When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday announced that IDF forces operating in Rafah had eliminated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, he directed a portion of his remarks to the people of Gaza.
“Sinwar destroyed your lives,” he told them.
“He told you he was a lion, when in fact, he was hiding in a dark den, and he was killed as he was fleeing in terror from our soldiers. His elimination is an important milestone in the fall of the Hamas regime.”
“Hamas will never again control Gaza,” Netanyahu declared. “This is the beginning of the day after Hamas. This is an opportunity for you, Gaza residents, to free yourselves finally from its tyranny.”
Now it’s up to them to make the choice.
Whatever they choose, Israel isn’t going to to accept anything less than the total destruction of Hamas.
Sinwar was one of the first terrorists to join Hamas when the terror group was formed in 1987 as the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Israel arrested him and sentenced him to four life terms for murdering Palestinians he had accused of working with Israel.
In 2005, Sinwar’s brother Muhamed, now considered his replacement, used a cross-border tunnel to Israel to kidnap IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Hamas held Shalit hostage for five years until Israel agreed to release Yahya Sinwar, and 1,026 other jailed terrorists, in exchange for Shalit.
Shortly after his release, Sinwar traveled to Iran. He met with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard terror master Qassem Soleimani and offered to subordinate Hamas to Iran in exchange for arms, cash and training.
Sinwar took over Hamas and its regime in Gaza in 2017. He took a society that had long viewed Israel’s destruction as an aspiration and convinced it that Israel’s annihilation was not a pipe dream.
They could do it. And he would lead them in achieving that goal.
As leader, Sinwar took the billions of aid dollars Hamas-ruled Gaza received from the United States and the international community to transform Gaza into a genocide factory.
He indoctrinated the Gazans to believe in genocide.
He built the most powerful defenses ever seen — 350 miles of underground tunnels that traversed the border with Egypt, and every inch of Gaza.
He smuggled thousands of missiles and rockets into Gaza and built thousands more inside his tunnels.
He sent his terrorists to train in Lebanon and Iran.
And on Oct. 7, 2023, he sent his terror army into Israel to torture, rape, murder and kidnap its people.
Aided by thousands of “ordinary civilians,” who followed them into Israel, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis on that day and took another 256 back to Gaza as hostages.
Sinwar expected Iran to order its other terror proxies to join Hamas’ war against Israel, and it did.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel with rockets, drones and missiles on Oct. 8. The Houthis in Yemen and Iran’s terror forces in Iraq and Syria followed suit in short order. The Palestinians in Judea and Samaria joined as well.
Counting Iran, within weeks of Hamas’ massacre, Israel was under attack on seven fronts.
Netanyahu’s message to the Gazans was simple: Sinwar is dead and Israel is winning this war. Hamas has no chance of ever defeating us. Turn on Hamas before it is too late.
His message reflected the truth that is being recognized regionwide: Israel has laid waste not only to Hamas’ regime in Gaza, but to Iran’s terror empire.
For the first time in decades, Israel is showing that victory over Islamic terror groups and regimes is not only possible, it is within reach.
Addressing what is left of Hamas’ terror army, Netanyahu said, “Your leaders are fleeing and they will be eliminated.”
“I call everyone holding our hostages: Anyone who puts down his arms and returns our abductees, we will permit to leave and live. And by the same token I say, anyone who harms our abductees will be signing his death warrant. We will settle scores with him.”
A statement like that six months ago, before Israel took over Rafah, when everyone from President Biden to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was waiting anxiously for a word from Sinwar, might have been disregarded as empty talk.
Today everyone understands that the choice is real.
Israel has killed Sinwar and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, dozens of other terror chiefs and thousands of mid-level commanders.
Israel has overturned Iran’s chessboard. And it will win this war, ensuring its survival and safeguarding the world from the scourge of Iran’s axis of terror.