When Israeli news outlets and government officials announced that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was assassinated, there were mixed feelings and controversy. The Israeli military claimed on Oct. 17, that Mr. Sinwar was killed a day earlier in southern Gaza.
He was reputed to be the mastermind of the onslaught by Palestinian resistance groups into Israeli illegal settlements on October 7, 2023. The move killed 1,200 Israelis and non-Israeli settlers and took 250 people into captivity.
The subsequent war, now entering its second year, has killed over 42,000 Palestinians and caused a deadly humanitarian crisis. Israel’s response has been widely condemned around the world as a genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
Mr. Sinwar’s death was the latest in a string of assassinations of high-profile leaders of the resistance groups. In July, Israel was accused of assassinating his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of Hamas’ Polit bureau and a major Palestinian figure, in Iran’s capital.
While Palestinians mourned Mr. Sinwar, some Israelis, the United States and other western countries lauded his killing as a possible opening for stalled ceasefire talks and the return of Hamas held captives to Israel.
In a statement on Oct. 18, Hamas mourned their leader and declared no hostages will be released until the Gaza war ends and Palestinians held in Israeli prisons are returned.
“We mourn the great leader, the martyred brother, Yahya Sinwar, Abu Ibrahim,” Qatar-based Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said in a recorded video statement, according to Al-Arabiya News.
The hostages “will not return… unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops, there is a complete withdrawal from it, and our heroic prisoners are released from the occupation’s prisons,” he added.
Things are spiraling dangerously toward a multi-nation war. There are strikes, counter-strikes, and threats of major strikes involving nonstate actors like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Ansar-Allah (Houthis) in Yemen, and nation-states like the United States, Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran. An already fractured region is unraveling further as nations wield the domino effects of an expanding war in the Middle East.
Conflicts from Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem have sparked a war with resistance groups like Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes into Lebanon are taking a toll on civilians in the country, pushing people to flee to Syria, said the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). It has been an experience of extremes, uncertainty, and perpetual anxiety.
“Nowhere are that uncertainty, that anxiety more palpable at the moment than in Lebanon,” said Filippo Grandi, UN high commissioner for refugees.
He gave the assessment while opening the 75th Plenary Session of the Executive Committee of the High Commissioner’s Program, in Geneva, Switzerland, on Oct. 14.
Just returning from Lebanon and Syria, Mr. Grandi said, “at the risk of sounding obvious,” the overwhelming message from the displaced people he encountered, impacted by the war is they want peace.
More people are being displaced in Lebanon by the day. On Oct. 14 alone, 20 villages in south Lebanon were ordered to evacuate. A quarter of Lebanon is now under evacuation orders from the Israeli occupation force.
The UNHCR said many families are fleeing to open public spaces, desperate to escape the bombs, but struggling to find shelter. The Lebanese government estimates that 1.2 million people have been displaced.
As war spreads, people seeking safety across borders also spread. Lebanese people are spilling into Syria for refuge and Syrian refugees, who had previously sought safety inside Lebanon from their own recent troubles are once again running for their lives.
As of October 12, over 283,000 people had crossed from Lebanon; 70 percent Syrians and the remainder 30 percent, Lebanese and a few other nationals.
As death tolls rise by the day, the Lebanese Health Ministry laments that the international community has not shouldered its responsibilities to end Israel’s flagrancy of international laws to carry out its inhumane and aggressive genocide.
From the playbook of Israel, civilian death is collateral damage in a war it maintains is against “terrorists” not “resistance fighters,” whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah. Killing major leaders means nothing in the face of slain Arabs in the tens of thousands.
But Israel is potentially facing another level of devastation if tensions result in an all-out war. It will be destructive for the region and also show Israel as a mischief-maker willing to devastate the region for its own goals.
Earlier this year, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, gave insight into Israel’s mark as a regional source of trouble.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has a vision of Haaretz Israil. Several states over there, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, they intend to annex that to what is called ‘Greater Israel,”’ said Minister Farrakhan in his message titled, “What Does Allah, The Great Mahdi and The Great Messiah Have To Say About The War In The Middle East?’ delivered on Feb. 25.
“Do you know about that? That man already has over 400 nuclear bombs sitting in the desert in Dimona, Israel, under where my Hebrew Israelite family stayed. That’s a lot of weapons,” said the Minister.
“And they, now, feel that they are the power in the Middle East, and they are. They feel that they can manipulate America, because they don’t respect Joe Biden.
And they have not respected any American president in the last 40 years, they have manipulated every president of the United States of America,” explained Minister Farrakhan.
Israel has killed over 1,600 people in Lebanon, so the Israelis have no problem killing hundreds of thousands of people, “clearly,” said Muhammad Sankari, spokesman of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)-Chicago, in a recent interview with The Final Call.
He said the calculation Israel may also be making is how much devastation they can sustain. “Every step of this ladder of escalation brings us closer and closer to more death … destruction… devastation because the Israelis don’t want to end their genocide,” he said.
But backed by America, the wealthiest power and strongest military worldwide, Israel retains an arrogant invincible air.
“It seems that the United States is more than willing to lead the region into destruction and potentially even pull U.S. troops into a broader conflict as we’ve seen they’ve moved troops and aircraft carriers,’” reasoned Mr. Sankari, “as opposed to forcing Israel to end the genocide,” he added.
On October 16, U.S. forces, using B-2 bombers, conducted precision strikes against five underground weapons storage locations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, said the Department of Defense. The Houthis have engaged in attacks on U.S. and allied merchant vessels in solidarity actions against Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians.
In addition, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told the media on Oct. 15 an advance team of U.S. military personnel and components of an anti-ballistic missile defense system arrived in Israel. The personnel add to the footprint of 40,000 American troops in the region.
The move was made as tensions thickened between Israel and Iran after mutual strikes occurred in recent months. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi warned that the United States was putting the lives of its troops “at risk by deploying them to operate U.S. missile systems in Israel.”
On the social media platform X, Araqchi said: “While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests.”
Considering the crisis of the Middle East and the ever-present implication for the world from the lens of history and scripture, oppressors always met their end.
For years Minister Farrakhan and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad described growing resistance as an intensifying “universal cry for justice,” and warned that the ways of tyrannical rule are being shut down.
Both men warned America and the nations about a universal change of an old world going out, and a new world coming in. They have warned the exploiters, warmongers and wicked rulers that the tides would change against malicious rule.
“Pride and arrogance are part of the leaders’ mentalities,” said Minister Farrakhan in his illuminating book, “A Torchlight For America.”
“This spiritual disease is what blinds them to the true formula for success because they’re trying to keep up a posture in the world that is out of step with the will of God and the demands of the time,” he wrote.
“They want to maintain themselves as the great imperialist power, the overlord, the slave-master, the god beside God,” added Minister Farrakhan.
—Brian E. Muhammad, Staff Writer
