Two years ago today, Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in combat in Gaza –– personally fighting on the frontlines against invading Israeli soldiers.
Inexplicably, Israel chose to release its drone video of his last moments. Sitting in an armchair, hooded in a Palestinian kuffiyeh, his right arm blown off, covered in dust from artillery shelling, he resisted until his very last moment –– defiantly throwing a stick at the Israeli drone.
In releasing this video, Israel inadvertently helped solidify Sinwar's already formidable military legacy amongst his people. Viewed by Israelis as an arch villain and terrorist embodiment of evil, the Palestinians rather see him as the modern day successor of their long line of resistance heroes, going way back to Izz al-Din al-Qassam himself, and further, in the past 150 years of resistance to Zionist colonialism in Palestine.
The images of Sinwar's final moments eerily echoed his most iconic photo, below, in which he defiantly sat in a surviving armchair amidst the rubble of his home, destroyed by Israel in their 2021 aggression against the people of Gaza.
The video also blew years of Israeli propaganda out of the water: Sinwar had not been "hiding behind Israeli hostages" or cowering in a hole somewhere, or using his people as human shields.
He had been on the frontlines, personally commanding his troops and attempting to defend the southern city of Rafah.
Read more in
@maureenclarem's contemporary report on Sinwar's death for
@intifada. Link in reply.