Global News Podcast
Israel checking Hamas claims that new body handed to Red Cross is Shiri Bibas
Sat, 22 Feb 2025
Red Cross says it’s transferred a body to Israel, which Hamas claims is that of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas. Also: Trump accuses French and UK leaders of doing nothing to end Ukraine war, and how to avoid news stress.
Chapter 1: What is the latest development in the Shiri Bibas case involving Hamas?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil, and in the early hours of Saturday, the 22nd of February, these are our main stories. A day after Hamas returned the wrong body to Israel, it now says it has handed over the body of a mother who was kidnapped with her two young sons.
Donald Trump accuses France's President Emmanuel Macron and Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer of doing nothing to end the war in Ukraine. The tech giant Apple is to remove access to its top data protection tool for British users.
Also in this podcast... Becoming consciously aware of your feet, feeling your feet on the ground. It's extraordinarily effective considering how tiny and throwaway that sounds.
Tips on how to de-stress from the news. We start in Israel, where a day after Hamas returned the wrong body to a grieving family and nation, the Palestinian militant group says the body of hostage Shiri Bibas, a mother who was kidnapped with her two young sons, has now been handed over. The Israeli military says it's checking this.
The bodies of the boys, four-year-old Ariel and baby Kafir, were handed over on Thursday, but a body said to be their mother's was later confirmed to be that of another woman. Israel said the children had been murdered, contrary to Hamas's claims that they died during an Israeli airstrike on Gaza.
The boy's aunt, Ofri Bibas-Levi, said the family didn't want revenge, just the return of every hostage, dead or living, as soon as possible.
My sweet nephews were taken alive from their home and murdered by a cruel terrorist organisation while in captivity. They didn't deserve such a fate. And it was Israel's responsibility and obligation to bring them back alive. There is no forgiveness for abandoning them on October 7th and no forgiveness for abandoning them in captivity.
For Ariel and Kafir's sake and for Yarden's sake, we're not seeking revenge right now. We are asking for Shiri.
Ahmed Youssef was a senior advisor to the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who is now in a camp for displaced people in Khan Yunis. Mr Youssef said Hamas had made a mix-up and did not want to jeopardise the fragile ceasefire deal.
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Chapter 2: What are Donald Trump's views on the involvement of European leaders in the Ukraine war?
But the Gulf participation is quite important because, as far as we know, they will be the people who will have the lion's share in funding this reconstruction process.
Because it's going to cost huge amounts of money, billions and billions, given the huge destruction of the past 16 months. And the countries that would be funding it, the Gulf countries, will be concerned that they could be rebuilding Gaza only for it to be destroyed again at some point in the future.
This is true. It will be a very costly process and a very lengthy one too. And I believe that with this political uncertainty looming... it's hard to predict how long and how much the reconstruction process can cost and whether or not it's worth investing in because, as you said, this region is quite turbulent and the possibility of confrontations happening again is not off the table.
So there needs to be some sort of a resolution for the political future in Gaza. And I believe...
This will be a matter of discussion among Arab leaders convening in Riyadh today and also among Arab leaders convening here in Cairo on the 4th of March in an Arab summit, because there are so many unanswered questions at the moment regarding the future of this part of the world, how post-war Gaza is going to look like. There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed.
Sally Nabil. Having called the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, a dictator for resisting Russia's invasion, Donald Trump has now vented his ire against Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France's President Emmanuel Macron. Both leaders are due to make separate visits to the White House next week.
Speaking to Vox News, Mr Trump accused both the British and French leaders of, quote, doing nothing to try to end the war. From Washington, here's our North America correspondent, John Sudworth.
In a phone interview with the Fox News radio show, President Trump continued his now well-trodden criticisms of the Ukrainian president.
Just two days after he'd called Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator on social media, Mr Trump suggested he'd led his country to ruin, claimed that he'd spurned a good-faith US approach to broker a deal, and said that, as a result, he didn't deserve a seat at the negotiating table with the US and Russia.
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