Sukkot Miracle: Hamas Leader Sinwar is Dead

Photo from this morning: Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader and October 7th mastermind, dead in the rubble, killed by the Israeli military. 

On October 7th 2023, which happened to be the last day of Sukkot, Hamas carried out the October 7th atrocity, resulting in the largest single day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. The mastermind of the attack was Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

And now, today, on the first day of Sukkot 2024, Israel has killed Yahya Sinwar.

Sinwar carried out his butchery on Sukkot and is now dead on Sukkot a year later. We're witnessing a divine moment. God's fingerprints all over this.

Sinwar launched this war on the last day of Sukkot. Israel eliminated him on the first day of Sukkot. ✡️ Everything is a work of God.

— Eretz Israel (@EretzIsrael) October 17, 2024

What are the chances? Sinwar launches the horrific massacre of Oct 7 on the last day of Sukkot in 2023; then, after evading every Israeli attempt to locate and kill him for a year, he is killed "accidentally" in a confrontation with the IDF on the first day of Sukkot 2024.

— Dr. Michael L. Brown (@DrMichaelLBrown) October 17, 2024

The timing was not planned by humans; the IDF had no intel that Sinwar was in the building. After reconnaissance spotted multiple figures moving stealthily among buildings, the IDF sent a drone into the building. It recorded a masked man injured and resting on a couch, his face hidden by a bandana. 

See Sinwar's unprecedented "resistance" seconds before his elimination. pic.twitter.com/CKjM8J4Px4

— Mosab Hassan Yousef (@MosabHasanYOSEF) October 17, 2024

The IDF shelled the building and opened fire. Hours later when the IDF entered the building, the masked figure's identity was revealed to be the October 7th mastermind.

Sinwar's body was found with cash and a false ID, indicating he may have been attempting to flee Gaza.

The contents of Sinwar's pockets, courtesy of Israel's Channel 12. Note the occupation listed on the false ID.

Sinwar joins a host of powerful men who tried and failed to erase Israel, often bringing calamity and destruction on themselves:

• Pharaoh Ramses II of Egypt
• King Tiglathpilnesser III of Assyria
• King Shalmaneser V of Assyria
• King Sargon II of Assyria
• King Sennacherib of Assyria
• King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon
• Haman the Agagite of Persia
• King Antiochus Epiphanes of the Seleucids
• Emperor Titus of Rome
• Emperor Hadrian of Rome
• Fuhrer Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany
• Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh of the Palestinians
• Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon
• and now Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar of the Palestinians

History teaches this simple lesson: if you try to harm the Jewish people, God will harm you.

An Israeli believer friend wrote some important, appropriate notes on Sinwar's death.

Sinwar is dead. The graphic pictures of his intact corpse leave no doubt, as the face is unmistakably his. And DNA tests have now positively identify the corpse as his.

His story and the story of the worst massacre of Jews since WW2 is filled with tragic twists and turns, and no shortage of bitter ironies.

The first bitter irony is that Israel saved his life with state-of-the-art surgery when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor that would have killed him if left untreated, while he was a prisoner in an Israeli jail.

The second irony was that he, together with 1,000 of the most murderous of Hamas' terrorists, were released from Israeli prisons in 2011, in exchange for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was captured and taken back to Gaza as a hostage in 2006. For six years his family and a growing number of their allies urged the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to "pay any price" to ransom him. While every Israeli citizen feared for Shalit's welfare and wanted to see him safely returned home, many saw the risk and folly in releasing 1,000 of the most experienced and hardened terrorist to rejoin the front lines of Hamas' jihad against Israel. This wasn't the first time that Israel released thousands of murderers to restore a single person--sometimes a dead citizen--to their family. And each and every time, without exception, it led directly to the deaths of tens or hundreds of other Israelis in the years that followed. Sinwar's release in 2011 for a single individual led, directly, to the torturous deaths of thousands of others on October 7, and since then.

A third tragic irony is that for months before the attacks of Oct. 7, dozens of female field intelligence soldiers arrayed along the frontier between Israel and Gaza faithfully observed Hamas' preparations for the attacks and correctly interpreted the gravity of what was being planned. But when they reported their findings to their male commanders, they were dismissed as the ramblings of a bunch of anxious teen girls with oversized imaginations. Therefore, the Middle Eastern chauvinism that famously affects many of Israel's neighbors seems to have infected not a few men in the ranks of Israel's own armed forces, with deadly consequences. 

The story, of course, continues, as the end is not within sight.

Another Israeli friend writes about the significance of Sinwar's death on Sukkot:

One more note from me, on a personal level. On Yom Kippur last week, I talked to my kids about repentance. I read for them Ezekiel 18, where God says he doesn't delight in even the death of a wicked person, but would rather that they repent and live. How does that relate to Sinwar's death?

While God doesn't delight in anyone's death, we can celebrate that justice is served. A man who orchestrated the murders, tortures, rapes, kidnappings, and executions of hundreds of innocent people deserves the death penalty. He has now received it poetically on the Hebrew anniversary of his demonic depravity.

God says Sukkot is a day for us to rejoice. We can rejoice that justice is served and that perhaps we're a step closer to the release of the hostages and the end of the war.