Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza who was saved from brain cancer by Israeli doctors but returned to murdering Israelis, has thanked Iran, vowed to destroy Israel through terrorist attacks, and praised Qatari TV channel Al Jazeera as “the best pulpit.”
Sinwar’s remarks, across the years 2017-2022, were released Friday by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which compiled a video of Sinwar’s public appearances and statements, including interviews on the Al Jazeera network.
Al Jazeera has been criticized by Israelis for its pro-Hamas coverage, often appearing alongside Hamas terrorists in Gaza. However, it occasionally airs criticism of Hamas — usually by accident, as when Palestinian civilians complain about the group.
MEMRI’s clips reveal Sinwar to be a strident, even arrogant man, who layers one radical statement atop another in his public statements. In one clip, he kisses a Palestinian child in Hamas costume, who is also holding a gun and trying to wriggle away.
In one interview, he freely admits that Hamas members who were killed at the Gaza border fence in 2018 while trying to break through and march to Jerusalem were terrorists who had set aside their weapons in a bid to appeal to supporters in the West. (The tactic fooled at least some people: then-Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to the Hamas terrorists killed at the border as “protesters” who were simply upset about the U.S. moving the American embassy to Jerusalem.)
In other interviews, Sinwar also gratefully acknowledges the help of Iran, and says that he met Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in an airstrike in 2020 ordered by President Donald Trump, and which was opposed by then-candidate Joe Biden.
Sinwar also says that Hamas is in regular, “almost daily” contact with the terrorist group Hizbullah, an Iranian-backed group that is currently firing rockets and anti-tank missiles at northern Israel, and which is thought to have a massive arsenal of rockets.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
