‘60 Minutes’ got it wrong

Yarden Bibas was featured this past Sunday night on “60 Minutes” in his first interview since being released as a hostage from the horrors of Gaza, but CBS reporter Lesley Stahl did not get the story right.

In the introduction, she says that “statistics tell the grim story of the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel: 1,200 civilians and soldiers slaughtered that day, 251 taken hostage — men, women and children; since then, an estimated 50,000 Gazans have been killed.” The death toll of 50,000 Gazans is fed to the media by the Hamas Ministry of Health, and it is severely inflated to serve Hamas’s own purposes.

“60 Minutes” should have mentioned the recent protests against Hamas in Gaza, and the 22-year-old Palestinian man, Oday Nasser Al Rabay, who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered after participating in protests last week. His dead body was left outside of his family’s home over the weekend.

Stahl describes Netanyahu resuming the bombing of Gaza, breaking a fragile ceasefire that was exceedingly popular among Israelis. She indicates that if Israel only would agree to a ceasefire, the hostages would be released, and the war would end. Netanyahu is in a very unenviable position. He has to protect the 9.5 million citizens of Israel from another October 7 attack, which Hamas wants and reportedly even has tried, while negotiating for the release of the hostages, who are being used as human shields and bargaining chips.

Three dozen living and dead hostages were released in dribs and drabs over the course of several weeks in early 2025, in exchange for thousands of Palestinian terrorists and murderers. Israel was willing to make itself vulnerable and undermine some of the gains the IDF has made over the past 17 months, only because Israel values the lives of its own citizens and wants the hostages to come home. It’s an unwinnable moral dilemma that needs to be carefully weighed and balanced by Israel’s leadership.

Yarden, Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas were taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, along with their best friends, the Cunio family — David, Sharon, and their twin year-old daughters, Yuli and Emma. Yarden bravely came on American television to advocate for the release of his best friend, David Cunio, who still is being held hostage in the tunnels of Gaza, and has been for more than 540 days. “60 Minutes” reported that David Cunio’s wife, Sharon, and their daughters, “went home but he did not,” without specifying that they also were held hostage in the dungeons of Gaza for more than 50 days.

“60 Minutes” did not do the Cunio family’s story justice. Yarden said, “I lost my entire family. Sharon should not lose her husband.” Sharon Cunio has had to recover from her own ordeal as a hostage, and her two young daughters’ trauma, as a single mother, while knowing that David is being tortured and living with the uncertainty over whether he will return.

While Yarden Bibas singlehandedly gives Trump the credit for his release, no one wants the hostages home more than the entire Jewish nation, which includes Prime Minister Netanyahu. My heart breaks watching Keith Siegel wrap his arms around himself and cry at the end of the “60 Minutes” segment. The pain of these hostages is endless and they cannot fully heal until everyone is home.

Statistics alone do not tell this story. While I hope that the hostages’ plight reached a wider American audience, “60 Minutes” did not get this important interview right.

Sarah Kukin Gretah, who works as a grants manager at the David Berg Foundation, is passionate about philanthropy in the Jewish community and is a fierce advocate for the State of Israel. She lives in Tenafly with her family.

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