Hamas – Palestinian Resistance Movement
Updated 2024-08-25
2024-08-08 Yahya Sinwar, Hamas has a new political leader. Yahya Sinwar, described by some as a hardline strategist, spent more than two decades in Israeli prisons and now holds unprecedented power within the movement. His appointment comes a week after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Israel accuses him of masterminding the October attacks which led to Israel’s war on Gaza.
So with Sinwar at the helm, what are the prospects for a ceasefire?
And how will Hamas balance its political and military ambitions?
Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom
Guests:
Omar Rahman — Fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs who focuses on Middle East geopolitics and American foreign policy in the region
Beverley Milton-Edwards– co-author of ‘Hamas: The Quest for Power’ and a former EU special adviser to the Middle East peace process.
Norman Finkelstein — Political scientist who specialises in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_TVBJgxqC4
2024-02-09 Hamas’ Gaza Chief Untraceable? Yahya Sinwar ‘Not In Touch’ With Leaders Amid IDF Offensive Speculation is mounting over the whereabouts of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar reportedly lost touch with other leaders “weeks ago” and was not involved in Hamas’ response to the latest truce proposal. IDF believes that Sinwar and other Hamas leaders are hiding in Khan Younis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PicagrKhCA8
2024-02-04 ‘Houthis Our Brothers’: Gaza Militants Come Out In Support Of Yemeni, Iraqi Resistance Against U.S. Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad blasted U.S. and UK strikes on Iran-linked groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and accused the western nations of supporting ‘Israeli crimes’ against Palestinians in Gaza by striking anti-Israel militants in neighbouring countries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JHpaqATrZU
2023-12-19All the Reasons Israelis and Palestinians Need a Cease-Fire in Gaza—Now! What follows is an issue by issue look at why a ceasefire is necessary to save innocent Palestinian lives, release Israeli hostages, prosecute the perpetrators of October 7, and follow international law. There is no military solution — this was true in Afghanistan and Iraq and it is true in Gaza. It is not possible to destroy Hamas militarily. Going to war against a small group of militants doesn’t work — with nearly 20,000 Palestinians killed, it still appears as of this writing that Israeli forces haven’t killed any top leaders of Hamas. Such military action only breeds greater resistance.
Hamas isn’t only made up of its military wing. It has a political wing that carries out Islamic education, social welfare, and other functions. And while its religious focus is not particularly popular, it is perceived by Palestinians across Gaza as the only Palestinian force standing up to Israeli occupation, apartheid, and the 17 years of siege Israel has imposed on Gaza since before October 7.
Destroying Hamas would require the destruction or expulsion of much of the population of Gaza (and even then, the group and its ideas would likely continue in exile). https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/cease-fire-in-gaza-now
2023-12-04 Israel’s Impossible Dilemma Despite American and other entreaties to limit civilian casualties, Israel appears determined to push into the south of Gaza, but its strategic thinking seems to end there, and to hold no plausible endgame in sight. As a consequence, the next phase of this vicious conflict will almost certainly lead Israel to an unenviable dilemma: whether to grant Hamas a small and ultimately hollow victory or a much larger and all-too-real one.
The next stages of the fighting seem clear. Israel will likely seize all of the significant aboveground urban areas in Gaza’s south, just as it did in the north. After that will come a major battle for control of Hamas’s extensive underground tunnel network, where most of the group’s fighters, leaders, equipment, and remaining hostages are presumed to be located.
All of those goals are plausibly achievable. But Israel’s larger stated aim—of utterly eradicating Hamas—is impossible. Hamas is a brand name, not a list of individuals and objects. Israel could destroy its leaders and all of its equipment, declare victory, and leave Gaza to its fate. Hamas, in some form, would still crawl out of the rubble and declare a “divine victory” of its own.
Not only that: Hamas has cadres all over the Middle East, including the group’s de facto diplomatic branch in Qatar, as well as significant pockets of fighters in the West Bank, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Israel could assassinate them all—and still, at the end of this round of fighting, somebody, in the name of Hamas, will declare victory over Israel, even if only by pointing to October 7 and claiming to have destroyed Israel’s veneer of invincibility, sense of impunity, and insufferable arrogance, while reviving the Palestinian issue on the international stage.
For Israel, leaving Gaza comes with this risk, no matter how severe the physical devastation. Not only could Hamas declare victory, but it could resurrect its governing structures in Gaza if Israel leaves. Israel would then continue its de facto siege and fortify its buffer zone, while Hamas would declare that Israel had retreated in humiliation and defeat. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-s-impossible-dilemma/ar-AA1kZ7th
2023-12-19 Who is Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas ‘mastermind’ in Gaza? Israeli officials say Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and a member of its politburo since 2013, was one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attack, along with Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing the Qassam Brigades, and Marwan Issa, Deif’s deputy. But Sinwar seemingly has the biggest target on his back, as Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have called him a “dead man walking”.
Sinwar, also known as Abu Ibrahim, has myriad stories around him, most adding to the idea that he is a near-mystical villain. This man painted as “the face of evil” was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, to a family that had been displaced by Zionist gangs during the Nakba, or “catastrophe” of 1948. They were from al-Majdal, a Palestinian village razed and built over to create the Israeli town of Ashkelon. Before he turned 20, in 1982, Sinwar was first arrested by Israeli authorities for “Islamic activities”. In 1985, he was arrested again, and it was during this second stint in prison that he met and became close to Hamas’s founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Sinwar was drawn to Hamas and, at 25, he helped establish al-Majd, the group’s internal security organisation, which earned him an uncompromising reputation in dealing with Palestinians who collaborated with Israel. Adding to that reputation was former Shin Bet officer Micha Kobi’s interview with the Financial Times telling of Sinwar boasting to him in the late 1980s about making the brother of an alleged informer bury the accused man alive.
In 1988, at 26, Sinwar was arrested and charged with plotting the murder of two Israeli soldiers and killing 12 Palestinians. He was given four life sentences. During the next 22 years in prison, Sinwar remained strictly disciplined, learned to speak and read Hebrew fluently and became a leader among the prisoners and a focal point for negotiations with prison staff. An Israeli government assessment from his time in prison described Sinwar as charismatic, cruel, manipulative, content with little, cunning and secretive, according to the BBC.
On October 18, 2011, Israel exchanged more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas, and Sinwar was among the Palestinians traded for Shalit. Outside jail, Sinwar quickly climbed the ladder in Hamas. His name landed on Netanyahu’s desk as a target for assassination, but the Israeli premier allegedly rejected plans to kill Sinwar on several occasions. In 2013, he was elected as a member of Hamas’s politburo in the Gaza Strip, before becoming the movement’s leader in Gaza in 2017, replacing Ismail Haniyeh.
Still, in 2018, Sinwar signalled that Hamas’s tactics were moving towards non-armed resistance. Another war with Israel is “definitely not in our interest,” he said at the time. But by late 2022, Sinwar’s calculus seemingly changed. On December 14, 2022, Sinwar and other Hamas leaders told a large crowd in Gaza they predicted an “open confrontation” after Israel elected the most right-wing government in its history. Sinwar’s threats were repeated in early 2023. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/who-is-yahya-sinwar-the-hamas-mastermind-in-gaza/ar-AA1lIrV7
2023-11-13 Why Norm Finkelstein Won’t CONDEMN Hamas The foremost scholar on the Israel-Palestine conflict returns to Bad Faith podcast to weigh in on why he refuses to condemn Hamas despite acknowledging the atrocities of October 7th, and update the pod on the most recent hospital bombing. He also destroys Jake Tapper and Hilary Clinton’s rationales for Israel’s siege against the civilians of Gaza, and debunks common talking points circulated by Zionist mainstream media figures. This is an epic nearly 3 hour conversation you’re not going to want to miss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXikmXo2Gw
2023-11-12 Hamas Didn’t Attack Israelis Because They Are Jewish We need a basic analysis of power and history to understand that Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians, while egregious, had nothing to do with those Israelis’ religion and everything to do with occupation and settler colonialism. In all my urgency, I’d neglected the core thing that needed tending to in my Jewish community: the assumption that Hamas’ attacks on October 7 were an expression of antisemitism, and thus, a threat to all of us.
Much of my family was killed in the Holocaust. On my grandparents’ wedding night, Hitler invaded their home country of Belgium. I grew up hearing my grandmother’s stories of narrowly escaping death at every turn, the wails of Jewish mothers over their dead children, fields of lifeless bodies. My grandparents arrived at Ellis Island traumatized by the unfathomable murder of their families in the gas chambers of Auschwitz while the world let it happen.
So I can understand why many of my fellow Jewish Americans’ limbic systems were triggered on October 7, especially in a world where antisemitism still very much exists, particularly in the context of white nationalism. A world where we are told the same story that Elena was, and where Palestinians are demonized to legitimize that story. Jews can grieve for Israeli lives lost and refuse the weaponization of that grief to commit genocide against Palestinians.
Antisemitism is defined as “discrimination against, violence toward, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish.” Let me be clear: Hamas’ killings of Israeli civilians were wrong, in clear violation of international law. But they weren’t about antisemitism.
The key thing to understand is that, in Israel/Palestine, unlike anywhere else in the world, Jewish people—specifically white Ashkenazi Jews—are the ones in power. Jewish Israelis are the occupiers and Palestinians are the occupied. When I spent eight months in the West Bank documenting human rights abuses, I saw the way Israel controls every aspect of Palestinian life, separating Palestinians from their schools and hospitals; torching their olive groves; demolishing their homes; imprisoning them without trial; discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel; and bringing about the slow, sometimes quick, death of Palestinians in Gaza by cutting them off from the outside world, putting them on a collective “diet,” and periodically bombing civilian infrastructure, homes, and families. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/hamas-attacks-not-antisemitic
2023-10-26 Hamas: Today’s Amalek There are some pretty despicable characters sprinkled throughout the Hebrew Bible; Amalek and his followers are among the worst. Exodus 17:8-16 recounts that, not long after the glorious celebration of dance and song described so beautifully in the Song of Miriam, the Israelites were ambushed by the Amalekites. We learn more about the brutality of the attack near the conclusion of the Torah, in Deuteronomy 25:17-18: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt — how, undeterred by the fear of G-d, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear.” The implication is that if there are any accepted rules of warfare, the Amalekites ignored them with their ruthless barbarity.
The Amalekites, eternal enemies of the Jewish people, are said to be the embodiment of pure evil. Just as the Nazis were the 20th century’s version of Amalek, Hamas has proven that they are the Amalek of today. I see the words “Do not forget” as an admonition to minimize the chances that this nightmare will happen again. Learn from military intelligence mistakes, don’t trust in the humanity of enemies who have none, and always remain vigilant.
At this stage, I doubt that many of us need be reminded of what Hamas did to our people. And I suspect that we agree on what we need to do in return. If we ever hope to live in peace alongside our Palestinian neighbors, Hamas, like Amalek, must be removed from the world. https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/364360/hamas-todays-amalek/
2023-10-20 “Divide and Rule”: How Israel Helped Start Hamas to Weaken Palestinian Hopes for Statehood “This isn’t an effort to try to quell, to destroy Hamas specifically,” says Tareq Baconi, Palestinian analyst and author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance. “This is an effort to pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Gaza Strip and beyond the Gaza Strip, as we see the violence rising in the West Bank.” Baconi lays out Israel’s history of enabling Hamas while designating them as terrorists in order to maintain tight control over Gaza. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/20/divide_and_rule_how_israel_helped
2023-10-19 US Warmongers Keep Pushing The Narrative That Hamas Is To Blame For All Deaths In Gaza US warmongers have been forcefully pushing the propaganda narrative that Hamas bears 100 percent responsibility for all deaths in Gaza, and Israel bears zero percent, as Israel ramps up its mass slaughter of Palestinians. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-warmongers-keep-pushing-the-narrative
2023-10-14 THE PLAN TO WIPE OUT HAMAS It’s been one week since the horrific Hamas attacks on Israel took place, and the shape of what is to come from the Israeli armed forces is clear, and uncompromising. Over the past week Israeli jets have conducted around-the-clock bombing of non-military targets in Gaza City. Apartment buildings, hospitals, and mosques were torn apart, with no prior warning and no effort to minimize civilian casualties.
By the end of the week Israeli jets were also dropping leaflets telling the citizens of Gaza City and its surrounding areas in the north that those who wished to survive had better start going south—walking if necessary—25 miles or more—to the Rafah border crossing leading to Egypt. As of this writing, it was not clear whether financially stricken Egypt will allow a million immigrants, many of them committed to the Hamas cause, to cross. In the short term, I have been told by an Israeli insider that Israel has been trying to convince Qatar, which at the urging of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a long-time financial supporter of Hamas, to join with Egypt in funding a tent city for the million or more refugees awaiting across the border. “It’s not a done deal,” the Israeli insider told me. Israeli officials have warned Egypt and Qatar that without a landing site, the refugees will have to “go back to Gaza. https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-plan-to-wipe-out-hamas
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