17.10.24
With the death of Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s mendacity and its genocidal intent stand exposed like never before.
Sinwar, the 62-year old leader of Hamas, who never abandoned his homeland, had been portrayed by Israel as hiding deep underground, surrounded by hostages, but in the end that was just another lie, to add to the mountains of lies that Israel has pumped out over the last year. In the end, Sinwar was killed in a chance military encounter in Rafah, not hiding out at all, but engaged in combat with the enemy — in military uniform, and with an AK-47.
His death was the opposite of the humiliation meted out by the US to Saddam Hussein or Moammar Gaddafi, when they were finally seized after the illegal invasions of Iraq and Libya. Nothing could be more inspiring for a resistance movement than for their leader to be killed in active combat, having refused to hide, or to be cowed by the enemy.
What does Sinwar’s death say about Israel’s much-vaunted military intelligence? It shows that, despite all their claims of targeting Hamas via innovative AI programs, used to justify so many of the tens of thousands of bombs dropped on Gaza over the last year, they never had any idea where Sinwar was, bringing sharply into focus the question of how much of the “targeting” was ever anything more than a cynical cover for the remorseless extermination of Palestinian civilians.
What does Sinwar’s death say about the future? It should indicate that, in practical terms, Israel’s stated objective in Gaza — the elimination of Hamas — has reached some sort of definitive conclusion, and can’t really, anymore, be used as a justification for the relentless alleged “collateral damage” of civilians slaughtered in their tens or even in their hundreds in alleged targeted attacks on specific military leaders.
Who, in Hamas, is left now to justify this? In Gaza, in relation to Hamas, as in Lebanon, in relation to Hezbollah, Israel has now killed so many of the organizations’ leaders that relentless genocidal attacks can surely no longer be tolerated by the west.
Of course, I have no expectation that Israel will stop its relentless genocidal assaults on Gaza, or the analogous attacks in Lebanon, but its fig leaves of justification have fallen, and Israel’s actions now stand nakedly exposed for what they are and always have been: pure genocidal intent.
An end to the lie that Israel has an endless and unfettered “right to defend itself”
While Israel continues to claim that it is merely “defending itself” — a sweeping claim that the west has, for the most part, failed to challenge at all over the last year, even as the bodies of innocent babies, children women and men have mounted up like the corpses in the Nazis’ concentration camps — the reality, as has become increasingly evident, is that its actions are aimed at “defending itself” solely through the elimination of civilian populations, the destruction of, and erasure of their entire built environment, and the occupation of their land.
Since October 7 last year, this has always been the subtext of Israel’s actions, but it now stands out more starkly than ever before. In the Gaza Strip, its steady obliteration of the built environment and its people, from north to south, from October last year until the last “red line” was crossed in Rafah in May, has been followed, in recent weeks, by the emergence of a diabolical new plan involving a significant military return to northern Gaza, where 400,000 residents have resisted, or been unable to comply with previous evacuation orders, and to ethnically cleanse it in its entirety.
This cannot be justified militarily, however much Israel tries to claim, while implementing its ethnic cleansing and extermination policies in northern Gaza, that it is targeting “terrorists” and “Hamas command centers.” The outrage that greeted its attack on an encampment sheltering displaced people outside Al-Aqsa Hospital on Sunday, when a 19-year old student, Sha’ban Al-Dalou, was filmed burning to death, hasn’t been assuaged by feeble claims that the deadly fire was the result of a “precision strike” on a “command and control center” used by “Hamas terrorists.”
Like the boy who cried wolf, Israel’s lies now increasingly ring hollower than ever before. The additional claim that this “Hamas command center” was “embedded in a compound that ‘previously served as the Al-Aqsa Hospital’” was risible, because the the hospital was still operational, despite orders for its evacuation. However, what these claims stirred up in particular, beyond the specific outrage about Sha’ban Al-Dalou’s death, was the tired manner in which Israel was replaying previously discredited lies about hospitals being used as “Hamas command centers.”
This particularly cynical ploy to circumvent the absolute prohibition on militarily targeting hospitals, which was designed by Israel, genocidally, to “deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about [a group’s] physical destruction in whole or in part”, as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention, began a year ago today — on October 17, 2023 — when Israel attacked its first hospital, Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, killing 500 civilians.
Once they had got away with that, their “war on hospitals” — recently condemned by a UN commission of inquiry — was followed by months of abject and unforgivable brutality, including at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in which hospitals were besieged, invaded and destroyed, and doctors and patients were killed and disappeared, while the “Hamas command center” allegations were never substantiated, and looked increasingly desperate.
Similarly, in Lebanon, Israel’s replication of its Gaza policy, relentlessly bombing densely-packed civilian centers (even after killing Hezbollah’s leadership), and deliberately targeting hospitals, healthcare facilities, doctors and medical staff, cannot be justified by any military necessity, and is, yet again, an arrant display of monstrous war crimes.
Yahya Sinwar’s death and the hostage situation
Yahya Sinwar’s death also does nothing to further Israel’s other stated aim over the last year — to secure the return of the hostages seized by Hamas and other militants during their deadly incursion into southern Israel on October 7 last year.
Sinwar may have miscalculated badly when that attack was planned. He and Hamas’ other operational leaders had, I presume, hoped that the 251 hostages would be a massive bargaining chip, to secure the return of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails — as happened in 2011, when 1,027 prisoners were released in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
They had, however, failed to recognize how the death toll on October 7 would be seized upon as a justification for a greater genocidal fury than had ever been seen before — from an Israeli government, and Israeli society, that had been lunging to the far-right for many years, as epitomized by Netanyahu’s desperate pact with two openly genocidal far-right settlers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, when he was obliged to give them ministerial position to enable him to form a coalition government in October 2022.
Perhaps, as some commentators have suggested, the breakout on October 7 was more blood-soaked than intended, as the immediate aims — to attack military targets and to seize hostages — suffered “mission creep” as the Israeli military failed to respond immediately, and unexpected targets like the Nova music festival turned up as unintended targets instead. It may also be that, eventually, we will officially discover quite how many of the 1,116 Israelis killed on October 7 were actually killed by the Israelis themselves, implementing the notorious ‘Hannibal Doctrine’, which requires Israeli soldiers to kill their own rather than allowing them to fall into enemy hands.
Whatever the truth about October 7, however, the aftermath has revealed that, with the exception of a week at the end of November last year, when a fragile pause in hostilities was negotiated and a prisoner swap was brokered in which 107 hostages were freed, along with 240 Palestinian prisoners, Netanyahu has done almost nothing ever since to secure the safe return of the hostages, blocking ceasefire negotiations that were successfully agreed to by Hamas in May, killing three hostages who had broken free of their captors in December 2023, killing others in bombing raids, and only securing four alleged victories — on October 30, when a female soldier, Ori Megidish, was rescued; in February, when two Israeli-Argentine hostages were freed in Rafah in a raid in which 74 Palestinians were killed; again in June, when four hostages were freed during a raid in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in which, appallingly, hundreds of Palestinian civilians were slaughtered; and finally, in August when another hostage was freed.
In contrast to Hamas’ efforts to agree a ceasefire, Netanyahu has, instead, deliberately targeted and killed those who might have secured the hostages’ safe return, particularly via the assassination, in Tehran, in July, of Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Hanniyeh, who had been directly involved in negotiations.
What will Yahya Sinwar’s death mean?
If Yahya Sinwar’s death is to mean anything, in the framework of Israel’s continued genocidal intent in Gaza, it must, while it is celebrated as a victory by Israel and the west, also lead to the end of hostilities.
If not, Hamas will regroup — as will Hezbollah in Lebanon — because resistance movements are not reliant on specific leaders, however charismatic and capable they may be.
Untold numbers of younger Palestinians and Lebanese, radicalized by the horrors inflicted on them by Israel over the last year, with the full support of the west, will eventually rise up to assume the mantle of their slain leaders unless a line is definitively drawn to bring hostilities to an end, which has to involve Israel withdrawing from both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, accepting its obligation to return the Palestinians’ stolen land to them (as required by a stark and devastating opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in July), and abandoning its claims on southern Lebanon.
If this doesn’t happen, the countries of the west will be faced with a situation in which, while continuing to support Israel’s apparently unfettered “right to defend itself”, they are actually supporting it in ethnically cleansing the whole of the Gaza Strip, starting with the north, amidst ever more alarming policies of mass extermination, and are also supporting it in ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon.
In both scenarios, if Israel is not stopped, fanatical settlers will lay claim to both territories, provoking further escalations in hostilities, and will, in addition, also increase their aggressive ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, a third illegal front in their seemingly boundless quest for the blood-soaked conquest of other people’s lands, which has also been escalating in intensity over the last year.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
Email Andy Worthington
Please support Andy Worthington, independent journalist:
31 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
With the death of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader, the inevitable triumphalism of Netanyahu, and wider Israeli society, is fundamentally misplaced, as I explain here, because he died on the frontline, not hiding in a tunnel, as Israel alleged, and will therefore be an inspiration to the continued resistance to Israel’s occupation.
However, the triumphalism is most fundamentally misplaced because his death exposes how Israel’s claims regarding its actions over the last year — primarily, eliminating Hamas — has effectively reached a dead end, and it will be increasingly difficult for Netanyahu and his ministers to now avoid an ever-brighter burning spotlight shining on what they are really doing in Gaza, which, from the beginning, has been a project of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and genocide, with the ultimate intention being to empty the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population, and to colonize it with Israeli settlers.
Can the west really continue to support a seemingly ceaseless genocide when its true basis has now been so clearly exposed?
...on October 17th, 2024 at 10:29 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
They killed the leader … and more than 40 thousand civilians (although the numbers probably are way higher). Netanyahu is a f*cking monster.
...on October 17th, 2024 at 11:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I’ve been trying to avoid any reports from Israel, Natalia, where they are, of course, celebrating outrageously and trying to outdo each with expressions of racist genocidal filth. An entire nation that has deluded itself into thinking that it all began on October 7, 2023, as though 75 years of barbarity and apartheid didn’t exist, and failing to recognize how profoundly a truly depraved sickness has overwhelmed them.
...on October 17th, 2024 at 11:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Jones Tim Meena wrote:
Shameless. Israel & its enablers are shameless.
...on October 17th, 2024 at 11:43 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Agreed, Jones Tim Meena. I see that Netanyahu has wasted no time in pledging to become even more barbaric.
“The war has not ended”, he said. “Now it is clear to all of us, here in Israel and abroad, why we stubbornly said that we will not stop the war and we will go into Rafah. We will continue chasing our enemy until we have eliminated them all.”
As Afif Aqrabawi, a Palestinian-Canadian neuroscientist wrote on X, “And there it is. The world must exist in a perpetual state of horror and misery because the Israelis are still trying to dance again. Not until every Palestinian is murdered, every American dollar robbed, and every law violated and discredited.”
https://x.com/AjAqrabawi/status/1846980395918938230
...on October 17th, 2024 at 11:43 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Ross wrote:
I put an angry icon but as well I offer tears and a heart. He was a real hero. I call for the total eradication of the Zionist state of Israel and all its enablers and supporters both there and in every country. May they all burn in hell.
...on October 17th, 2024 at 11:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, David. I think anyone who looks at armed resistance to generations of murderous colonial oppression can’t fail to see him as a genuine leader of the people, as was made clear in this interview here: https://x.com/GuantanamoAndy/status/1847051561530544467
...on October 17th, 2024 at 11:45 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Dan Shea wrote:
What galls me, when listening to all the talking heads, are the interviews with their journalists or experts on the ground talking about how Yahya Sinwar had so much blood on his hands (and he did) with such a superior better than thou attitude, without any perspective of the blood and genocide on the hands of Netanyahu, the IDF, Biden, Harris and Congress.
...on October 17th, 2024 at 11:45 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I agree, Dan, although I’ve been pretty scrupulously avoiding watching anything from the western media – and from within Israel.
They demonized him, and they will continue to demonize him, while absolutely failing to recognize the far greater crimes of Israel and the west.
I hope you have time to read my reflections on October 7 in my article, which I hope contextualizes it as it should be seen. Yes, Sinwar had blood on his hands, but no one should judge him without being obliged to mention the previous 75 years, and the 50, 100 or 200 times more Palestinians killed in the year since.
...on October 17th, 2024 at 11:46 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote, in response to 3, above:
Andy, me too, you’re my source of information, Al Jazeera, RT, Grayzone …
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:35 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks so much, Natalia. You really are the person closest to my writing, because you’ve translated so many of my articles into Spanish! http://worldcantwait-la.com/escritos-andy-worthington.htm
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:36 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Tamzin Jans wrote:
Andy, Biden’s words of rejoicing make me nauseated! If US policy is on par with assassinations, death, destruction, then what makes it right for Israel but not for anyone else? Why doesn’t he rejoice when Israelis are killed then? Or when Trump was nearly assassinated?
The hypocrisy of US’s policy of support for certain assassinations but not for others is meaningless to the vast majority of people on this planet. It is a senseless policy.
Also, when one starts history at only a given time of one’s choice, then that is not history – that is propaganda.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:37 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ah yes, the glaring permanence of double standards, Tamzin. You’d think some in the west might be ashamed seeing the sickening celebrations in Israel, but apparently not. Islamophobia and Orientalism still thrive. As I’ve seen pointed out today, what does it say about the New York Times that their obituary of Yahya Sinwar described him as combining “cunning and brutality”? The stereotype of the devious, inherently violent Arab.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:37 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Jones Tim Meena wrote, in response to 5, above:
Andy, that is how it appears to be. Israel celebrates every murder, rape, violation, desecration it commits – nothing to do with Hamas. Nothing to do with leadership.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:38 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Very well said, Jones Tim Meena. They live now only for death; every other aspect of their existence is empty. Dead-eyed violent celebrations of Sinwar’s death in a society going through the motions, in an equally dead-eyed manner, of shopping and partying as though their souls aren’t drenched in blood.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:39 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Imad M Nejim wrote:
We go to war because there are those who want us to stop living, to uproot us, and seize our right to our land, and we go to war to regain our right to exist, to live and not to die.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:39 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Israel and the west have tried to outlaw resistance, Imad, and have connived to categorize all resistance to brutal, illegal colonial occupation as terrorism, when the real terrorism is state terrorism.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:40 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Annalise Zaverdinos wrote:
We need to organise a global DAY OF RAGE – and shut down EVERYTHING.
If I have to hear Starmer say “Israel has the right to defend “herself” once more … God help me.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:40 pm
Andy Worthington says...
That would be wonderful, Annalise, and so appropriate. I absolutely share your condemnation of the genocide facilitator Keir Starmer.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:41 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Pam Hardy wrote:
Annalise, I want Starmer gone by any means possible. He is rampant evil.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:41 pm
Andy Worthington says...
And so many members of his Cabinet too, Pam. All thoroughly complicit in the genocidal cause.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Deborah Emin wrote:
I wish I felt that there was one death that now satisfied the Israeli lust for death. However, I don’t think this lust has an endpoint. I believe that they, as the Nazis showed, have fallen into that never ending need to kill in ever more brutal ways. Their sadism has no limit. But because this sadism has been on display for decades, it is part of the DNA of their lives. The indoctrination in the schools has made this racist/brutal/killing machine unstoppable by themselves. They have no reason to stop. Despite hollowing out their country, despite bankrupting themselves and despite world condemnation, their need to kill has no end until their own lives end and they will take everyone with them if they must. There is no reasoning with monsters.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
That’s a very powerful assessment of the situation, Deborah, and it shows why they must be stopped, if anyone in power in the west can eventually relocate the lost vestiges of any kind of a moral compass. They certainly won’t stop willingly, in large part because of that cradle to grave indoctrination that you mention.
If the weapons supplies stopped, and the aid payments, and boycotts, sanctions and divestments were to be fully applied, that would certainly help. I’m inclined to think that their vile bragging self-righteousness would be significantly punctured by a complete economic crash.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
S Brian Willson wrote:
This murder will have the effect of inspiring evermore, wider, and more intense resistance!
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:43 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I think that’s certain, in the very obvious sense that you can’t kill an entirely justified national liberation movement by killing its leaders, Brian, but resistance alone won’t save Gaza after the last year of atrocities. There needs to be coordinated outside intervention, and a total arms ban would be a good start.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:43 pm
Andy Worthington says...
S Brian Willson wrote:
Illegally occupied people have the right under international law to resist their illegal occupation, including the use of violence.
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, very much so, Brian, as everyone supporting Israel has completely ignored for the last year, whilst also ignoring Israel’s responsibilities as the occupying power. It’s why the ICJ’s opinion in July – about the illegality of Israel’s entire occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – is so important. If it is ignored, any notion of the “international community” will be dead and buried, and only “might makes right” will remain.
https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2024/07/23/what-now-after-the-world-court-condemns-as-unlawful-israels-entire-57-year-occupation-of-the-palestinian-territories/
...on October 18th, 2024 at 4:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anita Tuesley wrote:
What the israelis have done is so horrific, yet it never seems to stick. I mean, a skin bank from Palestinian victims’ bodies; body parts; arresting children and trying them in secret military courts and imprisoning them for long terms just for throwing stones; Save the Children reports on the sexual and other abuse of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons; the tape of women and men prisoners including sexual torture; other torture; horrific bombing campaigns against civilians; home demolitions and land theft; on and on – and this all before 7 October. Never sticks.
...on October 20th, 2024 at 12:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It’s not fooling the people anymore, though, Anita, so perhaps it’s a harbinger of change.
On X today, responding to a photo of a Palestinian double amputee baby posted by a Palestinian who said that the world was unmoved, Mark Curtis of Declassified UK – not known for breezy optimism – wrote, “I share [your] anger. But the world has indeed been moved. Decent people are horrified by Israel’s slaughters and support Palestinians. It’s that it’s extremely difficult for those of us in the Israel-backing states, especially the US & UK, to change our government’s hideous policies. Despite what many think, we live under political oligarchy posing as democracy – with no real public influence over high state policy & with a deeply-rooted imperialist ideology shaping foreign policy in the corridors of power. Both oligarchy and imperialism are deeply entrenched in our system and protected by national media who are part of the nexus of establishment interests, brainwashing vast numbers of people. Things are changing, slowly, and the elites are and will gradually lose control, and we will liberate ourselves from a system that doesn’t serve our own interests let alone those abroad.”
That loss of control by the elites is happening. We just have to keep pushing.
https://x.com/markcurtis30/status/1847903024850649509
...on October 20th, 2024 at 12:12 pm
Ethan Winters says...
“Illegally occupied people have the right under international law to resist their illegal occupation, including the use of violence.”
Illegally occupied people don’t have the right under international law to kidnap or kill civilians. For example, what did Kfir or Ariel Bibas do to deserve being kidnapped? The Israeli government is obviously no saint, but neither was Sinwar. He not only brought hell on the people of Gaza by poking the beehive but also caused the transfer of 11 Yemeni Guantanamo detainees to be postponed indefinitely. Anyway, I do think there will be a prisoner exchange some day but it probably won’t happen any time soon.
...on November 20th, 2024 at 2:37 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your thoughts, Ethan. As a lifelong pacifist, I don’t have any personal enthusiasm for any kind of violence, but I have to stand by my recognition that there is a fundamental difference between the occupier and the occupied when it comes to struggles over land, as well as confirming that my sympathies lie with the Palestinians, and that I can’t condemn one day of brutal actions by the Palestinian armed resistance by removing it from the necessary context of 76 years of unceasingly brutal, dehumanizing and murderous occupation by Israel.
I also can’t blame Yahya Sinwar for causing the cancellation of the eleven Yemenis’ resettlement, because it was, I presume, Biden and Blinken who drew an entirely spurious connection between October 7 and the Guantanamo prisoners, based solely on what I regard as an Islamophobic reflex, prevalent since 9/11, which, fundamentally and shamefully, regards as Muslims as the same.
...on November 20th, 2024 at 3:07 pm