The political and military leader of Hamas is dead. Some cheer. Some weep. History will judge the living and the dead. I wish Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar had appeared before an international tribunal of judges for their role in October 7th, rather than being murdered by the Israelis. All who committed crimes in the past year should face justice.
He belongs to history now. Watching his final moments was a surreal experience. A living ghost. Seated in a chair in a bombed-out building. Covered from head to foot in something like concrete dust. Barely able to move. I had to view the video twice before I realised what – or, rather, who – I was looking at. The Israelis were obviously pleased with their work – that’s why they shared it with the world. A high-tech drone hovering triumphantly over a dying man, a man they probably saw as a primitive who, at the end, had nothing but a small stick as a weapon. His final act of resistance was to fling that stick towards the drone.
Moments after the footage stops Sinwar is slaughtered. They apparently didn’t know who they were killing until afterwards. Just another terrorist. The man could barely move but – against any sense of human decency – he was executed rather than captured and given medical assistance. Israel’s President made clear in October last year that even Palestinian babies are terrorists. No quarter given for terrorists. No rules of war. People like President Biden, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris don’t have a problem with that. A year ago, the Israeli defence minister made clear that Palestinians are human animals and would be treated accordingly. And they have been. Thus it has been since the 1940s. Resistance to the combined might of Israel and the great white nations of the West is, they believe, futile.
I suspect the BBC and other Western media would........