in recent days and remain committed to all its terms.”

The 42-day ceasefire that began on Jan. 19 calls on Hamas to free 33 hostages, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Six more living hostages are set to be released on Saturday. (Five Thai nationals taken from Israel were released last month as part of a separate agreement.)

The Bibas family, while mourning Ariel and Kfir, is now once again in limbo, awaiting conclusive evidence about what happened to Shiri.

Yarden Bibas, the boys' father who was held separately by Hamas, was released on Feb. 1. Following his release, he wrote: “My light is still there, and as long as they’re there, everything here is dark.”

Throughout the war, the Bibas family’s struggle has been a rallying cry for protesters demanding the hostages be freed.

On Thursday, thousands of Israelis lined the roads from southern Israel to the National Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv. They stood silently, sometimes in pouring rain, holding flags. As the convoy passed, many wiped away tears and quietly sang Israel’s national anthem. Along with the Bibas boys, the body of Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted, was also released.

Concern for the Bibas' well-being emerged during a November 2023 ceasefire, when roughly 100 hostages — most of the women and children — were freed. It intensified in recent weeks as more living women hostages were freed.

Kfir was the youngest of about 30 children taken hostage Oct. 7. The infant with red hair and a toothless smile became an icon across Israel and his ordeal was raised by Israeli leaders on podiums around the world.

The extended Bibas family has been active at protests, branding the color orange as the symbol of their fight for the “ginger babies.” They marked Kfir Bibas’ first birthday with a release of orange balloons and lobbied world leaders for support.

Family photos aired on TV and posted across social media created a national bond with the two boys and made them familiar faces. Israelis learned of Ariel Bibas’ love for Batman and photos from a happier time showed the entire family dressed up as the character.

The Hostages Families Forum said there were more hostages in Gaza whose lives could still be saved, and called for an extension to the ceasefire.

“There is no more time to waste,” it said in a statement.

For much of the war, the lack of information about Shiri Bibas and her children created uncertainty and ambiguity, including among their relatives.

Shiri Bibas’ sister, Dana Silberman-Sitton, has said she did not believe her sister or the children were still alive. She told Israeli news site Ynet that she decided to tell her children in December 2023 that Aunt Shiri and their cousins had died, after Hamas claimed they were killed by Israeli airstrikes.

“I created a defense mechanism for myself: Because I cannot live with uncertainty anymore, I live with the knowledge that Shiri and the kids are dead,” she told Ynet in September.

Silberman-Sitton’s parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, were also killed during the Oct. 7 attack, at Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Yarden Bibas’ sister, Ofri Bibas Levy, took the opposite approach: She insisted that Shiri and the children were still alive, traveled abroad on missions and gave numerous interviews to ensure their story was constantly being mentioned.

The story of the family captured Israel’s attention and much of the world because it encapsulated many of the worst aspects of Hamas’ attack, explained Ruth Pat-Horenczyk, a professor at the Hebrew University school of social work who specializes in trauma.

“The graphic scene of the mother trying to protect the two babies was burned into the mind in the country,” she said.

“Everything together created a kind of capsulated example of pain that really became the most dramatic symbol of Oct. 7.”

People react at the so-called 'Hostages Square' in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, as the bodies of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, are handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

The convoy carrying the coffins of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, arrives at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday Feb. 20, 2025 after they were handed over by Palestinian militant groups in Gaza.(AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

A convoy carrying the coffins containing the bodies of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, handed over by Palestinian militant groups in Gaza, drives by a road near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025.(AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli border policewoman salutes as a convoy carrying the coffins of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, arrives at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday Feb. 20, 2025 after the bodies were handed over by Palestinian militant groups in Gaza.(AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

A woman reacts at the so-called 'Hostages Square' in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, as the bodies of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, are handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

A woman reacts at the so-called 'Hostages Square' in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, as the bodies of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, are handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

A man holds a teddy bear at the so-called 'Hostages Square' in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, after the bodies of four Israeli hostages, including a mother and her two children, were handed over by Palestinian militant groups to the Red Cross in Gaza. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

A militant stands next to the coffins containing the bodies of hostages, from right to left, Shiri Bibas, her two children, Ariel and Kfir and Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted before their are handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)