All opinions expressed in this article are solely the opinions of the contributors.
On Oct. 16, 2024, Israeli forces found and killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza. Sinwar is widely believed to have been a mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. U.S. officials have also blamed Sinwar for obstructing ceasefire negotiations since then. Israeli military leaders issued an open call to all Hamas fighters still remaining in Gaza to lay down their weapons and surrender in the wake of Sinwar’s death.
Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich reflects on what he says the killing of Yahya Sinwar means for the Israeli people and for the future of the Israel-Hamas war.
Be the first to know when Newt Gingrich publishes a new opinion! Download the Straight Arrow News app and enable push notifications today!
The following is an excerpt from the above video:
The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the military leader of Hamas, is an enormous breakthrough for the Israeli people. He was the mastermind behind the terrible massacre, the tortures, the rapes and the kidnapping of hostages [on Oct. 7, 2023]. He had been a mortal enemy of Israel. He spent 21 years in prison, and in that time, he’d grown more bitter, more hostile, more determined to destroy Israel and either kill or drive into exile every Jew in Palestine.
The fact was that he had been hiding in a huge complex. There are about as many miles of tunnel under Gaza as there is in the London metro system, which is like 300 miles. And so he had been really avoiding being captured for over a year. Now, the Israelis had him as their highest-value target. They went after him every way they could, and he’d kept the hostages, in part, hoping they would protect him from the Israelis.
Finally, for reasons I frankly don’t know anything about in detail, he decided to come above ground, and the Israelis had been tracking him carefully, knew where he was, and went after him and killed him. For virtually everybody in Israel, this will be a great moment of relief and a great moment, candidly, of satisfaction. This had been their mortal enemy. He’d killed more Jews in one day than have died at any time since the Holocaust in World War II, and so there was a deep sense that they had to get him.
