Hamas say they won’t give up, even with Yahya Sinwar in Hell

At what point in history did the losers in a war ever get to dictate terms to the winners?

All kinds of people were sagely telling the world that, with the express train that sent Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, to his 72 bacha bazi boys in Jahannam, there was a fresh opportunity for a ceasefire to be negotiated. But the next dead man walking says no. From The New York Times:

Hamas Says Its Demands Are Unchanged as Biden Pushes for Gaza Cease-Fire

A top deputy to the killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar vowed that his “banner will not fall” and that the group would hold to its cease-fire conditions.

By Liam Stack, Aaron Boxerman, Bilal Shbair, and Jim Tankersley

Khalil al-Hayya.

A top Hamas official vowed on Friday that the killing of the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, would change nothing for its war with Israel, saying that it would fight on even as President Biden pressed for a deal to stop the conflict in the Gaza Strip and free the remaining hostages there.

In Hamas’s first official comments since Israel announced Mr. Sinwar’s death on Thursday, his deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, said that the group maintained its conditions for a cease-fire. He said Hamas still insisted on an end to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, as well as its complete withdrawal from the territory and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

“We are continuing Hamas’s path,” Mr. al-Hayya, who lives in exile in Qatar, said in televised remarks in which he praised Mr. Sinwar for dying on the battlefield and added that his “banner will not fall.” It remained unclear when Hamas would announce a successor to Mr. Sinwar, who was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza on Wednesday.

Mr. Sinwar orchestrated the Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages. The assault led to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has killed 42,000 people, according to local health officials, and left much of the territory in ruins.

Mr al-Hayya continued to say that there would be no release of the 101 hostages being held by Hamas until their demands are met. Of course, as the Times noted, Mr al-Hayya lives comfortably in exile in Doha, Qatar, where many of the wealthy Hamas leaders stayed. He’s far less vulnerable to Israeli attack, but, as Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah learned the hard way, living outside of the ‘Palestinian’ areas does not guarantee that your health won’t take a very quick turn for the worse.

There is continual political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cut a deal that gets the hostages released, but that’s a poor idea. In 2011, Israel traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, one of whom was Mr Sinwar, for the release of one captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and look how that turned out. It’s cold-hearted to say, but the 101 hostages, perhaps a third of whom are believed to already be dead, need to be considered casualties of the war, and lost forever. If, by chance, there are a few left alive and they are somehow rescued, great, but no ‘Palestinian’ prisoners — Mr Sinwar was in prison for killing four ‘Palestinians’ in Khan Younis — should ever be released.

The hostages are the only point of strength Hamas have; if Mr Netanyahu and the Israeli government take the hard decision to regard themas casualties, Hamas will have nothing left.

Mr Sinwar’s body will probably be given a Muslim burial in a secret place in Israel, to prevent it from becoming some sort of sick shrine for the ‘Palestinian’ irredentists to visit.

The demented mind of Yahya Sinwar

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

To me, the most amazing thing about Hamas’ October 7, 2023 surprise attack on Israel was that they thought that they could get away with it. The New York Times reported, five months ago:

As an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, (Yahya) Sinwar masterminded a strategy that he knew would provoke a ferocious Israeli response. But in Hamas’s calculus, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians — who do not have access to Hamas’s subterranean tunnels — were the necessary cost of upending the status quo with Israel.

That sounds like utter stupidity to me, but I’m a product of Western civilization, not Islamic barbarism. I’ve said it before: Mr Sinwar’s actions resemble, to me, those of Adolf Hitler, holed up in his Führerbunker, unwilling to surrender to save the Germany he supposedly loved so much from the oncoming destruction and devastation that the inexorable Allied advance and bombing campaign would continue to cause.

Now there’s more insight into his diseased mind:

Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack

The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.

By Ronen Bergman, Adam Rasgon, and Patrick Kingsley | Reporting from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Doha, Qatar | Saturday, October 12, 2024 | 9:55 AM EDT

For more than two years, Yahya Sinwar huddled with his top Hamas commanders and plotted what they hoped would be the most devastating and destabilizing attack on Israel in the militant group’s four-decade history.

Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid.

Hezbollah certainly did agree to that “broader fight,” though perhaps the Hezbollah leadership, at least those who are still breathing, might regret it now. I’ve seen speculation that Hassan Nasrallah might not have been killed instantly by Israel’s bombing attack on his location, but might have been trapped in an unventilated pocket and suffocated, perhaps giving him time to realize just how badly he had f(ornicated) up.

Iran? Several Iranian big wigs have been killed in Israeli attacks on Hezbollah sites, and, more embarrassing of all, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed when a safe house in Tehran where he was staying was destroyed by a planted bomb. But, even with that, Iran has limited its direct action to two mass ballistic missile attacks against Israel, both of which were largely intercepted. And now CNN has reported:

Iran’s government is extremely nervous and has been engaging in urgent diplomatic efforts with countries in the Middle East to gauge whether they can reduce the scale of Israel’s response to its missile attack earlier this month and – if that fails – help protect Tehran, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Iran’s anxiety stems from uncertainty about whether the US can convince Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites and oil facilities, and the fact that its most important proxy militia in the region, Hezbollah, has been significantly weakened by Israeli military operations in recent weeks, the sources said.

Mr Sinwar must be so disappointed! Back to the Times:

The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.”

The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack.

This is what makes the article really interesting, and I urge you to follow the link and read it; the Times has done very useful journalism here, but I cannot just plagiarize it and reproduce the whole thing.

Mr Sinwar and his minions clearly wanted, and perhaps even expected, Hezbollah and Iran to follow Hamas into the fight, but, as the above CNN story told us, while Iran might like striking at Israel, even the mad mullahs aren’t particularly interested in what happens if Israel strikes back.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has publicly denied that Iran had any role in the Oct. 7 attack. And American officials have described intelligence showing key Iranian leaders were caught by surprise, fueling doubts that Iran played a direct role in planning. But Hamas leaders have spoken broadly about the support they have received from regional allies, and there have been scattered and sometimes conflicting reports that Iranian and Hezbollah officials helped plan the attack and train fighters.

So, maybe Iran and Hezbollah helped Hamas, and maybe they simply spewed hot air; we just don’t know. But we do know one thing: whatever training the Hamas fighters were given, it wasn’t very good. They were able to kidnap and rape and burn and murder, but if there was any actual military goal, they didn’t achieve it. Instead, they engaged in an orgy of death and destruction, one which made the denizens of Gaza deliriously happy, right up until the IDF got its response organized and entered Gaza.

The Gazans aren’t so happy now!

And Mr Sinwar isn’t too happy, either. What he expected isn’t what happened. Gaza is heavily damaged, Hamas seriously weakened, Hezbollah has lost almost all of its previous leadership, and has perhaps a thousand of its lower-level people seriously injured by the diabolically brilliant pager attack. Iran has made two expensive but ultimately futile ballistic missile attacks, and is now shuddering in fear over what Israel might do in retaliation. Like the Führer he’s now emulating, he’s waiting in his underground bunker, waiting for a miracle deliverance to keep him from adjourning to Jahannam. He guessed wrong, and he’s going to pay for it. Sadly, tens of thousands of innocent people have also paid the price for his fantasies and delusions.

October 6, 2023: a day of peace. The next morning in Israel would be a red dawn.

On Friday, October 6, 2023, Israel was not in open warfare with Hamas or Hezbollah. On Friday, October 6, 2023, Israelis were going about their business. At sundown, on Friday, October 6, 2023, observant Jews were beginning their Sabbath celebrations.

On Sunday, October 6, 2024, Catholics around the world were listening to parts of Psalm 128:

5 – The Lord bless you from Zion: may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life;
6 – May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, terrorists from Hamas broke through the gates between Gaza and Israel proper, and went on a rampage of rape, murder, kidnapping, and mayhem. It was still the Sabbath in Israel.

As a terrorist surprise attack, it was wildly successful. 1,195 Israelis were killed, 815 of whom were civilians, and 251 people were seized as hostages. Many Israelis were wounded, and the ‘Palestinians’ used rape and serial rape as instruments of torture and terror.

Yet, for the ‘Palestinians,’ October 7, 2023, was a massive failure. None of the bordering nations came to Hamas’ aid, though Iran, a thousand miles away, kept sending weapons, and Hezbollah, not a nation but a terrorist group of Iranian puppets, tried to join in. Much of Gaza is in ruins, thousands upon thousands of homes destroyed, dozens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, all due to a war Hamas started but couldn’t finish.

Israel is not done. Gaza is still being pounded, and the Israel Defense Force has now focused on Hezbollah in the north. Almost all of Hezbollah’s leaders have been sent to Jahannam, and many of their fighters killed or wounded. Parts of Hamas leadership have also been sent to their eternal rewards, while Yahya Sinwar, who planned the October 7th attack has been stuck in underground shelters in Gaza.

Hamas Leader Is Holding Out for a Bigger War, U.S. Officials Say

Yahya Sinwar is increasingly fatalistic, has blocked a cease-fire deal and, so far, been frustrated that Hezbollah and Iran have not come to his aid, officials said.

By Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman, and Edward Wong | October 4, 2024

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

The leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, has become fatalistic after nearly a year of war in Gaza and is determined to see Israel embroiled in a wider regional conflict, U.S. officials said.Mr. Sinwar has long believed he will not survive the war, a view that has hindered negotiations to secure the release of hostages seized by his group in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.

His attitude has hardened in recent weeks, U.S. officials say, and American negotiators now believe that Hamas has no intention of reaching a deal with Israel.

What “deal” could be reached? Hamas have only one point of strength, and that is the hostages. If they surrender the remaining hostages, many of whom are already dead, they have no leverage at all.

But Israel has learned from past wars: whenever they grant the Muslims a ceasefire before the terrorist groups, or, in some cases, actual Arab armies, have been fully destroyed, they slowly reconstitute themselves, and a next generation of boys grow into men and want to take up the fight. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows this, and that’s why he is determined to destroy Hamas once are for all.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also rejected proposals in the negotiations and added positions that have complicated the talks. U.S. officials assess that he is mainly concerned about his political survival and might not think a cease-fire in Gaza is in his interests.

Well, yes, of course The New York Times and the liberals in the State Department are going to try to put the blame on Mr Netanyahu. But, as the Times previously reported:

As an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Sinwar masterminded a strategy that he knew would provoke a ferocious Israeli response. But in Hamas’s calculus, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians — who do not have access to Hamas’s subterranean tunnels — were the necessary cost of upending the status quo with Israel.

American and Israeli intelligence agencies have spent months assessing Mr. Sinwar’s motivations, according to people briefed on the intelligence. Analysts in both the United States and Israel believe that Mr. Sinwar is primarily motivated by a desire to take revenge on Israel and weaken it. The well-being of the Palestinian people or the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intelligence analysts say, appears to be secondary.

The distinguished Mr Sinwar is very much like Adolf Hitler in his Führerbunker, waiting for the last, and refusing to surrender to save Germany from near total destruction.

On 28 April, Hitler learned that Reichsführet-SS Heinrich Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies through Count Folke Bernadotte, and Hitler considered this treason.

How is that any different from what the crazy-eyed head of Hamas is doing? He knows that he’s a dead man, and that his dreams of the ‘frontline’ Arab nations attacking Israel are nothing but fantasy, but if he cared anything, anything at all, about the people for whose liberation he is supposedly fighting, he’d not only surrender himself, and Hamas, but should have done that months ago.

This is being published at 6:30 PM EDT in the United States, which is half-past midnight in Israel. At this time a year ago, innocent Israelis were mostly in bed, living in the peace that they had. When the morning sun arose on October 7th, it would be a red dawn.

Blogging from France! The only way the war can really end

Ville de Nice, 11:12 AM — I’m sitting in our airbnb balcony, French doors open this Sunday morning. The Mediterranean beach is just a couple of blocks away, but, alas! it’s raining this morning.

Even six hours away from the US, I’m still being inundated with social media messages — yes, I have Twitter on my phone — in support of the poor, poor ‘Palestinians,’ the Arabs who live in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Those mean ol’ Jooos stole their land, don’t you know!

Never mentioned, of course, is that the Jews were forced off their land starting in 70 AD by the Roman conquerers, pushed into Europe at the point of a sword. And never mentioned is that our good, Christian forebears in Europe, in all of Europe, hounded and persecuted the Jews living among them; Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were simply the last of the last and worst of the persecutions.

Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat well before the Nazis, in the last years of the 19th century, following a series of antiSemitic episodes, in which he posited that the only way Jews could truly be safe was to have their own nation. He died before the Nazis came to power, and never knew about the Holocaust.

Why is it, I have to ask, that the Jews returning to Israel is not something that today’s left see as just as much of a homecoming as they see the ‘Palestinians’ deserving what they laughably call ‘Palestine’?

Just as amusing is that so many of the things I see came from Americans, or at least people living in the United States. They whine about “white settler colonialism”, but if you are living in the United States, you are the beneficiary of “white settler colonialism,” the beneficiary of those primarily English settlers who expanded westward, conquering a continent, expelling and often exterminating the Indians, the weaker people who were here before them.

It isn’t just in the US. Every nation on earth, with the exception of Iceland, is ruled by the descendants of the last people to conquer the land. The Norman French conquered England, and imposed their rule, assimilating and in some instances killing the Anglo-Saxons, who themselves had conquered the Britons before them. Today’s Germans are not the people who lived there 2,000 years ago.

Today’s left are screaming for a ceasefire, but what they really want is for Hamas, the terrorists who started the war with a bloody attack last October 7th, to survive, so that they can regroup, rearm, and attack Israel again. Unthinkingly, they want this war to end, but the fighters to be able to start the next war.

Can you imagine today’s left, in January of 1944, advocating a ceasefire, since Germany was obviously beaten, instead of continuing on, to spare the lives of innocent Germans, don’t you know? That would have left Adolf Hitler and his minions alive and in power, to keep on oppressing the people and murdering the Jews.

World War II was the last war we actually won, and that ought to be a lesson: the demand was for unconditional surrender, and we continued on, bombing and burning and killing until that was achieved. Since those dark days of 1945, neither the Germans nor the Japanese nor the Italians have threatened world peace again, because we destroyed their ability to make war, and occupied those countries, installing decent governments and forcing changes in the militaristic cultures. That’s how you win wars!

Right now, Yahya Sinwar is sitting somewhere, in a tunnel, surrounded by his human shields hostages, like Hitler in his bunker, hoping for some kind of miracle to save him. In the end, he shot himself as the Red Army was a few blocks away. His miracle never happened.

Mr Sinwar is hoping for the same kind of miracle, and the lamebrained protesters in the West are trying to give it to him. But this war can only truly end when Mr Sinwar puts a bullet in his own head. Regrettably, he’ll kill his last hostages before he kills himself, because death, other than his own, is meaningless to him.

Will Yahya Sinwar meet his end the same way Adolf Hitler did?

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

We have previously reported on Yahya Sinwar, the now official leader of Hamas, several times in the past, most recently on how he reportedly wants any ceasefire agreement with Israel to include a guarantee that his life will be spared.

Now there’s this, from Sunday’s New York Times:

Israel’s Hunt for the Elusive Leader of Hamas

Yahya Sinwar’s ability to evade capture or death has denied Israel a military success in a war that began after he planned the Oct. 7 attacks.

by By Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman, Julian E. Barnes, and Adam Goldman | Mark Mazzetti and Julian Barnes reported from Washington. Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman reported from Tel Aviv and Rafah. | Sunday, August 25, 2024

In January, Israeli and American officials thought they had caught a break in the hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men.

Israeli commandos raided an elaborate tunnel complex in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 31 based on intelligence that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, was hiding there, according to American and Israeli officials.

He had been, it turned out. But Mr. Sinwar had left the bunker beneath the city of Khan Younis just days earlier, leaving behind documents and stacks of Israeli shekels totaling about $1 million. The hunt went on, with a dearth of hard evidence on his whereabouts.

Since the deadly Oct. 7 attacks in Israel that he planned and directed, Mr. Sinwar has been something of a ghost: never appearing in public, rarely releasing messages for his followers and giving up few clues about where he might be.

He fled without the money? 🙂 I guess he understands that you just can’t take it with you! Previous ‘official’ Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, found out just a month ago that his estimated $4 billion personal fortune wasn’t enough to Israel from sending him from being sent to Jahannam and his 72 bacha bazi boys.

Mr Sinwar, along with several other Hamas leaders, have been hiding in the sophisticated Hamas tunnel network in Gaza, and the Times’ report tells readers that they have ceased using sophisticated electronics communications, as Osama bin Laden famously did as well, to avoid being tracked by American and Israeli intelligence. Rather, these 7th century minds are using a very 7th century method of communications, human couriers. I’d note here that Adolf Hitler served as a dispatch courier from regimental headquarters during World War I, and there’s probably some irony in that.

The Times reported that messages to and from Mr Sinwar used to be completed within days, but that it has recently become more difficult and time consuming. If Mr Sinwar’s approval is required for any ceasefire agreement to be concluded, then such automatically draws out any negotiations. But, to me, the entire idea of ceasefire negotiations is ridiculous: the losing side in a war does not get to dictate terms to the winners. In the last war the United States actually won, the terms to Germany and Japan were simple: unconditional surrender.

The ‘Palestinians’ cannot do much more than lob a couple of harmless rockets at Israel at this point, and Israel can decide to stop shooting at the ‘Palestinians’ any time they choose. The only sticking point is the roughly 109 hostages Hamas currently holds. CNN reported, on June 13th that a senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, stated that no one really knows how many of the 120 remaining hostages are even still alive. The Israel Defense Force recently recovered the bodies of six more hostages, which ought to indicate that relatively few of them remain alive.

Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Hamdan said the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan that was first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.

Hamdan told CNN that Hamas needed “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege … and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”

Wait, what? The current proposal “(does) not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war”?

Mr Hamdan is saying, in effect, that Israel has to give Hamas something that they have not won on the battlefield to end the war!

Unlike bin Laden in his last years, Mr. Sinwar is actively managing a military campaign. Diplomats involved in cease-fire negotiations in Doha, Qatar, say that Hamas representatives insist they need Mr. Sinwar’s input before they make major decisions in the talks. As the most respected Hamas leader, he is the only person who can ensure that whatever is decided in Doha is implemented in Gaza.

This has been previously reported, including the fact that Mr Sinwar’s consent had to be obtained even when Mr Haniyeh was the nominal leader of Hamas. That’s the beauty of an unconditional surrender demand: no ‘negotiations’ are required, and the IDF can keep shooting and burning and bombing until the rats come out of the tunnels with their hands up.

Adolf Hitler never surrendered. Instead, as the Red Army were closing in on Berlin and the Führerbunker, he poisoned his wife and shot himself in the head, his last loyal aides taking their bodies outside and burning them in the garden. After living underground for over none months, that might be a fitting end for Mr Sinwar. After all, he hates Jews just as much as did der Führer!

LOL! Yahya Sinwar is afraid of the death he inflicted on so many others Israel needs to send him to his 72 Bacha bazi boys!

Following the extermination — I will not use the word assassination to reference the killing of a cockroach — of Ismail Haniyeh as the political leader of Hamas, the leadership of the terrorist group decided that Yahya Sinwar should be their new Fearless Leader.

Well, now the distinguished Mr Sinwar has added a new demand for a ceasefire: to save his own skin!

Oct. 7 mastermind and Hamas leader Yaya Sinwar reportedly adds new demand for cease-fire deal: Don’t kill me

By Ronny Reyes and Reuven Fenton | Wednesday, August 21, 2024 | 5:26 PM EDT

Hamas chief and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, who previously claimed that it would be an honor to die fighting Israel, has made his own survival a condition of any cease-fire in Gaza, according to a new report

Sinwar allegedly emphasized that his safety must be guaranteed, and that Israel must not try to kill him, a senior Egyptian official told Ynet.

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

“Sinwar insists on a guarantee that his safety and security are assured,” the official said.

Sinwar, who rose to the top of Hamas following the assassination of former chief Ismail Haniyeh last month, allegedly claimed that if Israel could agree with his demands, then a cease-fire deal would be possible.

The new position comes after months of Sinwar intervening with the cease-fire and hostage exchange talks, with the terror chief calling on Hamas to continue fighting until Israel is destroyed.

As The New York Times pointed out on May 12th, Mr Sinwar was among 1,027 ‘Palestinian’ prisoners traded for one Israeli soldier, Staff Sergeant Galid Shalit, in 2011. It is the sad irony of the Middle East that Mr Sinwar planned what turned out to be the deaths of about 1,200 innocent Israelis on October 7th, along with the capturing of roughly 250 hostages.

The Israeli government has already stated that Mr Sinwar is a dead man walking, and that he is to be killed, period.

It’s a strange notion, that the losers in a war could demand a ceasefire. Israel can stop shooting whenever they choose. Then, if Hamas and the ‘Palestinians’ decide to keep shooting, the Israelis can start destroying what’s left of Gaza all over again.

Hamas only bargaining chip is that they still hold 109 hostages, but the Israel Defense Force just recovered the bodies of six more. As the rescues keep ‘rescuing’ hostages who are already dead, it becomes ever more clear that there are few, if any, of the hostages still alive.

It’s a tough thing for the Israeli government to do, but at this point — actually, that point passed long ago! — they need to declare all of the hostages unfortunate casualties, and just proceed with the war to exterminate Hamas. Western nations cannot let concern for hostages guide their policies, because all that does is to put a premium on hostage taking. If some few of the hostages get rescued in the end, that will be great, but concern for their lives must not stop Israel from doing what it must.

Declaring all of the hostages casualties removes any leverage Hamas have left in ceasefire negotiations; all that will remain for them is unconditional surrender or a fight to the death.

Dead man walking: Hamas declare Yahya Sinwar as their new political leader

Following the extermination — I will not use the word assassination to reference the killing of a cockroach — of Ismail Haniyeh as the political leader of Hamas, the leadership of the terrorist group decided that Yahya Sinwar should be their new Fearless Leader.

Israel had long ago declared that that Mr Sinwar is a dead man walking.

Middle East Crisis: Hamas Names an Architect of Oct. 7 Attacks as New Political Leader

Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Hamas announced on Tuesday that it had chosen Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds behind the deadly Oct. 7 attack, as the next head of the group’s political office, consolidating his power over the militant group as it continues the 10-month war with Israel.

Mr. Sinwar, who spent two decades in Israeli prisons, has been long viewed by Israeli officials as a sophisticated strategist with a keen understanding of their society. He has been Hamas’s leader in Gaza since 2017. But he will now also replace Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s top political leader, who was a key liaison in the indirect cease-fire talks with Israel.

As The New York Times pointed out on May 12th, Mr Sinwar was among 1,027 ‘Palestinian’ prisoners traded for one Israeli soldier, Staff Sergeant Galid Shalit, in 2011. It is the sad irony of the Middle East that Mr Sinwar planned what turned out to be the deaths of more than 1,027 innocent Israelis on October 7th, along with the capturing of roughly 250 hostages.

In saving one soldier, Israel paid the price of over a thousand innocent non-combatants, plus over 600 soldiers and policemen killed in the current war. I understand the tremendous pressure on the government concerning the return of the remaining hostages, an unknown number of whom are already dead, just as there was during the five-year captivity of Staff Sergeant Shalit, but at some point Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have to realize that releasing multiple numbers of ‘Palestinian’ bad guys in exchange for a few surviving Israelis is not a wise trade.

The Times reported:

While the talks are mediated in Egypt and Qatar, it is Mr. Sinwar — believed to be hiding in a tunnel network beneath Gaza — whose consent is required by Hamas’s negotiators before they agree to any concessions, according to some of those officials.

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

Due to Mr Sinwar’s concealment, it takes considerable time to get any new negotiations communicated to him, and time to get his responses back. If his consent has been required in the past, while Mr Haniyeh was still alive, how much more so is that true now?

He is supposedly hiding in a deep, deep tunnel network, protected by several captured Israelis being used as human shields.

The decision to appoint Mr. Sinwar is an indication that, ten months into the war, the Palestinian group’s leaders remain firmly behind the decision to attack southern Israel on Oct. 7, analysts said. And it signals that Israeli efforts to try and cripple the group by killing off its leaders may have only entrenched the hard-line position Hamas has taken, they said.

Gaza has been, if not completely destroyed, heavily damaged. Whatever jobs they had, whatever infrastructure they had, are gone now.

“This is more about the overall vision for what Hamas wants, which is focusing more on liberation and less on being a governing power,” said Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, the official body representing Palestinians internationally.

Israel’s current military campaign in Gaza has driven the Islamist group underground, but Hamas had ruled over the enclave since 2007, fashioning itself into the new government of Gaza and exerting oppressive control over the enclave’s people.

Under Mr. Sinwar’s leadership, Hamas, designated by many Western governments as a terrorist group, had sought to free itself of the challenge of running a civilian government in Gaza, while remaining the ultimate power through its military might.

Mr. Sinwar’s selection was an affirmation of that vision, one that aims to put a greater focus on confronting Israel.

After the Oct. 7 attacks, Hamas leaders said they wanted to ignite a permanent state of war with Israel on all fronts to revive the Palestinian cause, knowing Israel’s response would be aggressive.

In other words, they’re fanatics.

As much as they might have thought the Arab or Muslim nations would come to their aid, that hasn’t been the case. Some Islamist groups like the Houthis and Hezbollah have tried to bring the battle to Israel, none of the Arab nations have done so, because Arab governments have a responsibility to their nations and people, and the last thing they want is another devastating war with Israel. Iran, which is Persian, not Arabic, and Turkey, which is Turkish, not Arab, have made threatening noises, but Iran is 1,000 miles away from Israel, and Turkey 500 miles away.

Hamas would prefer death before surrender, and Israel just might give it to them.

There’s only one way to win: Israel must stop worrying about the hostages #Hamas hold

The First Street Journal has previously stated that holding the hostages is the only weapon that the Hamas terrorists have left, and that, as harsh as it sounds, Israel must forget about the fate of the hostages and pursue its course of completely destroying Hamas. The terrorists’ military leader in Gaza — the vast majority of the Hamas leadership are already out, living their lives safely in Lebanon and Qatar — Yahya Sinwar is in power because the Israelis stupidly exchanged him, and over a thousand other ‘Palestinians’ in jail, for one Israeli soldier held hostage.

But it’s not an easy policy for Israeli families to accept. Not only are they agitating for the return of their hopefully still living relatives, there’s even pressure now from a relative for the return of her known-to-be-dead parents’ bodies. Continue reading