News Club - The death of a terrorist

The death of a terrorist

After serving up some hard News Club last week (BTW thank you for the terrific feedback about the newsletter on what civil war and famine in Sudan), I was going to change gears this week for a romp through Royal visits to Australia over the years. And then, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza last week. 

Since that news broke on Friday morning, I’ve devoured the stream of reporting on the demise of the terror group’s influential leader, who had spent much of the last year hidden in tunnels beneath Gaza. Reports say some Israelis believe it is their “Osama bin Laden moment” - a reference to America’s killing of the al-Qaeda leader in 2011 after he organised the 9/11 attacks. 

Since Friday, I’ve thought a lot about that comparison - that we very quickly learned bin Laden’s name in the immediate aftermath of those attacks on the US, along with the terror group’s. But in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October, while we became more familiar with Hamas in Gaza, I don’t feel like we locked onto the people behind the organisation in the same way. 

So with that prelude, some Club Picks to help you size up the magnitude of this development: 

1. Yahya Sinwar’s backstory (laid out in this BBC explainer) is one worth knowing about. His parents were displaced Palestinian Arabs - a formative experience that saw him recruited to Hamas in its early days of the 1980s. His first major role was as chief of an internal security unit where he punished/tortured/murdered his own people for violating Islamic morality laws or cooperating with Israel. 

2. Sinwar was in prison in Israel for more than 20 years, where he spent his time becoming fluent in Hebrew and boning up on the enemy. There, he formed a relationship of sorts with the prison dentist, Dr Yuval Bitton, who helped him get a lifesaving operation. In this New York Times article from earlier this year, Bitton talks about Sinwar’s mindset. “He was willing to pay a heavy price for principle, even if the price wasn’t proportional to the goal,” he said. 

3. Sinwar now has martyr status - elevating him in the world of Islamic extremists. “Sinwar’s warrior’s death seems certain to guarantee him the top place in the Palestinian pantheon, obscuring the fact that, before 7 October last year… he killed far more Palestinians than Israelis,” says the Guardian's world affairs editor Julian Borger. 

4. And if you want something to listen to, the Daily podcast has a great wrap. It does a great job underlining the significance of this development and what it could mean for Hamas under Sinwar’s brother Mouammed and Israel. 

Sinwar and the Israeli Government had refused to compromise during ceasefire negotiations. Analysts now say his death could see Hamas agree to some of Israel’s demands or provide Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu with a victory that could see him soften his own negotiating stance. Or, as they have over the weekend, they fight on. 

Tell us what you think