'Sinwar the Bogeyman' written out of Israel's Hamas script

Inspired by the creative accounts coming out about the demise of Hamas bogeyman Yahya Sinwar in southern Gaza on Wednesday evening I figured I’d give it a go too... suppose there must be a frustrated scriptwriter inside me who’s failed to find a home in Hollywood or Pinewood.

But having read the Israeli narrative, obediently followed by the mainstream media, about the expiration of “Sinwar the Bogeyman” I figured I couldn’t do any worse.

I’ve researched much about Sinwar, who conveniently disappeared in Gaza soon after allegedly masterminding the nonsensical Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October last year, and would argue his role in the Mossad pantomime has been nothing more than to provide the cover story for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud regime to carry out its year-long ethnic-cleansing campaign in Gaza.

Conveniently he’d eluded capture for the past 12 months, allegedly holed up in the network of tunnels under Gaza constructed by Israel after it took control of the region from Egypt in 1967 and held under full military occupation until 2005 when it withdrew its settlers and soldiers for Hamas to assume full control following the January 2006 elections, the last to be held in the enclave.

Infiltrated, financed and foisted on the people of Gaza by Israel after Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation showed too much intent to come to the negotiating table with former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Hamas is the Israeli phantom that justifies its ongoing terrorism in Gaza.

With Rabin assassinated in Tel Aviv in November 1995 and Arafat mysteriously passing away after a “massive haemorrhagic cerebrovascular accident” in 2004, the scene was set for Israel to take out Hamas’ founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and infiltrate the movement and bankroll it to an election victory in 2006.

That’s the background to Hamas’ role in Gaza, with Sanwar taking over as its leader there in 2017 from Ismail Haniyeh, the current chief of the group’s political bureau in Kuwait and head of the Hamas list that narrowly won the 2006 elections.

And until yesterday morning Sinwar had supposedly been hiding in the Gaza tunnels for the past 12 months, along with his bodyguards and a “human shield” of hostages seized from Israel in October last year who the Israel Defence Forces had been desperately fearful of harming while shelling infrastructure to smithereens and bombing thousands of women and children in the process. But hey, keeping those hostages safe was a top priority, but then again, maybe they never even existed?

But during a chance encounter in Rafah on Wednesday night an Israeli patrol engaged and eliminated “three militants”, before returning yesterday morning to identify the bodies. The soldiers from the 828th Bislamach Brigade inspected the scene at Tal al-Sultan and found one of the bodies bore a striking resemblance to the Hamas leader, despite having suffered “catastrophic head wounds”.

According to a BBC report the corpse “remained in situ due to suspected booby traps and instead, part of a finger was removed and sent to Israel for testing”.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said the brigade had identified the three men running from house to house and engaged them, with Sinwar killed after being located by a drone.

“None of the hostages Sinwar was believed to be using as a human shield were present and his small retinue suggests either he was trying to move unnoticed or had lost many of those protecting him,” the BBC report said, adding that by the end of the day DNA tests confirmed Sinwar had been eliminated.

Now that’s basically the official Israeli narrative about Sinwar’s passing and I have to say I’m far from convinced. The most puzzling thing about it in my eyes is why Israel has decided to dispense with his services now? You’d expect the news to put pressure on Netanyahu to stop the genocide in Gaza, but I can’t imagine for one second he has any intention of allowing that to happen.

The next puzzle is whether Sinwar has simply past his sell-by date and no longer has a part to play in the Zionist agenda so has really been exterminated or just been written out of the script?

And I really don’t have an answer to that question although I do have my own shaggy-dog story to tell about Sinwar’s whereabouts for the past 12 months, which begins shortly after Israel’s false-flag deception on 7 October last year.

Sinwar, nominated as the scapegoat for Hamas' alleged “atrocities” (none of which had any substance to them), is spirited away through the Israeli-built underground tunnel network to Israel where he boards a US military transport from the top-secret Site 512, one of a half-dozen US bases in Israel, located 38 kilometres from Gaza at Be'er Sheva.

Home to the American 13th Missile Defence Battery the base is manned by more than 200 Americans, three quarters of whom are contractors employed by companies such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, who operate the missiles, radar and communications links.

The military transport takes Sinwar on an 11,000-kilometre journey from Site 512 to another US facility in Guam, part of the Mariana Islands archipelago. Landing at Andersen Air Force Base six kilometres from Yigo in the north of the island, Sinwar finds his slice of paradise at the remote but idyllic Tarague Beach, a hidden gem away from the madding crowd in the western Pacific Ocean.

With little more than Israeli forensic tests on a bit of finger to go on, you can’t totally dismiss it as a possible scenario with Guam somewhere Sinwar could still be holed up, although realistically he could be anywhere right now… dead or alive.

One thing is certain though, Israel’s going to have to find a new bogeyman now to provide its “get-out-of-jail card” for its acts of genocide in Gaza and war-mongering in the Middle East. But Sinwar’s a tough act to follow, he really had the appearance and all the credentials of the archetypal pantomime villain, wonder what he looks like now?