That Sinwar dude. Born in Kahn Yunis in 1962. Heavily influenced by the Naqba which directly affected his family, who were cleansed from Ashkelon. The dismal circumstances of refugee camps were another influence as a kid. Thorns and carnations, the novel he writes in prison describes a scene where Israeli tanks pretend to be Egyptian tanks so they can be welcomed by Palestinians and then shoot at them from up close. As a young man he joins the resistance, he becomes very close with Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (born in Ashkelon), who was later assassinated by Israel in 2004, along with 9 bystanders.

In 1988 Israel arrests Sinwar for plotting the abduction of two Israeli soldiers and twelve Palestinians he considered to be snitches, several he proudly killed with his own hands, suffocating them. One he apparently kills inadvertently during a torture session gone wrong. With Israel always trying to infiltrate resistance movements by creating collaborators among Palestinians, using all the tactics you can imagine, the Palestinians have to crack down hard, because the consequences of allowing a collaborator to be active among them can turn out lethal for the resistance. Sinwar gets four life sentences. He will spend 22 years in jail.

An Israeli government assessment – note that this cannot be fully objective – of Sinwar during his time in prison described his character as “cruel, authoritative, influential and with unusual abilities of endurance, cunning and manipulative, content with little… Keeps secrets even inside prison amongst other prisoners… Has the ability to carry crowds”. In prison he becomes a respected leader. With his high status he doesn’t try to get out of simple daily tasks. He performs all the regular duties of his fellow prisoners, cooks and cleans with the rest of them. He continues to weed out snitches using brutal methods.

Sinwar once remarked to supporters: “They wanted prison to be a grave for us, a mill to grind our will, determination and bodies. But, thank God, with our belief in our cause we turned the prison into sanctuaries of worship and academies for study.” Lazy or unfocused he is definitely not. Probably didn’t scroll much online in prison. He becomes fluent in Hebrew and translates Hebrew writings on counterterrorism into Arabic. He encourages the study of the way the Shin Bet operates. He becomes an expert on the way Israeli society, media and politics function. Sinwar has a bachelor in Arabic studies.

Hamas is not Al Qaeda or ISIS, many of its members are highly educated and know more about the UN, journalism, the law, strategy, history, than most western minds ever will. As already mentioned, he also writes a novel, which has to be smuggled out and is later found online in a PDF format. The novel is about a young boy who grows up in the squalid circumstances of Palestinian refugee camps. American politicians and their marital partners also write novels, but they call them autobiographies and follow a strict story arch. Some childhood hardship, inspired to make a difference, painting a few family members as hard-working, mentioning some small vices and sins to endear themselves to the reader, their eventual success story, how they fight for average Americans, blablablabla. If you’ve read one you’ve read them all. They go down very smoothly. Like a premixed rum and cola you can get cheap at the supermarket. Though the rum and cola could trigger more inspiration at times.

In prison he continues to help direct the resistance outside of the prison. He is especially interested in capturing Israeli soldier to use them as bargaining chips. When they capture the Israeli soldier Shalit he wants to get the maximum out of a deal and keeps pushing to get Israel to agree to a bigger deal. He’s so stubborn that Israel puts him in solitary confinement and some of his fellow leaders rebel against him and agree to a pretty good deal. They get 1,026 prisoners in return for their one. Israeli society has to pretend to care incredibly much about each of their individual soldiers and civilians. The Hannibal directive shows you that this is driven by propaganda reasons. A dentist at the prison, Yuval Bitton, discovers that Sinwar has a brain tumor and surgery in Israel saves his life. Israel like any other country is obliged to give proper medical attention to its prisoners. He receives the surgery the day he is diagnosed. The dentist says in interviews he lost a nephew on October 7th. (https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/20/tv/video/amanpour-yuval-bitton-hamas-yahya-sinwar-gaza)

The nephew was named Tamir Adar and was 38 years old, he was part of a response team sent to try and fight off Hamas and others. His grandmother, was taken hostage, but was later released. After Yuval Bitton does his job as a person who chose a medical profession, Sinwar starts holding regular meetings with the Israeli dentist and they only talk about the ideology of Hamas. This guy doesn’t half-ass anything, which is probably part of what fuels hatred against him. He is for sure a very brutal, controversial and strangely ascetic figure for whom the end justifies the means, but his dedication and focus are also a source of envy among his haters, if they could be fully honest.

Sinwar himself is among the political prisoners swapped for Shalit. He then becomes something like the Secretary of Defense in Gaza. He is involved in the execution of a high ranking Hamas member, Mahmoud Ishtiwi. The member is accused of homosexual practices, embezzling funds and supplying vital information to Israel. It’s not entirely clear if the man was indeed guilty. This sparks some rare public protest against Hamas. The mother of the executed man pleads with the prominent Deif, a man who she sheltered at great personal risk, to please release her son. Most likely one of the reasons the man is executed is to show that nobody is untouchable, if you go against the cause, if you are corrupt, you will be punished.

Sinwar is certainly a radical and wants the resistance to be as pure and dedicated as possible. It’s hard to determine to which extent Sinwar is the product of decades of Israeli oppression and systematic land theft. We’d have to run an experiment where we take Sinwar at birth and plant him into American society in a relatively affluent family in a nice neighbourhood to see how he develops. Maybe he becomes a Democrat or Republican who can wash his hands in innocence cause he only kills people in drone strikes. The nature versus nurture debates lies outside of the scope of this post.

Sinwar is obviously a very unusual person with a strange set of characteristics. To quickly dismiss him as a psychopath – for which you can find enough ammuniton – is an indolent reaction and doesn’t help our understanding of our deeply conflicted human world.

I hope to have added a tiny bit to your understanding of what is going on in this part of the world. I keep learning new things about this issue every day and am still often reluctant to express my opinion.

May you look at your fellow human beings with modesty, a willingness to understand and affection today and vice versa.