A new leader for the next phase of Palestinian resistance
Yahya Sinwar, head of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas ,in Gaza City on 14 April 2023 [Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]
By Sayid Marcos Tenório | MEMO | August 20, 2024
The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, announced on 6 August the election of Yahya Sinwar as the new head of the movement’s Political Bureau, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in an Israeli terrorist attack in Tehran. Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Sinwar is one of the most prominent figures in the Hamas political sphere, known for his heavy hand and for making big changes. His unanimous election is a strong message that Hamas has become stronger and more resilient despite the severe blow it received from the political murder of Haniyeh. The movement expressed its confidence in Sinwar, known as Abu Ibrahim, to lead this new delicate phase in a complex local, regional and international context.
Known for his steadfast leadership style and his resistance-focused approach to the occupation state, Sinwar has played a crucial role in shaping the resistance movement’s strategies and managing Gaza’s complex political and social relations.
Hamas wanted a replacement for Haniyeh who would send strong messages to the enemies of the Palestinian people.
Sinwar was elected head of the Hamas Political Bureau in Gaza in February 2017, also succeeding Ismail Haniyeh. He was re-elected for a second term in 2021. He led the Great March of Return in 2018, a peaceful attempt to break the siege of Gaza, as well as the Sword of Al-Quds campaign in 2021. He has also played a prominent role in strengthening relations with the axis of resistance.
The new political bureau head was the mastermind and commander of the epic Al-Aqsa Flood, which has lasted more than 300 days. In a speech at the commemoration in Gaza on 14 December 2022 of the 35th anniversary of the creation of Hamas, he foreshadowed the events of 7 October when he declared: “We will come to you [Israel], God willing, in a thunderous flood. We will go against you with endless rockets, we will go against you in an endless onslaught of combatants, we will go against you with millions of our own, like an endless tide.”
The other Palestinian factions and leaders of the axis of resistance expressed their support for Sinwar’s election, demonstrating confidence in his ability to overcome the loss of Haniyeh and to continue his legacy and that of all the martyred leaders, especially those who fell during Al-Aqsa Storm.
Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after his family was ethnically cleansed from the city of Majdal Asqualan (“Ashkelon”) by the Zionists in the 1948 Nakba. He completed his secondary education at Khan Younis Boys Secondary School. He then earned a bachelor’s degree in Arabic from the Islamic University of Gaza, where he was one of the leaders of the Student Council for five years, serving as Secretary of the Artistic Committee, then of the Sports Committee, Vice-President, President of the Council, and then Vice-President again from 1982 to 1987.
He began his political activity in his youth, leading numerous popular clashes against the Zionist occupation state between 1982 and 1988. His participation was instrumental in the founding of Majd, the Hamas internal security apparatus tasked with exposing Israeli spies. Along with Salah Shehada, he was one of the founders of the Hamas military wing, the Izz Ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in 1991.
Arrested by Israel in 1982, Sinwar spent six months in Fara’a Prison for his resistance activities. In 1988, he was arrested again and given four life sentences, serving 23 consecutive years in the enemy’s prisons.
He spent four years being held in solitary confinement.
In prison, he repeatedly assumed leadership of the Hamas prisoners’ High Command, leading a series of hunger strikes, with significant examples in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. He learnt and still speaks fluent Hebrew and has numerous writings and translations related to political and security issues.
He translated the books Shabak Among the Remains and Israeli Parties in 1992, for example, and authored Hamas: Experience and Mistakes and Al-Mayd, which documents the work of the occupation state’s Shin Bet internal security agency. He is also the author of a novel, Thorns and Carnations, which covers the experience of the Palestinian struggle from the 1967 Naksa to the First Intifada (1987-1993).
After his release in 2011 under the prisoner exchange deal which saw 1,027 Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, he was elected to the Hamas political office in Gaza and assumed responsibility for the security cabinet in 2012. He was later elected to the general political office and assumed responsibility for the military cabinet in 2013.
Now, the legitimate resistance for the liberation of the historic land of Palestine from occupation, with Jerusalem as its capital, continues under the leadership of Yahya Sinwar, a selfless anti-colonial, anti-occupation fighter.
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Containing the United States
By Edward S. Herman | Z Magazine | September 2016
“Containing the United States” is, of course, a ridiculous and self-contradictory idea in the U.S. and Western ideological and propaganda system. We all know that the United States had to “contain” the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991, and since then has had the task of containing Russia and China. Only they threaten, bully, aggress and worry countries like Poland and Vietnam. Obama has had to reassure them both of our steadfast stand against Russian and Chinese military attacks. NATO has, of course, expanded greatly over the past several decades, despite the deaths of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, but only to contain the renewed Russian — and Iranian, Libyan, Syrian and other — military threats; and we have “pivoted” to Asia, supported Japanese rearmament, bolstered our own forces in that area and jousted with the Chinese in their coastal waters solely to contain China. Earlier we had been obliged to contain North Vietnam, or was it the Soviet Union in Vietnam? Or China? Or “communism”? Or maybe all of them? Or none of them, but just needing an excuse to enlarge power?
The parallel propaganda has taken many forms. One is accepting as a premise that the United States only acts defensively and has no internal forces and interests that drive it to enlarge its sphere of control. I noted in an earlier article how Paul Krugman claims that internal Russian problems may well be the explanation of Russian “aggression,” but how at the same time it never occurs to him that the huge U.S. transnational corporate interests and “defense” establishment, and the pro-Israel lobby’s activities, might possibly make for an expansionist dynamic here.2 This reflects the standard establishment perspective that we are good and only react to evil. This was the view sustaining and justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003. That attack was taken here as not evil but a response to evil, even if involving lies and mistakes, hence not describable as “aggression.” … continue
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