Israel and Hamas are engaged in a battle of stories about Sinwar’s death

Tel Aviv
CNN
—

The video shows a desperate, forlorn man trying to attack an advanced military drone with a wooden stick. Or perhaps it shows a defiant hero staring the enemy in the face as he fights to the bitter end. It depends on who’s watching.

When the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced the killing of Yahya Sinwar last week, they released several photos and a video showing the Hamas leader during his final moments alive and after his death. It was intended as proof that the man they believed was the main architect of the October 7 terror attack was indeed dead, and as a warning to Israel’s enemies that the IDF will eventually get them wherever they hide.

But the decision to release the footage appears to have backfired, at least in part, as it has since been used by Hamas and others to celebrate Sinwar as a martyr and hero.

Now Israel is in damage control mode, releasing older photos and videos of Sinwar hiding in tunnels with stashes of cash in an attempt to portray the Hamas leader as a selfish man who only cared about himself.

Gershon Baskin, a Middle East expert, peace activist and former Israeli hostage negotiator who spoke to Hamas through backchannels, said the release of the images was misleading and likely motivated by Israeli politics.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has come under criticism from all sides over the conduct of the war in Gaza. Domestically, the country is facing deep anger over its failure to return the 101 hostages still held in Gaza. The country is under international pressure due to the rising Palestinian death toll and the horrific humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

IDF releases video showing Hamas leader Sinwar hours before October 7 terror attacks

“It’s all about controlling the narrative on Netanyahu’s part – he needs this as his victory pictures,” Baskin told CNN.

“They have no idea that they are cementing Sinwar’s legacy in Palestine and the Arab world as a new kind of Saladin, a hero, a warrior until the end,” he said, referring to the famous 12th-century Muslim warrior who defeated a much larger Crusader army and conquered Jerusalem.

Hamas quickly seized on the story, declaring Sinwar a martyr who fought and died for the cause, but even Palestinians who have opposed Sinwar and Hamas in the past said the photos and video show defiance and courage.

“I think the Israelis were looking for an image of victory, but Sinwar gave them a different image. He did not hide in a tunnel, as Netanyahu claimed, he did not hide behind Palestinian civilians and take them as human shields, as Israeli propaganda used to say. He did not hide behind Israeli prisoners or prisoners, as they also claimed, he fought,” Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian politician and chairman of the Palestinian National Initiative, told CNN.

“And this image will make him look like a hero to most Palestinians and most Arabs and most people who are against the Israeli occupation and against the oppression that the Palestinians are being subjected to,” he added.

Gil Siegal, a legal scholar and head of the Center for Medical Law, Bioethics and Health Policy at Ono Academic College in Israel, said the fact that the video was used by both Israel and Hamas to make a point that suited their respective goals, no surprise.

“The truth is in the eye of the beholder. Objectively, the photo shows a person covered in dust, clearly injured, trying to throw an object at a drone. This is the fact, the objective fact,” he said.

“Let us now interpret this fact. You’d say, ‘oh, you see, this person is fighting until his last breath.’ The second would say, “You see, this is the Stone Age battling the Age of Startups and Technology.” And the third will say, ‘you see, even at the last moment this person remains violent and determined to do harm,’ and so on.”

Siegal said there were likely several reasons why the IDF publicly released the materials, including a desire to demonstrate that Sinwar was indeed dead.

“It’s proof. For example, people said that (Hamas military chief) Mohammed Deif is still alive. There were days of refutation after (the death of Hezbollah leader) Hassan Nasrallah,” he said.

To counter the portrayal of Sinwar as a courageous martyr, the IDF has since released several videos and photos of him hiding in the tunnels under Gaza with his family, accompanied by claims that he lived a comfortable life and prioritized himself over his people. The IDF said the images were captured by a Hamas security camera on October 6 and 10 last year and obtained by the IDF in recent days.

Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arab spokesman, said the IDF found huge sums of money, food and water in Sinwar’s shelters. “He hid with his family in a luxury tunnel while the children of Gaza were out in the open as a result of his crimes and brutality,” Adraee said on X.

Adraee posted a photo of Sinwar’s wife carrying a bag and suggested the accessory was a luxury piece costing tens of thousands of dollars. “Although the people of Gaza do not have enough money for a tent or basic necessities, we see many examples of Yahya Sinwar and his wife’s special love for money,” he said.

Shira Efron, senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, said the release of photos and videos from the tunnels was likely an attempt at “course correction on Israel’s part.”

Israel’s narrative for a long time was that Sinwar made the people of Gaza suffer while he hid underground and surrounded himself with the hostages brought from Israel as an insurance policy, she said.

“And then all of a sudden you see this guy and not only is he not in the tunnel and not with hostages, he’s fighting heroically like the last soldier, right, he’s wearing armor, he looks skinnier and even with his arm hanging , he lost an arm and he’s still fighting. This was not Israel’s intention,” she said, adding that the videos subsequently posted by the IDF are an attempt to reinforce their favored narrative.

It is a well-known fact, supported by Western intelligence services, that Hamas has built an extensive network of underground tunnels in Gaza, using them to store weapons, move undetected, and hide.

The IDF repeatedly said it believed Sinwar moved through the tunnel network accompanied by hostages, and said his DNA was found in a tunnel near where the bodies of six hostages killed by Hamas in late August were found.

Hamas has already issued a statement refuting the Israeli version of events and accusing the IDF of “blatant lies” and “a botched theatrics” in its portrayal of the last year of Sinwar’s life.

The group said Sinwar was killed while “operating on the battlefield” after “traveling across various battle fronts in the Gaza Strip” over the past year, adding that “Commander Sinwar and his brothers” had humiliated the Israeli army.

But Siegal said there was likely another reason why the IDF released the video showing Sinwar all alone at the end.

“Those who lead a revolution, those who lead a military campaign, are usually surrounded by the people who support them, people who live for them, people who will do everything in their power to help him. And guess what? This person who supposedly fought for the Palestinian people, the people left him alone. He was all alone,” he said.