Under Yahya Sinwar Hamas Is a Death Cult

[ancianita]

Sinwar Stands Alone by Seth Mandel

...There are three reasons for the West to find encouragement in this latest turn of events.
First, Hamas’s leadership bench is depleted, and Israel’s careful decapitation of its branches has been effective.
Second, Sinwar’s consolidation of power, combined with his geographic isolation, turns Hamas from an organization into a literal death cult.
Third, it collapses a comforting lie that the West tells itself about these terror groups, enabling a more honest conversation about how to defeat them.

More important, however, is that his communications network—Hamas deputies abroad, Hezbollah officials, Iranian government officials, Haniyeh in Qatar—has already been badly disrupted. His isolation means he is even more powerful within Hamas, but that is because now he IS Hamas. And it also means that Sinwar is nothing more than an Iranian satrap...

...Sinwar’s vision is a maniacal march to Armageddon, not a blueprint for governing. When the Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar talked to members of the Palestinian old guard who had left Gaza, they made clear to him just how much “the entire leadership had been taken captive by the Sinwar group’s deranged idea of an all-out battle. They had an orderly plan and they believed they were fulfilling a divinely ordained mission.”...

...that description of the conflict isn’t really in doubt anymore, either. Sinwar is now Hamas’s political “wing,” its military “wing,” and any other chimerical “wing.” Large terror groups like Hamas have different departments, sure, but the West has always fooled itself into believing there’s a fundamental difference between the guy playing Good Cop and the guy playing Bad Cop. In reality, they’re all the Bad Cop. And now there’s not even someone opposite Sinwar to pretend that a compromise is in the works and the West just has to keep making concessions to the “moderates” so the hardliners don’t lose their temper.

Sinwar was the mastermind behind October 7. That’s who he is, that’s who Hamas is, and there’s no plausible way to pretend otherwise."

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/sinwar-stands-alone/

[Joinfortmill]

1. What a nightmare

[ancianita]

2. It is. And seeing the UN's list of terrorist organizations, and what countries declare them terrorist, is a sobering

perspective on why ending Israel is only part of the Islamic mission. And so different versions of this nightmare will continue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_groups

That Hamas itself hides behind civilians is why they are indicted by the I.C.C



The reason people are leaving Lebanon by the thousands is because they will be casualties when Hezbollah is the next target of Israel, which has rooted out Hamas' organizational leadership, except for this death cult leader.

Israel's closest enemy, Hezbollah (Iran is its biggest enemy), is its current focus, and Biden as commander-in-chief, is now trying to deter Hezbollah and its allies from entering the war on Israel. Hezbollah's leadership is in Tehran, and so will be harder to root out than that of Hamas.



.

[dalton99a]

3. Hamas leaders should lead by example by offing themselves

[ancianita]

4. They'll only do that in order to take Israelis (and even collaterally, Palestinian civilians) down with them.

Haaretz interviews a Shin Bet interrogator of Sinwar...

Sweeping charisma is also an attribute of psychopaths.

Look, he suggested that people endanger their life, confront the army. People usually respond to such ideas apprehensively and attempt to evade the issue. But with Sinwar no one declined. Everyone he approached was recruited immediately and agreed to every mission. This is what I wrote about him after the second round of questioning: "A Hamas activist in every fiber of his body. A figure of a leader with the personality of a murderer. During interrogation he was characterized by cleverness, guile, with operative cognitive abilities that were manifested in his field activity. A logistics person, and an amazing organizer and operator in the field." To you, I'll say that he hates Israel at an extreme level, which was translated in our presence into toxic comments, spoken with burning hatred.

Such as what, for example?

He told me in one interrogation: "You know that one day you will be the one under interrogation, and I will stand here as the government, as the interrogator. I will interrogate you." I shudder when I say that now, because just think: This is not so very far from reality now. If I lived in a community near the Gaza Strip, I might have found myself in a tunnel, opposite that man. I absolutely remember how he said it to me, as a promise, his eyes red. How did he put it? "Our roles will be reversed. The world will turn upside-down for you." You could see how much he believed in himself.

And what fearlessness. Micha Kobi noted also that Sinwar often made threats in his interrogations.
He has no fear. He did not hide his thoughts about his intention to murder Shin Bet personnel. He told me, "I will murder you, all your colleagues in the Mukhabarat [Arabic for secret police]," as he termed the Shin Bet. You need to understand what level of psychological warfare he employed already then, as a detainee. He faces you and curses and threatens, and is not afraid. I don't know how that served him. Why should someone under interrogation do something like that? Even if that's what you think, what do you gain from telling the interrogator that you will murder him?
A grandiose ego that he must feed.
His ego leads him, without a doubt at all. From then until this very day. The fact that he was placed behind bars didn't harm his leadership abilities or affect his determination to take action against the Zionist enemy. On the contrary: In prison he simply kept working. He activated people, recruited militants. Scary.

Were you afraid of him?
No.

Were there other interrogatees who threatened you like that?

Not like that. With him I experienced moments when I felt that I was liable to lose control and do things that must not be done and get into trouble. I left the room quite a lot during sessions with him, which I don't customarily do. He's one of those interrogatees who could lead you into a corner where you get tripped up and fall, and I didn't want to fall into a trap. I think I understood that he was looking for that. That he saw in my loss of control a weakness, that if I were tempted to lay into him, he would say to himself, "Great, he's afraid of me." I just feigned indifference.

Did he succeed in surprising you?

In terms of his cruelty and hardness, yes. I hadn't seen people like that before. Someone who behaves and speaks so boldly, isn't ashamed and doesn't fear the interrogator, and tells you: "You are the criminal, and even if the world turns upside-down I will deal with heretic Jews like you." ...

For the jihad is eternal.

They never stopped telling us that. Sinwar, too. He kept saying, "We see an Islamic state from the Nile to the Euphrates. There is no Israel." He couldn't bear the idea that there was a Jewish entity that has a state and a government. "There will be an Islamic state, the only law will be Islamic law. We won't necessarily kill the Jews, you will be able to go on living here as protected people."

https://archive.ph/gdvjz#selection-1889.0-2033.292