 "Yahya Sinwar during a meeting with leaders of Palestinian factions at his office in Gaza, on April 13, 2022. File Photo/AP")
A Gazan boy reels under occupation after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War with the occupiers causing the “chests of youth to boil like a cauldron”. Angry and frustrated, Ahmed’s friends and family attack Israelis with knives, throw Molotov cocktails at them and hunt Palestinian collaborators to “gouge out the eyes that the occupier sees us with from the inside”.
The incendiary lines are from the novel The Thorn and the Carnation, written by the ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’ while he was serving four life sentences at the Beersheba prison complex, in southern Israel’s Negev desert, since 1989 for abducting and killing two Israeli soldiers and murdering four suspected Palestinian informants.
Unfortunately, the terrorist was released—rather unleashed—in the famous 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner swap only to metamorphosise into a monster that would murder innocent Israelis for years to come.
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More ShortsHowever, in the end, Yahya Sinwar died like a terrorist—a rat chased out of its hole.
After a gunfight with the 828th Bislamach Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the Tal al-Sultan area of southern Gaza’s Rafah city on October 16, the wounded Hamas chief fled to a nearby building that was subsequently bombarded.
In his final moments, an IDF drone showed Sinwar on a sofa in a room of the severely damaged building, grievously wounded, helpless, and covered in dust, resembling any other terrorist of his organisation—not an icon of Palestinian resistance or hero as he was made out to be.
Sinwar cut out a pathetic figure—bleeding, exhausted, unrecognisable, in military fatigues, grabbing a Kalashnikov and a keffiyeh wrapped around his head and face. Before being shot dead, he was seen trying futilely to strike down the drone with a stick—dreading that his aura of fake invincibility and heroism would be shattered before the world.
Sinwar was not an iota of the invincible and elusive image propped by the Western media, which indirectly portrayed him as a hero among Hamas terrorists and Gazans who could challenge Israel and plan brutal attacks at will.
Throughout the years, the ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’ was portrayed in news reports as elusive as Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades.
However, in the end, the two masterminds of the October 7 massacre were eliminated by the IDF, showing that no terrorist is beyond the reach of Mossad, Shin Bet and Aman.
Sinwar, notorious for his monstrosity, was a sadist. Like any other top Hamas leader or cofounder assassinated by Israel, he was aware that he could never fulfil his commitment of “eradicating Israel”, which he made to fool Palestinians, especially Gazans.
Sinwar wasn’t the first and the last Palestinian terrorist who advocated Israel’s destruction in public while knowing well in private the ridiculousness and the impossibility of the mission.
Hamas co-founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, his successor Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi, al-Qassam Brigades founder Salah Shehade, Hamas’s master bomber Adnan al-Ghoul and its chief bombmaker Yahya Ayyash, Deif’s deputy Marwan Issa, the outfit’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy Saleh al-Arouri were all eliminated in targeted killings while they dreamed of destroying Israel.
These devious cons artists had been taking Palestinians for a ride for decades. A common factor united them—spilling the blood of innocent Palestinians in the name of Islamic resistance while using them as human shield .
In May 2021, Hamas fired more than 4,000 rockets at Israelis from Gaza’s densely populated urban areas while using its civilians as human shields, according to a UN report . Terming the Hamas action as a “double war crime”, the report read: “Hamas not only deliberately attacks Israeli civilians, but intentionally exposes its own civilians to the deadly consequences of the hostilities it provokes itself.”
During the July-August 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge, the IDF found a Hamas combat manual on urban warfare belonging to the Shuja’iya Brigade of the al-Qassam Brigades explaining the benefits of human shields.
As per the manual, Hamas knows that the IDF will do its best to limit civilian casualties and the group will exploit such situations by using civilians as human shields.
According to Hamas, the “presence of civilians are pockets of resistance” that cause three major problems for advancing troops. First, problems with opening fire. Second, problems in controlling the civilian population during operations and afterward. Third, assurance of supplying medical care to civilians who need it.
The manual also discusses the benefits of the destruction of civilian homes. “This increases the hatred of the citizens towards the attackers and increases their gathering around the city defenders (resistance forces).”
Sinwar was not only a fiend but also a war criminal. He and Deif planned to take Israeli hostages aware that Israel would retaliate and the captives would be used to Hamas’s advantage.
In the ongoing Hamas-Israel War, the terrorists have flagrantly violated the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1998 International Criminal Court (ICC) Statute by using Israeli hostages as bait.
According to Article 23 of Geneva Convention III: “No prisoner of war may at any time be sent to or detained in areas where he may be exposed to the fire of the combat zone nor may his presence be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.”
Article 28 also bars using a protected person [civilian] “to render certain points or areas immune from military operations”.
International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits the use of civilian population or an individual in war to shield military targets from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.
Article 51(7) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions states: “The presence or movement of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular, in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.”
Article 51 (2) specifically bars actions that “spread terror among the civilian population”, which shall not be the object of attack. Indiscriminate attacks to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction are also prohibited.
Hamas has also committed war crimes in the conflict by violating Article 8(2)(b)(xxiii) of the ICC Statute, which prohibits using the “presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations”.
Cruel, cunning and manipulative—that’s how Yuval Bitton, a former dentist at the Beersheba prison complex, described Sinwar in an interview with The New York Times. Bitton, who went on to become the head of the Intelligence Division of the Israel Prison Service, had saved Sinwar’s life. Had he not recommended immediate surgery, Sinwar would have died of a malignant brain tumour. Sinwar thanked him and they became good ‘friends’.
In a tragic ironical twist, Bitton’s nephew was among the 1,200 Israelis massacred by Hamas terrorists on October 7—a carnage planned by Sinwar.
During one of their several conversations at the prison, Bitton asked Sinwar, “Is it worth 10,000 innocent Gazans dying?”
“ Even 100,000 is worth it ,” Sinwar replied. His reply encapsulated his agenda.
Sinwar, the chief architect of Holocaust 2.0, dragged Gaza to an abyss. More than 42,409 Gazans have been killed in the ongoing Hamas-Israel War, around 99,000 wounded and 1.9 (9 out of 10) displaced due to incessant bombing by Israeli warplanes and artillery.
Sinwar not only sacrificed innocent Palestinians for his unquenchable bloodlust, but he also poisoned the minds of Palestinians, including boys not even 10 years old, and radicalised them.
Sinwar’s chilling and unforgettable picture in which he holds a perplexed child forced to don military fatigues, wear a headband with Arabic words and brandish a submachine gun showed the level of radicalisation of Palestinians. The picture represented Sinwar’s inherent hatred for Israel and the posterity’s pledge for its destruction.
The bloodthirsty Sinwar never wanted peace or a two-state solution—all he wanted was to continue using Gazans as the scapegoat.
In another conversation, when Bitton asked Sinwar why he didn’t believe in the two-state solution, he replied, “Because this is the land of Muslims, not for you.”
Obituaries are meant for martyrs, not fiendish terrorists, like Sinwar, who was safely holed up inside the Gaza Metro like a rat as Hamas terrorists were being killed fighting the IDF.
The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.