r/JewsOfConscience • u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) • Oct 19 '24
Discussion Questions about Sinwar's Death
- What they thought was an opposing soldier was heavily wounded and armed with a stick, which he threw at the drone. The I.D.F.'s response was to kill him with a sniper shot to the head and then bring down the building with tank fire.
Why haven't any Western journalists asked about what Israel's rules of engagement were? Was it legal to kill what appeared to be a badly wounded, dying enemy infantryman?
For months, reporters relied on U.S. and Israel intelligence assessments that said that Sinwar was hiding in a tunnel, surrounded by Israeli hostages, with whom he was protecting himself. This description tended to give an image of an insulated leader cowering in fear while putting ordinary people at risk. Instead, it's very plain that he died by chance, in combat with no hostages anywhere near. His corpse was diminutive; not a man who fed on ample rations. How much has the narrative been distorted?
Something written in the June, 2024 Wall Street Journal exclusive about Sinwar's private messages has stayed with me. "'Things went out of control,' Sinwar said in one of his messages, referring to gangs taking civilian women and children as hostages. 'People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.'" Wall Street Journal, Jun. 10, 2024, "Gaza Chief’s Brutal Calculation: Civilian Bloodshed Will Help Hamas."
The description of the planning for the Oct. 7, 2023 attack as reported by the New York Times in its recent exclusive based on minutes of Hamas meetings went like this:
"At this point, preparations for the attack were roughly a month from completion, according to the June 2022 minutes. The plans included striking 46 positions staffed by the Israeli military division that guards the border, and then targeting a major air base and intelligence hub in southern Israel, as well as cities and villages."
"The leaders said it would be easier to target those residential areas if the military bases were overrun first — a prediction that proved to be correct on Oct. 7."
Did Hamas' high command, including Sinwar, plan a bloody slaughter of Israeli civilians, or did they have a different plan that went awry? Was it or wasn't it in Sinwar's nature to viciously and indiscriminately kill in that manner? With Israel's control of information and limitations on access for foreign press, the full story of Oct. 7, 2023 remains elusive.
Given the materials the New York Times has access to, minutes of a string of Hamas meetings in which the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks were planned, has it given an adequate account of whether Hamas high command intended to perpetrate atrocities?
- New York Times, Oct. 18, 2024, "What will become of Yahya Sinwar’s body?" "Israel often holds the corpses of Palestinians, hoping to use them in a future exchange with Hamas or other militant groups, just as Hamas has done with the bodies of hostages killed on or after the Hamas-led attack in Israel."
What the fuck?
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u/senzare Oct 19 '24
Where were the human shields to protect him?
That's what we heard from MSM for over a year. It's well apparent that it was another false narrative.
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u/HiThisIsGio Oct 20 '24
My main argument against the human shields nonsense is that it wouldn't make any sense using human shields (for the Palestinian resistance) if Israel just keeps targeting civilians and using the same bs excuse: why on earth would they think that the 95th hospital would be one too many for the zionists?
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u/BadFurDay Oct 19 '24
Remember the claims that Hamas leaders were billionaires hiding in Qatar while Gaza burned? Hard to trust anything when these unsourced fake news make it around most of the media and social media world and people trust them.
Reminds me of the portrayal of Algerian FLN leaders by french colonial media during the Algerian war of liberation. They tried the same tactics to paint them as too greedy to be worth considering seriously.
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 19 '24
They are there in the rubble with their people and dying with and like them
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 19 '24
Correction, maybe not dying, but being martyred is a better description, which does not imply an ethical judgment.
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u/HelpM3Sl33p Oct 19 '24
Keep in mind (and I'm not saying this to be like "actually! 🤓," but just so FYI) that I think there are like 1-3 "political" leaders outside of the country. I don't know if they're in exile or something, or really much about the background.
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 21 '24 edited Oct 21 '24
I can understand governments in exile due to invasion. It used to be political leaders were not to be targeted in military campaigns i thought, including top military officials. Resistance movements often operate far removed from combat areas. Any form of leadership in any organization wouldn't be right there on the front lines. That's how they can plan, communicate, strategize, coordinate with allies. I mean they're not all warriors like Leonidas or Stonewall Jackson. Even de Gaulle led the French Resistance from London. Where was Lenin before the Bolsheviks took over?
That doesn't mean they're living large in exile
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u/autostart17 Oct 19 '24
Hanniyeh was in Qatar before he was killed in Iran?
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u/SentientSeaweed Oct 21 '24
The negotiations were in Qatar. His family was in Gaza and more than 60 of them, including a toddler granddaughter, were killed before he was. There’s a video of his reaction when he’s told that his sons were killed.
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u/autostart17 Oct 21 '24
I wonder what his relationship was with Sinwar. I wonder if they had frayed and who was really responsible for the plans of 10/7 and if the plans were strayed from by the militants.
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 19 '24 edited Oct 19 '24
I think it's fair to say Oct 7 was such a tactical embarrassment for Israel they took advantage of the atrocities by framing the story into a subhuman group of hateful savages attacked and terrorized innocent Israelis out of blood lust. Oct 7 was largely a military campaign with strategic objectives. Of course, many of those militants engaged in horrifying war crimes, which is unsurprising given the decades of oppression the Israeli government has exercised over them. I don't know about intent from Hamas commanders or participants that day. Im sure revenge and terror were on some ovtheir of their agendas, to be fair. Also too be fair, Israeli "civil diplomacy" "explains" the events in ways that seek to discredit Palestinian resistance.
The fixation on seeing events of October 7th in terms of normal ethical judgments is less helpful than seeking to understand why they happened. Israeli supporters or proponents of its Zionism are so misguided and self-destructing when they refuse to acknowledge Palestinian resistance outside of simplistic and self-righteousness moral judgments.
I cannot accurately and will not attempt to judge Sinwar. I think it's best to assess and analyze his historical importance as central figure in the story of Palestinian resistance - what made his methods of resistance, what of his martyrdom, how did he rise to leadership, and what led to his decisions and the State of Israel's obsession to discredit and knock him off?
I deviated from your central point. The main point i think is that Israel PR will not tell an honest and fair story. They must discredit him to frame resistance against them as hatred toward them.
I think after asking such and finding truths about the man we can assess the wisdom or insanity of his means of resistance.
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u/blishbog Oct 19 '24
Don’t forget he was a scholar who knew Hebrew and translated texts during his decades in Israeli prison. Born a refugee, died fighting on the front line. Just facts no editorializing here.
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 19 '24
Interesting. I did not know Maybe there can be fairer account in death than in life. I guess that's an aspect of martyrdom.
It seems many Palestinian leaders and advocates are highly educated and. Intellectual. By some measures I've heard Palestinians and especially Gazans among the most literate people on earth.
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u/iqnux Non-Jewish Ally Oct 19 '24
Your points above on martyrdom are interesting. How do you define martyrdom?
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 23 '24
I think it's different in each scenario. Life in Gaza is almost sanctified. Memory lives in in the liberation struggle. Maybe a prominent death that inspires the will to survive is martyrdom. I think it's different with suicidal terrorists who die for the sake of death. Sinwar did not want to die. But he knew he would in tbe resistance fight. I think a martyr must fight for life and venerate it, kind of like Sisyphus? I that way, martyrdom is definitely by a life of activism for justice. In Gaza living is resistance, in the middle of genocide. That's why Al quada are not martyrs. Their murder-suicide was self-serving amd hateful. Death was the only reward, so life neant nothing. What is that life for? A martyr would die while fighting for life. I don't really know much about Sinwar, and could offer an ethical judgment on his methods and I certainly cannot determine how it inspires me to action coming from a different world. Its the Palestinian people inspire them to action, often just keeping memory alive finding joy in life knowing death could happen instantly. The Early Christians are called martyrs sometimes for being fed to lions. They achieved a status and over time now just an ideology out of context. That raises questions about Jews in history forced to convert or suffer or even be killed. They denied themselves the status of martyrs, but cannot be blamed for choosing survival and the death of their historical memory. A martyr isn't good or bad.
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u/cupcakefascism Jewish Communist Oct 19 '24
Why all this speculation on why Hamas did it and what they planned without at all referencing what they say about it themselves?
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u/Critter-Enthusiast Oct 19 '24 edited Oct 19 '24
The media focuses on the hostages taken, but does not highlight the fact that they were taken to be traded for Palestinian hostages who far out number the Israeli ones.
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u/cupcakefascism Jewish Communist Oct 19 '24
Quite. And that they specifically wanted military hostages and tried to give the civilians back within hours.
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 19 '24
Oh yes. I did see those reports the government rejected a hostage deal on October 8
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u/marvsup Oct 19 '24
Do you have a source? I'm very curious
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u/cupcakefascism Jewish Communist Oct 19 '24
“We left the meeting very disappointed because Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war. He didn’t promise anything regarding the demand to return the hostages. He merely said a military operation in Gaza was needed to serve as leverage for the hostages’ release.
We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the Strip, but the government rejected the offer.”
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 19 '24
Also oct waa a horrible military failure and victory although brief for Palestinian resistance overall. Israel had frame the narrative about the events around "Hamas delenda est" on the basis of crying Amalek
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u/cupcakefascism Jewish Communist Oct 19 '24
Also OP if you want to know more about how Israel uses the bodies of their loved ones against Palestinians, listen to this episode of Makdisi Street with Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.
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u/Correct_Brilliant435 Oct 19 '24
Laws only work when they are enforced. Israel can do what it likes because no laws are enforced.
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u/brkonthru Oct 19 '24
Rules of engagement…. Dude!
Israel killed its own people on the 7th
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Oct 19 '24
It's not that I'm surprised at Israel, but it is demoralizing that reporters have stopped asking the questions, as if they've become desensitized or as if this conduct has become, at least for Israel, normalized in world public opinion.
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u/badoopidoo Oct 19 '24 edited Oct 19 '24
I'm a lawyer with an academic background in international issues. I'm currently researching a different major ongoing war. While it's unprofessional to draw legal conclusions from seeing a video extract as we don't know what happened beforehand, my immediate preliminary thoughts after seeing it was that it needed investigation for potential war crime violations. He was injured and unarmed. There's clear rules about that for combatants. It's also concerning to me that Israel released the footage showing the killing of an injured, unarmed combatant without realising the potential legal implications. It shows a real disconnect with the Geneva Conventions and makes me curious about what's in their rules of engagement.
None of this is to dismiss the fact that Sinwar himself was likely a war criminal. However, that doesn't make illegally executing him okay.
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u/autostart17 Oct 19 '24
The other question is whether they could have heightened the chances of saving the hostages by taking him captive, vs killing him.
Wonder if they made the right decision, strictly militarily, on that.
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u/Saul_al-Rakoun Conservadox & Marxist Oct 22 '24
The Israeli government has no intention of saving the hostages.
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u/Alarmed-Albatross200 Oct 20 '24
He and bodyguards had been shooting at and throwing grenades at the IDF. I believe I read that at least one soldier had been injured.
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u/blishbog Oct 19 '24
David Simon (creator of “The Wire”) blocked me for suggesting maybe Israel killed some Jews on 10/7. Now evidence makes “killed most” very plausible, and they’ve been destroying the evidence ever since
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u/Klutzy-Pool-1802 Ashkenazi, atheist, postZ Oct 19 '24
What evidence is that?
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Oct 19 '24
Both Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth have published reporting about the I.D.F. firing on Israeli civilians on October 7th.
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u/Klutzy-Pool-1802 Ashkenazi, atheist, postZ Oct 19 '24
Yeah, did they suggest this was potentially hundreds of Israeli deaths? Potentially a majority of Israeli deaths? That would be a pretty big story if true.
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u/ComradeTortoise Jewish Communist Oct 19 '24 edited Oct 19 '24
Why haven't any Western journalists asked about what Israel's rules of engagement were? Was it legal to kill what appeared to be a badly wounded, dying enemy infantryman?
Yeah, that at least, wasn't a war crime. If the wounded are still fighting, it's legal to kill them. I mean, kinda funny that the Israeli soldiers had to use a sniper and tanks to take out an emaciated man with one arm, but it was legal.
For months, reporters relied on U.S. and Israel intelligence assessments that said that Sinwar was hiding in a tunnel, surrounded by Israeli hostages, with whom he was protecting himself.
Whenever you hear the word "intelligence assessment", that has been released to the public, if it is coming from the US government, you really should just assume it is propaganda. Their real intelligence information they keep secret, and what they release is designed to dehumanize our supposed enemies and justify atrocity. Remember the "intelligence assessments" regarding WMDs in Iraq?
Given the materials the New York Times has access to, minutes of a string of Hamas meetings in which the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks were planned, has it given an adequate account of whether Hamas high command intended to perpetrate atrocities?
Everything I've seen paints a picture. Hamas intended to punk the IDF and take some military hostages to exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Administrative Detention (read: being tortured). Probably secondarily to sow terror among the civilian population and break their illusion of untouchability too (Which, you know, isn't great. But it's understandable given history.)
The problem was, this was a large operation, and Hamas likely lacks the organizational capacity to pull off something like that without it going wrong, given what kind of fighters they have to work with (mostly ~20ish year old kids who are very very angry, and not operating under what we would consider modern military discipline or sufficiently rigid command and control structures and hierarchies. They also have other allied orgs like Islamic Jihad with far worse ideologies, less discipline, and a different agenda either operating with them or piggybacking). They managed to pull off the attack, but their command structure lost operational discipline/control, and their fighters... lost it on a civilian population.
They killed civilians, they sexually abused civilians to varying extent (not to the extent claimed by the Israeli government, but it still happened), they captured civilians. The intent was to go after the IDF bases. But the guys with boots on the ground didn't follow the plan to varying extent based on individual or small-group inclination.
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u/_II_I_I__I__I_I_II_ Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 19 '24
The short answer is, no one in corporate America cares about any semblance of 'rules'.
Israel regularly kills innocent civilians, and the media does not care.
So I doubt they'll kick up any drama over Sinwar.