On the martyrdom of Yahya Sinwar
No one will take away from Sinwar October 7, his military master plan that destroyed forever the myth of Israeli invincibility and revealed it to be nothing more than an elaborate façade.
The Israelis have announced that Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar is no more. The Zionists apparently got him. But not like the way they anticipated and told the world they would get him. The legendary Palestinian freedom fighter wasn’t hiding in a tunnel wearing a burqa or sitting in the middle of the Israeli prisoners of war from October 7 acting as his human shields, as the Israelis had made the world believe. No. He died fighting in the trenches with his weapons and in his combat gear. By the looks of the images of his death scene (if they are real), the Israelis were so scared of confronting him that they withdrew and ordered an airstrike that ultimately got him. They didn’t dare fight even a cornered Sinwar. And for good reason. In his last act, a half-dead Sinwar flings a stick at a Zionist drone filming him, the literal definition of fighting until the last breath. Sinwar achieved martyrdom that befitted a warrior like him.
Like so many Palestinians in Gaza, Sinwar’s family were made refugees in 1948. His ancestors came from Asqalan (Ashkelon). Sinwar was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in 1962 and went on to become a seminal figure in the early days of Hamas, taking the lead in routing out the traitors from the Palestinian ranks. Arrested in1989 by the Zionists for killing their informants inside Gaza, Sinwar spent more than two decades of his life in the Zionist dungeons. He utilised that time to learn Hebrew, Israeli history, and the Israeli psyche. When he was ultimately released in a prisoner exchange deal in 2011 with over a thousand fellow Palestinians, he had studied the Israelis meticulously enough to read them like a book. You fear someone who knows you deeply. That explained why the Israelis feared him like they had feared no one else. He knew them like few others did.
The Israelis had to get him to project an image of victory in Gaza after a year of unabashed genocide, for Sinwar symbolised Hamas and the Palestinian resistance. Even after reducing all of Gaza to rubble they couldn’t possibly claim victory as long as Sinwar was at large. Now they have got him. But it is unlikely to be the end of their genocide in Gaza. Hamas was always merely the pretext, the Israelis have always wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza and add the territory, free of the Palestinians, to their illegitimate colony.
Sinwar’s martyrdom adds to the growing list of key resistance personnel who have departed since October 7. Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas leader in the West Bank was assassinated in Beirut in January, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau was killed in Tehran in July, and now Sinwar, the Hamas head in Gaza (and its overall head after the killing of Haniyeh) has also been assassinated. But just like his fellow leaders, Sinwar’s assassination is unlikely to dim the fierce flames of resistance.
As Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida noted in his speech marking the first anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 8: “If assassinations were a victory, the resistance would have ended with the assassination of Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam 90 years ago. However, the resistance continued and grew stronger.”
The Syrian-born Al-Qassam, after whom the armed wing of Hamas takes its name, was killed by the British colonisers of Palestine in a standoff in Jenin on November 20, 1935. As he and his fellow fighters were surrounded by the British, he told his men, “It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom,” making those words immortal in the Palestinian liberation struggle. Far from putting out the Palestinian resistance, 90 years later the fighters of Al-Qassam have posed an existential threat to the Zionist entity, which appears ever close to collapsing and its raping and thieving squatters fleeing to the lands they came from in the first place.
The Israeli thirst for stealing Arab lands has seen them extend their barbarism all the way to Lebanon and Syria. In Lebanon, the Zionists have landed some difficult blows to Hezbollah, most notably by assassinating Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Islamic Resistance, last month. Yet, the Lebanese have kept scorching the Zionist entity with a constant barrage of rockets ever-deeper inside the stolen Palestinian lands. Just today, they killed five Zionists (the actual numbers are likely much higher) attempting to invade the Lebanese borders.
No resistance leader takes his role with the understanding that they will die a natural death. As such, resistance organisations have a built-in resilience with the next chain of leadership well in place before a leader departs. Their days are numbered by default, but they never shy away from taking the fight to the enemy for the cause of liberation. When Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi was asked if he was afraid to die, he replied, “It’s death — either by Apache or cancer. The same thing. We are all waiting for the last day of our life. Nothing will be changed, if it is by Apache or by cardiac arrest. I prefer to be [killed] by Apache.” The Israelis fired Hellfire missiles at al-Rantisi’s car from an Apache helicopter, killing him in 2004.
Instead of adopting any of the fears they projected on him, Sinwar preferred to fight on the battlefield, away from the relative safety of the tunnels. He died fighting for his people, like he lived his whole life.
He may be no more, but nothing will take away from Sinwar October 7, his military master plan that destroyed forever the myth of Israeli invincibility and revealed it to be weaker than a spider’s web and an elaborate façade of dust. Moreover, the Israeli reaction to its spectacular October 7 defeat revealed to the whole world its genocidal character that the Palestinians have been at the receiving end of for over a century without the world taking notice of their suffering.
As Israel has bared its gnarled and bloody fangs, and embarked on a live-streamed genocide, the world has come to see why that deplorable, despicable, inhuman entity cannot continue to exist and why it must be dismantled in favour of a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in which all faiths can live peacefully side by side, just like they did before the beginning of Zionist thievery and terrorism over a century ago. Sinwar, more than anyone else in recent history, has brought that day closer to fruition. He might not be there to see the sun rise on a liberated Palestine, but he has played a seminal role in that day materialising, and for that he will go down as one of the greatest liberation fighters in history.
Also read: The philosophy of Hamas in the writings of Yahya Sinwar
And: A Resistance View of the Long War
Everything on this Substack will always remain free, but it wouldn’t be possible without your support. If you like my articles, please consider a paid subscription here or on Patreon (starting at $3/month) or Ko-fi ($5/month). You can also make a one-time contribution on Ko-fi. Thank you.
October 6
In 2003 — four years before Israel imposed its crippling blockade of Gaza — Baruch Kimmerling, a sociologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, described the enclave as “the largest concentration camp ever to exist.” In 2004 — three years before the blockade — Israel’s National Security Director Giora Eiland
The Israelis are masterful at nothing but murder!
I am not at all surprised to see that the pack of courtiers and valets of the Zionist entity are congratulating themselves on the execution of Yahia Sinwar, and that, moreover, they pretend to believe that this will hasten the end of the war against the Palestinian people, and even that it will relaunch the peace process!
They pretend to ignore that the goal of the Zionists is not the extermination of Hamas, Hezbollah, or even the Houthis or the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They do not hide the fact that their goal is to resolve, definitively, and in their own way, the Palestinian “problem”: by extermination, deportation, famine, disease, and all the other means with which their imagination is so fertile….
The spirit of resistance will survive all the successive leaders, and, more and more, the hardest elements will be selected, and, this deadly entity as well as its thurifers will end up paying for their crimes!...