As you already know, Yahya Sinwar is dead. He was killed last week by a bullet to the head:
The leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head, according to the director of Israel’s national forensic institute, Dr. Chen Kugel, who oversaw the autopsy and described its findings in an interview with The New York Times on Friday.
He said that shrapnel, possibly from either a small missile or tank shell, had earlier hit Mr. Sinwar’s arm, causing bleeding that he was trying to stanch by using an electrical cord as an impromptu tourniquet. “But it wouldn’t have worked in any case,” Mr. Kugel said. “It wasn’t strong enough, and his forearm was smashed.”
Like a lot of people I was hopeful that once Sinwar was dead there would be some movement by Hamas to release the hostages, but his deputy quickly announced that would not be the case.
“We are continuing Hamas’s path,” Mr. al-Hayya, who lives in exile in Qatar, said in the group’s first official comments about Mr. Sinwar’s killing by Israeli forces, adding that the slain leader’s “banner will not fall.”
In any case, the war is over for Sinwar and it's interesting to take a look back at what he thought was going to happen when he planned the 10/7 attack. Based on captured documents, we know that the ultimate goal was to drag Hezbollah, Iran and other groups into a larger war against Israel, a final war that would defeat them.
the Hamas leader was crystal clear about his ultimate intention: the destruction of the state of Israel. He repeats the point multiple times in the captured letters and asks Iranian officials to help him in his quest.
A series of letters dated in June 2021 are essentially pleas to Iran’s leaders to send more money and provide training for a division’s worth of new fighters...
If Hamas receives the aid, “we are confident that we and you, by the end of these two years or during them, if God wills, we will uproot this monstrous entity,” meaning Israel, Sinwar writes to Qaani.
“We, and you, will change the face of the region and end, God willing, this dark era of the history of our Islamic nation,” he writes.
Sinwar was so confident of his ultimate success that at the same time as he was planning the 10/7 attack he was also planning how he would manage the new Palestine it would create from the river to the sea.
Sinwar affirmed that “the heart of Hamas’s strategic vision” was “full liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river.” (He reversed the order of reference to the bodies of water.) Sinwar was quite clear that this “vision” meant neither a two-state solution nor coexistence but “the Palestinian refugees’ return to their homeland, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty over its lands, with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Of course the war wouldn't kill all of the millions of Jews living in Israel, there would be many groups left to be dealt with in various ways. Sinwar had plans for all of them.
Israelis who fought Hamas “must be killed,” the document noted, although anyone “fleeing” could “be left alone or be prosecuted for his crimes in the judicial arena.”
“Educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry” would have a special status, however. They would be “retained … for some time” and “not be allowed to leave and take with them the knowledge and experience that they acquired while living in our land and enjoying its bounty.” The implication is that they would serve the new Hamas regime, voluntarily or otherwise.
The document did allow that some peaceful people could be dealt with humanely, but as Charles Lane points out, it doesn't get much more peaceful than young people at a dance party. Hamas did not deal with them very humanely.
In reality, I think we all know what would have happened if Sinwar's dream had come true. It would be the same violence we saw on 10/7 just on a much larger scale. No jew would have been safe.
This is the vision of justice that has enraptured college radicals across the country, a bloodbath followed by forced servitude. It's hard to believe anyone is willing to openly side with these monsters but there seems to be no shortage of western supporters for Sinwar's vision.
