23 Key Facts To Know About Yahya Sinwar, the Mastermind of October 7

Meet the one man standing in the way of the hostages' freedom and peace in Gaza.

Aug 18, 2024

This is the sixth installment in a new series at God of the Desert Books, Hostage Liberation News, which will focus exclusively on new developments and efforts in the fight to ensure the release of the human beings kidnapped by the Islamist terror group Hamas for use as human shields.

Please see my previous writings on this subject, linked at the bottom of this post. You can also read the 90 installments of the Antisemitism and Culture and Axis of Genocide series here. See also the first installment in the new Academic Inferno series here.

My apologies that it has been over a month since the last installment in this ongoing series exploring the plight of the human beings held hostage by Hamas and the efforts not just by Israel, but by much of the global community to save them. The last segment also began with an apology noting that three weeks had passed since the previous post too. I was really hoping that this series could offer updates on at least a weekly basis.

But there hasn’t been much real progress made yet. What I wrote then still stands, so I’ll just repeat it:

There have been times when I’ve wanted to write up a new installment — when seeming “good news” emerged in the “negotiations” for a “deal” with Hamas. But each time, I could not get it out of the back of my head that Hamas was simply continuing to fuck with us, that the Islamist terror group still really had no intention of concluding a “deal,” and that this charade amounted to just more psychological warfare to try to get people’s hopes up that they might see their loved ones again.
That remains my position today. Even if Hamas finally agrees to a “deal,” there exists no reason why one should believe they would follow it.

There continue to be “negotiations” coordinated by Qatar—one of the world’s most evil states and a longtime supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood—but none of them have provoked much hope, so I’ve not felt compelled to write about them here.

Thus, until there is any meaningful progress on these “negotiations” or rescues of hostages who are still alive, I’ve decided to shift some of this series’ emphasis away from the hostages and onto the man who is most responsible for their kidnapping and continued captivity: the new leader of Hamas:

“He is much more aggressive, much more militarist so it’s going to be more difficult to actually come to a negotiated ceasefire with Sinwar than Haniyeh would have been.” — Dr. Malcolm Davis, Australian Strategic Policy Institute Senior Analyst

Phyllis Chesler

, my friend and one of my most important professional mentors, encouraged me to check out this 11,000-word New Yorker article by the magazine’s editor David Remnick, titled “Notes from Underground: The life of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza.” I’m quite grateful that she did, as it’s loaded with insights about this fucking evil monster.

If you don’t have the time to read it—or the desire to spend so much time thinking about this demonically-possessed person—then here are some key highlights to keep in mind about the man now leading Hamas, the terrorist army which should be understood properly as an appendage of Iran.

In 1999, Sinwar was in prison in Israel, serving four life sentences for his role in a Hamas unit called Munazamat al-Jihad wa al-Da’wa, or the Majd. This is what this division of Hamas was responsible for:

punished those who collaborated with Israel or who committed offenses against orthodox Islamic morality, including homosexuality, marital infidelity, and the possession of pornography.

Sinwar coordinated from prison to have his cellmate’s sister killed because she was having an extramarital affair, something that he did because her actions had led her brother into depressive feelings.
Sinwar saw his time in prison as an opportunity to educate himself about how to destroy Israel:

From the start, Sinwar regarded Israeli prison as an “academy,” a place to learn the language, psychology, and history of the enemy. Like many other Palestinians designated as “security prisoners,” he became fluent in Hebrew and consumed Israeli newspapers and radio broadcasts, along with books about Zionist theorists, politicians, and intelligence chiefs. Despite the length of his sentence, he was preparing for his release and the resumption of armed resistance.

In 1998, Sinwar determined that a political solution to gain his release was not possible, so instead he developed an alternate plan: order the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and then exchange him for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including himself. This did not work in its first attempt, but did later on, resulting in Sinwar’s freedom:

The foiled plan can easily be seen as a foreshadowing of the events that led to the current war, the bloodiest chapter in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In 2006, Hamas soldiers led a cross-border raid through a tunnel from Gaza. At an Israeli military outpost near the village of Kerem Shalom, they killed two soldiers and kidnapped a third, a nineteen-year-old corporal from the Galilee named Gilad Shalit. Hamas kept Shalit captive in Gaza year after year, demanding hundreds of prisoners in return. In Israel, there were candlelight vigils and bitter debates over whether the life of just one soldier was worth freeing so many Palestinian prisoners. Shalit was finally released in 2011, in exchange for more than a thousand Palestinians—including Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Sharatha.

Since Oct. 7, Sinwar is believed to still be alive, hiding in the vast tunnel labyrinth under Gaza.
He does not use electronic communications as he runs Hamas. Instead he relies on written messages and oral instructions given to runners.
Sinwar is a short man, something noted by a released hostage:

Adina Moshe, another hostage who was released, also recalled her encounters with Sinwar in the tunnels. “He’s short, you know? All his guards were taller than him,” she told Channel 12. “It was ridiculous to see him like that. . . . He stood there. No one responded. ‘Shalom! How are you? Everything O.K.?’ We all looked down. He came twice, about three weeks apart. Each time, it was ‘Shalom! How are you?’ No one responds, and he leaves.”

Sinwar was born in 1962 into a large family in the Khan Younis refugee camp.
Sinwar is a fucking novelist. (As a writer, editor, and publisher of novels, this absolutely infuriates me):

A depiction of the political and emotional landscape of Sinwar’s youth can be found in an autobiographical novel that he wrote in 2004, while still in prison, called “Al-Shawk wa’l Qurunful” (translated as “The Thorn and the Carnation”). Fellow-prisoners “worked like ants” to smuggle out his manuscript and “bring it into the light,” according to the preface. Last December, Amazon began offering an English translation. The promotional copy promised that the novel would provide readers a rare opportunity to “traverse the corridors of [Sinwar’s] mind, possibly where the seeds for the ‘Flood of Al-Aqsa’ operation . . . were sown.” Amazon removed the book after several pro-Israel groups took offense and warned Jeff Bezos that selling it could be a violation of British and U.S. antiterrorism laws, but it’s still possible to find a digital copy online.

In the 1980s, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was central to Sinwar’s radicalization:

In the eighties, while the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization was operating out of Tunisia, Yassin was able to appeal directly to people, particularly young Gazans disenchanted with their lot and hungry for guidance. Sinwar, who studied Arabic at the Islamic University of Gaza, grew increasingly close to Yassin, eventually becoming an aide-de-camp.

In his original role in Hamas, rooting out traitors, Sinwar engaged in torture and utilized the cruelest methods of executing people:

Hacham told me that Sinwar’s mission was to torture collaborators and intimidate anyone in the community thinking about working with the Israelis. “He used to do it in the cruellest manner,” he said. “He would drip boiling oil on people’s heads to get them to confess to collaboration. People were terrified of him.” Michael Koubi, a former officer in the Israeli security services who interrogated Sinwar in prison, told me that he was the coldest man he had ever encountered. “He described to me very precisely how he killed people,” Koubi said. “He took out a machete and cut off their heads. He put one suspected collaborator in a grave and buried him alive.”

Sinwar does not care how many Palestinians die:

In the years to come, Bitton spent hundreds of hours talking with Sinwar, who seemed to have little interest in concealing his past or his intentions for the future. When Bitton asked him whether achieving his goals was worth the lives of many innocent people, Israelis and Palestinians, Sinwar replied, “We are ready to sacrifice twenty thousand, thirty thousand, a hundred thousand.”

During the negotiations for the release of Shalit, it soon became apparent that Sinwar would be one of those released because he was imprisoned for killing Palestinians rather than Israelis:

Around 2009, Bitton recalled, Sinwar got heavily involved in the negotiations surrounding Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who had been kidnapped three years earlier and was being held hostage in Gaza. The Israelis were prepared to give up hundreds of Hamas and Fatah prisoners in exchange, but they were reluctant to free anyone convicted of killing Israelis after the start of the second intifada. Sinwar was almost certain to be among those released. “After all,” Bitton said, “he did not have Jewish blood on his hands”—only Palestinian blood.

Sinwar was ultimately released on October 18, 2011.
After his release from prison, Sinwar married a woman named Samar, 18 years younger than himself, who has a master’s degree in religion from the Islamic University of Gaza. She wears a niqab face covering and the couple has three children.
Sinwar’s role as a Hamas leader in prison meant that, once released, he became a top leader on the outside and resumed his previous role of torturing and murdering Palestinians:

He became a critical decision-maker in the Strip and was in frequent contact with Ismail Haniyeh, who at the time was Hamas’s chief political leader in Gaza; Mohammed Deif, the military commander; and important foreign allies, including the leaders of Hezbollah, in Lebanon. In 2012, he travelled to Tehran to consult with General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force.
Sinwar also remained involved in the sanctioning of collaborators. In 2015, he led an effort to punish a Hamas commander named Mahmoud Ishtiwi, who was suspected of embezzlement and homosexuality and was thus susceptible to being compromised. Khaled Meshal, who was then Hamas’s primary political leader, reportedly tried to de-escalate the situation, but Sinwar was unrelenting. Ishtiwi’s relatives say that he was suspended from a ceiling and whipped for days.

In 2017, Sinwar became the head of Hamas in Gaza.
In 2021, an article in Ha’aretz described how Sinwar had started fashioning himself as a spiritual, mythic figure:

Kubovich’s sources told him that Sinwar was now a more vivid presence on the streets, meeting frequently with ordinary residents. The sources were struck by how people reached out to touch him, how they hung photographs of him. “Sinwar is turning himself into a spiritual figure,” one told Kubovich. “He is trying to create myths around himself and to talk about himself as someone chosen by God to fight for Jerusalem on behalf of the Muslims.”

While Hamas leaders agreed on the Oct. 7 terror attacks, it was Sinwar who was primarily responsible for the planning. To do so, he utilized his knowledge of Israeli culture gained from his time in prison:

Yet the raid’s planning and execution were largely in the hands of Yahya Sinwar, along with Mohammed Deif. Haniyeh, the politburo chairman, who was living in Qatar, had little influence on the specifics. As Basem Naim, the Hamas leader, told me, “The operational decisions were all made by the military wing in Gaza. We don’t interfere in the timing and the tactics.”
Sinwar’s planning reflected his acute awareness of Israel and its history. The day of the assault was both Shabbat and Simchat Torah, the last of a series of important holidays in the fall.

Hostage negotiations have dragged out so long because it takes time for Sinwar’s messages to reach the “negotiators” in Doha:

One reason the hostage and ceasefire negotiations are so time-consuming, they say, is that it often takes days for Sinwar’s messages to reach the negotiators in Doha or Cairo.

Sinwar knew full well the scope of the military response from Israel that the Oct. 7 pogroms would provoke. And he did not care:

Ghaith al-Omari, a former adviser to the Palestinian Authority who now lives in Washington, was even more critical. “Not many people end up killing people with their own hands,” he said. “Sinwar is a criminal and a psychopath, someone willing to do something like October 7th. Forget the killing and kidnapping of Israelis for a moment. He knew what it would bring on his own people. You’d have to be blind not to see that.”

Just as he does not care about the lives of Palestinians, he does not care about whether he himself lives or dies:

The C.I.A. director, William Burns, reportedly told a closed-door meeting that, although Sinwar is concerned about being blamed by many Gazans for sparking the war and is facing pressure from other Hamas commanders to accept a ceasefire deal, he is not concerned about being killed. Palestinian and Israeli sources alike said that Sinwar almost certainly sees himself as the triumphal player in a great historical drama. As Neumann put it, “From his point of view, he is the modern-day Salah al-Din.”

There is no more influential Palestinian today than Sinwar:

As we got up to leave, I asked Abdul what he thought about Sinwar.
“Sinwar is in every home in Palestine,” he said. “He is the most important Palestinian in the world.”

Friends, I hope that, through this article, it has become abundantly clear just who the world is dealing with in Yahya Sinwar.

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