Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas mass murderer, wore clothes sewn from UN food bags as a child

The 22 years Yahya Sinwar spent in Israeli prisons strengthened his resolve and transformed him into a leader of Hamas. During his stay in prison in Ashkelon, he played table tennis barefoot. Ashkelon is where his parents fled to Gaza during the Intifada in 1948. Sinwar said he wanted his “feet to touch the land of Palestine.”

Sinwar was not just a Palestinian who was emotional for his homeland. He masterminded the October 7 massacre, in which Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people in Israel. He became infamous as the ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’ for torturing and murdering a dozen people accused of spying for Israel. He was a mass murderer.

“The mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, responsible for the October 7 massacre and atrocities, was eliminated… by IDF (Israeli military) soldiers,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

Sinwar’s cruelty towards the Palestinians is rarely discussed.

“Yahya Sinwar’s cruelty towards the Palestinians is rarely talked about,” says satirist and columnist Kamlesh Singh on X. Singh is popular as ‘Tau’ on Aaj Tak Radio’s Teen Taal podcast.

The Hamas chief was shot by the Israeli army on October 16. The Israeli army has released drone footage of Sinwar’s final moments.

The video shows Sinwar sitting on a couch in a destroyed apartment, and his head and face are covered with a scarf. The walls of the building appeared to have been blown away by shelling and Sinwar was covered in dust and had a serious injury to his right arm. As the drone approaches him, he is seen throwing a stick at it.

These were the Hamas chief’s final moments.

Last month, the US, an ally of Israel, accused Sinwar and other Hamas leaders of “financing, directing, and overseeing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the national security of the United States.”

“On October 7, Hamas terrorists, led by these defendants, killed nearly 1,200 people, including more than 40 Americans, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians. Yahya Sinwar and other senior leaders of Hamas are today accused of orchestrating the terrorist organization’s decades-long terror campaign. campaign of mass violence and terror – including on October 7,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

But before becoming the head of the terrorist organization Hamas and planning the October 7 massacre in Israel, Sinwar served multiple prison sentences and was part of multiple negotiations between Hamas, Israel and even Iran.

REFUGEE CAMP, ISRAELI PRISONERS STOLE SINWAR SOLUTION

Born in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, Sinwar was born in 1962 when Gaza was under Israeli occupation.

He once said his mother made clothes from empty UN food bags, Gaza resident Wissam Ibrahim, who met Sinwar, told Reuters.

An impoverished childhood and 22 years in Israeli prisons left him with a high tolerance for suffering. He was arrested in 1988 and given four life sentences for the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinian spies.

“Prison builds you up,” Sinwar told an Italian journalist, according to a New York Times report. In prison, he realized what he believed in and the price he was willing to pay for it, the report said.

While in prison, he also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel – The Thorn and the Carnation – and described the Israeli forces bulldozing Palestinian homes “as a monster crushing the bones of its prey,” according to Reuters.

It was in prison in 1992 that he emerged as a leader by organizing a strike of Palestinian prisoners, surviving for days on salt and water alone. He got what he was looking for from the Israelis.

Sinwar married after walking out of prison and has three children.

He has said very little publicly about his family, other than to say that the first words his son ever spoke were “father,” “mother” and “drone.”

Smuggled phones into prison, carried out Hamas activities from prison

Sinwar was first arrested in 1982 when he met other Palestinian activists in Fara Prison. When he was arrested again in 1985, after his release, he tried to find collaborators with Israel among the Palestinian population. This was called the Hamas police.

His brutal murder of suspected collaborators earned him the title ‘Butcher of Khan Younis’.

In 1988, Sinwar planned the murder of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians who allegedly collaborated with Israel.

During his interrogation, he admitted to strangling one of these men with his hands and another with a kaffiyeh.

The other two were killed during a violent interrogation and shot.

Here he was sentenced to four life sentences in 1989.

Even from prison he managed to carry out his operations. Hamas operatives even threw a victim’s body out of the prison cell and asked the guards to “take the dog’s head.”

He even tried to escape from prison several times.

From smuggling phones into the prison to using his lawyer to send messages outside, Sinwar managed to transmit Hamas activities from the Israeli prison.

He also used this time to learn Hebrew and history.

An Israeli daily Maariv even reported that Sinwar took 15 courses at Israel’s Open University in seven years during his time in prison. Most were about the history of the Jews, the Holocaust and Zionism, and about Israeli democracy.

A copy of his novel was found during a search of his prison cell in 2004, the New York Times reported.

ABOUT 1,000 PALESTINIAN PRISONERS RELEASED FOR AN ISRAELI

Sinwar finally left prison in 2011 after nerve-wracking negotiations with Israelis over the release of a thousand prisoners, including himself, in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

In November 2012, Sinwar met Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani in Iran during an Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip. After Sinwar became Gaza’s clear leader following the 2017 elections, he developed close relations with Iran.

This was the only time he set foot in Tehran.

He was introduced to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by Ismail Haniyeh, the Tehran Times reported.

“Brother Yahya Sinwar spent 25 years of his life in an Israeli prison. He was sentenced to 430 years in prison,” he said.

Sinwar even helped rebuild ties between Hamas and Tehran, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Hamas chief was also behind the torture and murder of the Qassam Brigades’ Zeitoun battalion commander, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, in 2016, on charges of embezzling funds and homosexuality and providing information to Israel, according to a report by the Irish Times.

In February 2017, when Sinwar became leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, he took over from Ismail Haniyeh. He rejected any reconciliation with Israel.

“We would rather die as martyrs than die from oppression and humiliation,” even saying, “We are willing to die, and tens of thousands will die with us,” NYT reported.

Finally, in 2022, reports discuss how Hamas under Sinwar began preparing a surprise attack on Israel. It even tried to convince Hezbollah and Iran to participate.

After the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh by Israel, Sinwar had completely taken over Hamas.

Many said this would be the beginning of an era of hardliners. Sinwar even called Qatar’s Haniyeh group, which was more wary of the October 7 attack, “hotel boys,” the Washington Post reported.

But Israel had deployed all its intelligence services and military to find Sinwar and eliminate him. According to various media reports, he was Israel’s main target or enemy number 1.

Now that he is gone, there may be a chance for talks, some experts think.

“As progress has been made toward a cease-fire-for-hostages agreement to pause the war, senior (US) government officials for months clung to the hope that Sinwar could one day be eliminated – opening doors in the conversations were opened that simply would not be available. different,” CNN reported.

Israel now has one of its biggest enemies after a year-long hunt. Sinwar’s murder offers Hamas and Israel the opportunity to scale back the attacks.