10/17/24 BREAKING: Hamas Leader Sinwar Claimed DEAD: Ryan and Jeremy React
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We're getting news reports that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar may have been killed in an IDF operation in northern Gaza today. A lot is still unclear, but to unpack what we know about what happened so far and what this could mean and who Yahya Sinwar was, joined here by my Dropsite colleague, Jeremy Scahill. I'm Ryan Grimm. Jeremy, thanks for joining us on short notice. Good to be with you, Ryan.

And so it's 1130 Eastern Time right now. You may, as you're watching this, know a little bit more about this than we do at the moment, but we'll try to give you the back story and what this means. So, Jeremy, I guess first of all, who is Yaya Sinwar? And while you're answering, I'll try to put up one of the photos that is suggestive of the fact that they did indeed kill Yaya Sinwar.

Well, I mean, first of all, the caveat here is that what we know about this right now is entirely coming from the Israeli military and Israeli intelligence. There have been previous reports indicating that Sinwar was killed or may have been killed. The same scenario played out with other senior figures within Hamas, including Mohammed Daif. So, you know, with the sort of all

all encompassing caveat that it is, you know, it's dependent on, you know, much clearer evidence. Um, we can discuss what, what we know at this point. And that is that on Wednesday night, um, apparently there was a routine patrol in the South of Gaza and there was some sort of, this is all according to the Israelis. We have to emphasize Hamas as of this moment has not put out any statement. Um,

but, uh, there was some sort of a routine patrol happening with Israeli occupation forces in Southern Gaza. There's indications that it was either in or Rafa. I had thought Northern Gaza. Okay, good. Okay. Interesting. Go ahead. And, and, um, and there was, uh, uh,

According to the Israelis, some kind of a firefight. Initial reports was that there was an RPG fired by the Israeli forces at a building where there were Palestinian resistance fighters. More recently, they've indicated that it was tank fire that hit the building. And some of the images that we've seen look like a heavier munition was used because it collapsed part of the concrete building.

structure under the individual that they're identifying as Yahya Sinwar. And then these soldiers, when they went inside and what they say is that they're always looking for the Israeli captives that are being held in Gaza. They came across the bodies of what we understand now three individuals who

uh, who we believe are Palestinian resistance fighters. And the soldiers saw one of them and, uh, believe that it was Yahya Sinwar. He's a very distinct, um, you know, looking guy. Um, the last image that Israel, uh, claimed to that the world has seen of Sinwar, um, it was a grainy image that the Israelis released. They said it was captured from a security camera in one of the tunnels in Southern Gaza, uh, was a kind of side and rear view, uh,

of a man walking down a tunnel with other individuals. But since then, we haven't seen anything. And Sinwar has only...

put out a few statements. He did release a couple of letters to foreign dignitaries after Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated in Tehran and Sinwar was then made the head of both the military operations on the ground inside of Gaza, the political leader in Gaza, and the head of its political bureau, which is largely based outside of

of Gaza. You know, the story of Yahya Sinwar in some ways is the story of what happened to the Palestinians of Gaza. He was born in a refugee camp in Khan Yunis in 1962. And he himself was part of the original formation of Hamas. Soon after Hamas was formed, Yahya Sinwar was arrested by Israeli forces. And he was accused of

of being a hit man essentially for this new group that was emerging that was responsible for taking out collaborators who were working with the Israelis. They also tried to pin on him allegations that he was involved with ambushing or killing Israeli soldiers, but he ends up spending 22 years in an Israeli prison. And in fact, Sinwar was released in 2011

in a exchange deal for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. And you had more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners released during that deal. And one of the chief negotiators was Yahya Sinwar's brother, Mohammed Sinwar, who also is a significant figure in the command structure of Hamas and certainly in its ground operations over the past year. So Sinwar emerges from that prison

and becomes quite quickly a revered political leader of Hamas and ultimately then takes control of the organization. But while Sinwar was in prison, Ryan,

He spent his time studying, and he himself has talked about this and written about this. He spent his time studying the Israeli state. He read the memoirs of Shin Bet, former Shin Bet heads, other Israeli intelligence officials. In fact, by hand, he translated from Hebrew into Arabic these memoirs and would disseminate them to other political prisoners, Palestinian political prisoners, arguing that you have to study the enemy in order to

to defeat the enemy. But the thing I want to emphasize is if Yahya Sinwar died, a couple of things here. First of all, the Israelis have often portrayed him, and their political cartoons show this, as kind of a rat hiding in tunnels using Israeli captives as human shields.

And it appears from even Israel's own narrative about this alleged killing of Sinwar that he died in combat, wearing combat gear. They said there was no sign of Israeli captives around him. And already on social media, in the Arabic language, you see a lot of people saying that this is a holy Shahid, that this is a martyr who died fighting for the Palestinian cause of liberation.

And so what would it mean for this conflict that's ongoing if he was killed? You know, remember some months ago there was reporting and it was based on leaks coming out of the Biden administration that the Biden administration was dangling what they claimed was valuable intelligence to help the Israelis locate Yahya Sinwar.

the US has been providing Israel intelligence on high value, so-called high value targets throughout the duration of the past year. But I think that what it indicated was not so much that the US necessarily knew where Sinwar was and was withholding that information from Israel, but rather that I think the Biden administration has felt like if Yahya Sinwar was killed,

it would allow them to argue with Netanyahu, you know, the time is up to say, you know, declare victory and let's wrap this thing up. Now, we have to emphasize that Biden has not wrapped this thing up throughout the entire duration. I think it's pretty clear he could have ended this a long time ago with a phone call as he did in 2021. They certainly could have said no more weapons for you. And Israel would have been in very, very deep trouble, especially as it tried to launch this multi-front war, potentially also with Israel.

But I think that a mistake that, you know, Americans, that America made during the so-called war on terror and that sometimes the, you know, the Israeli press and government encourages this narrative is that by killing leaders, whether it's Hassan Nasrallah,

of Hezbollah in Lebanon, or Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader, or in this case, Yahya Sinwar, that by killing the leaders, you somehow are going to destroy the resistance. And the fact is that, and history backs this up completely, that every time the Israelis believe that they have achieved some victory by assassinating a Palestinian leader,

more rise up to take their place. What I think it's indicative of though, Ryan, is that Netanyahu from the beginning never actually wanted a deal here. He sabotaged every possibility of a ceasefire, excuse me, of a prisoner exchange.

You have 10,000 Palestinians that are right now being held in Israeli custody. You have high-value political prisoners being held in Israeli custody. If Netanyahu wanted to make a deal to release the Israeli captives from Gaza, they would have had to give over not just Palestinian children, which they're holding and who they subject to military tribunals, or people that had posted WhatsApp or Facebook messages that the Israeli state has outlawed, but there would have been political figures.

chief among them and number one on the list of Hamas, even though he's not a Hamas member,

was Marwan Barghouti, who actually emerged as a leader of the second Palestinian Intifada, was part of Fatah and then became a paramilitary leader. And he's been decades in Israeli prison. Some compare him or say that he's akin in ways to a Palestinian Nelson Mandela, one of the few figures that many people believe would have the ability to unite

Gaza and the West Bank and all of the factions into a unified Palestinian entity that would make a very clear demand for a Palestinian state to be recognized. It seems as though what Netanyahu decided was, I'm going to burn Gaza to the ground. I'm going to kill as many Palestinians as possible. I'm going to destroy the entire infrastructure of Gaza. And if it means

that you know 100 plus israeli captives get killed in the process it was a price worth paying um

That's what I think really needs to be emphasized here. This shows that Netanyahu and the Israeli state, the security establishment, embraced a scorched earth policy that was aimed at obliterating Gaza as a Palestinian territory and many of the residents of Gaza with it. They can say, "Oh, this is a great victory." Watch for the Biden administration also to make an argument. This means that you've won the war.

76 years of oppression, of apartheid, of colonialism, of targeted killing, of mass killing, of starvation, of blockades has shown that you cannot kill the Palestinian resistance by killing the people who happen to be the leaders at any given time in history.

Certainly that theory will be tested at this point because it seems like Netanyahu has no intention of letting up. This comes at the same time that Biden, last question for you here, has issued this very late ultimatum that puts a 30-day ultimatum that aid must get into Gaza, that puts it past the election. Already I'm getting reports from aid workers saying that

the aid trucks that they're claiming are getting in aren't actually getting in and in fact uh they're pulling out vetted drivers uh from the trucks and beating and arresting the drivers uh doing everything they can to kind of make it look publicly like they're letting aid in uh while actually thwarting it on the ground uh so are is this all of this just on hold until the election

You know, I think it's pretty clear that the Biden administration doesn't have any intention of actually cutting off weapons to Israel. The farthest that they're willing to go is to take, you know, in a symbolic way, the most contentious weapon in the eyes of the U.S., these 2000 pound bombs that caused horrifying civilian deaths and to kind of temporarily pause them. Let's remember that just in recent days,

The White House authorized the deployment of the THAAD missile system to Israel, supposedly to defend against potential Iranian counterstrikes. A hundred U.S. military personnel went with it. The weapons flow is continuing. Yes, there's probably a degree to which this has to do with the election. And Kamala Harris has been given many opportunities to

indicate that she has any difference of perspective than Biden on this. She's not only declined to do that, she's doubled down on saying that she's been in the room and she supports the policy entirely. I think there are probably many people in the Biden administration that for a variety of reasons are really fed up with this. And it's totally toxic to the election campaign of Kamala Harris. But I think

I wouldn't look for anything significant to happen out of this. I do think that Biden personally is going to try to use, if SINWAR is confirmed to be dead, is going to try to use this to make an argument that now is the time for a deal. From Netanyahu's perspective, I think he says, we don't even need to make a deal. We can just keep killing through this. And what I think they're going to hope for is let's try to recover as many living hostages as possible.

He's gambled with the lives of these Israelis for an entire year. Israeli forces have killed numerous hostages on their own. This all could have been done a long, long time ago, at least since July 2nd. This could have been ended in a very clear way when Hamas told international mediators that it accepted the terms of the Biden plan.

I don't think you can put any hope that the Biden administration is going to back up any of its expressed frustration leaks with real policy.

All right, Jeremy Scahill, my co-founder over at DropSite News. You can find our work at dropsitenews.com. I'll also put a link down in the description below to a 20% off discount that we're giving for subscriptions to Breaking Points viewers. Check that out. So, Jeremy. Ryan, one plug. I think people, I want to just tell people, make sure to look at the recent reporting from Abu Bakr Abed, who is a great young reporter, and Darrell Bala.

And he just did a report on the young man. Everyone now has seen the images, Shaban, the young man who was burned alive in the attack on Al-Aqsa Hospital. But it's a very deep profile that in many ways speaks to

the utter loss that Israel has imposed on the people of Gaza in every aspect of their lives. It tells the life and death of this young man who was still attached to an IV when Israel struck the courtyard near Al-Aqsa Hospital and caused him and his mother, another family member and others to catch on fire. And at least four people died in that fire.

It's a moving piece, quite moving piece, and I'll put it down in the comments below as well. And my understanding is that Abu Bakr, in the last week, while reporting this piece, himself has only had something like three meals. The desperation in northern Gaza is so difficult to conceptualize.

I mean, the Palestinian journalists who have been the eyes and ears of the world for this deserve our defense and our gratitude forever for being the actual writers of history in real time, because without them, we would have known very little about the extent to which the United States and Israel waged this genocidal war. Well, Jeremy, thank you for joining me here. Thanks, Ryan.

I get it.

The cost of rent, groceries and utilities is too high. So here's what we're going to do about it. We will lower housing costs by building more homes and crack down on landlords who are charging too much. We will lower your food and grocery bills by going after price gougers who are keeping the cost of everyday goods too high. I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message because you work hard for your paycheck. You should get to keep more of it. As president, I'll make that my top priority.

Hey, I'm Emily, revealing incredible jobs that are out there. Ah, here's Winston with his burning question. Emily, can race cars top jet planes? I gotta know. Classic. He's a charmer, but his timing could use some work. Winston loves trucks, so we'll explore construction, car racing, and more. Join us on Growing Up, the Lingo Kids podcast inspiring you to chase all your dreams. Listen to Growing Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts.