Glory to the Martyr Yahya al-Sinwar: 2 Years on We Recommit to Liberation

More than two years after the martyrdom of Yahya al-Sinwar – fighter, leader, liberated prisoner, son of the refugee camps of Gaza and head of the Political Bureau of Hamas — we reaffirm our commitment to the resistance he helped build and to the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners. 

Yahya al-Sinwar changed the world with his strategic planning, strong leadership, commitment to justice, tireless organizing, and faith in God. As part of the founding generation of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, he began his political work as a student at the Islamic University of Gaza. He was imprisoned several times by the zionists until he was finally sentenced to four life sentences in 1988. While the enemy was determined to bury him within the walls of its dungeons, Sinwar used these harsh conditions as an opportunity to study the enemy and prepare himself and his comrades for the years of struggle ahead. His brothers in Hamas liberated him along with 1,027 other prisoners in the 2011 Wafa’al-Ahrar exchange and he immediately set himself to work. 

Sinwar was one of three brilliant leaders, alongside the martyrs Marwan Issa and Mohammed al-Deif, behind operation Toufan Al Aqsa on October 7th, 2023. This great crossing, tearing through the walls encircling Gaza, humiliated the enemy, liberated the prisoners, and relaunched the Palestinian struggle after decades of Oslo induced sedatives and zionist escalations. Quite simply, it ripped the entire world in half. Toufan Al Aqsa and the genocide that followed clarified that there are only two camps that exist today. There is the camp of genocide, colonialism, and imperialism, intent on the death and destruction of the majority of the people and the planet for the gross enrichment the ruling class: a handful of Epstein pedophiles, their regimes, and their companies. And then there is the camp of resistance, of justice and humanity which includes the Islamic, leftist, and other freedom-loving revolutionary forces on the Palestinian, Arab, and International scene that fight against Zionism, imperialism, and capitalism. 

Sinwar was martyred in battle on the front lines of Rafah, one year after the launch of the flood, after the enemy happened to find him. Not one of these Zionist invaders had the spine to face him, and they cowered behind their high-tech drones and heavy weaponry to kill one man. A 61 year old man, wounded, having not eaten for three days, used his last weapon and last breath to strike the invader. 

The zionists believe that killing a leader defeats a movement. But Sinwar’s influence, his example of how to live a life of honor and dignity only grew stronger after his martyrdom. The Zionists cannot escape from the historical fact that in Palestine, what they kill only multiplies. A thousand fighters have risen up to take Sinwar’s

place.The structures of resistance he built, in the student movements, among the prisoners, in the mosques, for the resistance security force of Al-Majd, for Al Qassam brigades, and for the government in Gaza, continue to grow and live collectively, beyond Sinwar. 

Today, al-Sinwar cannot truly be said to have left our world. He lives on as a popular hero, especially for the international students and youth coming of age during a period of immense worldwide revolutionary change. Our generation grew up during global protests of the George Floyd rebellion, an unprecedented genocidal onslaught on the Arab-Iranian region, a legacy of the decline of the international Left and complete US-western hegemony on the financial system of the world. All the attacks of the last decades including wars, sanctions, and normalization pacts attempted to seal the final nails on the coffin of the Palestinian struggle and, with it, the Arab, Islamic, and human causes for sovereignty, dignity, and justice. As Sinwar stated in a famous June 2021 interview when recounting the racist murder of George Floyd in the aftermath of the battle of Seif al-Quds: the free people of the world must put an end to these crimes.

Al-Sinwar, through his leadership in the Great March of Return, the battle of Seif al-Quds, Toufan Al Aqsa, and more, proved that the Palestinian cause is alive, capable of defending itself, and capable of advancing against the enemy’s worst plans. With this, he proved that revolution itself is alive, that we are not defeated unless we accept defeat, and that the whole world has a role in this struggle for justice. For many youth and students this has fundamentally changed our outlook on the world and our tasks.

We did not live in the time of Omar Al Mukhtar, Izz el-Din al-Qassam, Vladimir Lenin, Patrice Lumumba, Ghassan Kanafani, Mao Zedong, Malcolm X, Fathi Shaqaqi, or Ché Guevara but their names, faces, stories, and ideas bring steadfastness and guidance. We lived in the time of Yahya al-Sinwar, Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Saleh Al-Arouri, and Ismail Haniyeh, today’s revolutionary martyrs who lived and died in the service of God, of Palestine and her people, and of all of humanity who fights in the camp of resistance. We will not forget them, and we will honor their martyrdom through living and fighting as they did, as we take up our role in the battle for liberation, continuing in their path. 

A selection of resources on the martyr:

https://odysee.com/@samidounnetwork:d/Sinwar-interview:d
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/demystifying-how-the-hamas-leadership-works/
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/the-philosophy-of-hamas-in-the-writings-of-yahya-sinwar/
https://mujammaharaket.substack.com/p/excerpts-from-al-majd-glory-by-yahya
https://samidoun.net/2024/10/prisoner-leader-martyr-yahya-sinwar-the-great-hero-of-palestine/
https://www.palquest.org/en/biography/41041/yahya-al-sinwar
https://orinocotribune.com/how-palestinian-resistance-leader-yahya-sinwar-led-the-negotiations-for-the-2011-prisoner-exchange-from-inside-prison/