The things Sinwar carried

Tim O Brien’s classic Vietnam war novel “The Things They Carried” discusses both the physical and emotional baggage of the US troops in that conflict. This week, with the elimination of the arch terrorist Yahya Sinwar, one of the unusual visuals was the pile of things he carried with him in his last moments.

Sinwar was the architect of the October 7, 2023, invasion and slaughter in southern Israel, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst through the Gaza border and massacred some 1,200 people in their homes, communities and at a music festival, and abducted 251 to Gaza, where 101 are still held hostage, sparking the war.

The greatest murderer of the Jewish people since Hitler was finally sent to hell by the IDF in a textbook operation.  His last moments had the poetic justice of him losing his dominant hand (as happened to the US Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin during his kidnapping a year previously).  He also tried to beat away a high tech IDF drone with a stick, symbolising just how hopeless the Hamas struggle is against the IDF juggernaut.

Me (left) and members of my IDF combat medical extraction unit inside Gaza. Photo (c) 2024, T. Book.

Sinwar was a rat cornered by the same people he had genocidal ambitions against.  He knew his end was approaching and there was nothing he could do about it.  Throughout history people have tried to hunt the Jews, the only question we Jews have is whether we live in an era when we can hunt back?  Thankfully we don’t live eighty years ago, in 1944, when there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide from out murderers.  Then we were not independent, without an army, and in not charge of our own destiny.  Now we are.

We know what Sinwar carried in his black heart – the desire to slaughter Jews wherever they are.  The question is what did Sinwar carry in his pockets?  Here is the partial list:

1. 40,000 Shekels: This money was probably donated by well-meaning useful idiots from abroad demand ZERO accountability to where their well-intentioned aid money is going.  Sinwar and the other leaders of the radical Islamist terror organization were billionaires thanks to foreign aid being funneled to their own bank accounts or to the terror infrastructure that is rapidly being destroyed by my comrades in the IDF.  The Gazans are the highest recipients per capita of foreign aid on the planet earth.  The problem is that the man/woman on the street does not see any of it.
2. A UNRWA teacher ID:  This, more than anything, illustrates the corrupt UN’s role as an accessory to terror and murder.  UNRWA (bizarrely nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year) is actively implicated in Hamas terror, with several of its employees, including Sinwar’s bodyguard, who actively participated in the horror of the October 7 terror attack, and even housed kidnapped Israeli citizens, as well as foreign nationals.
3. Mentos: Even with the extremely sympathetic mainstream media, led by the openly hostile BBC, one cannot get the taste of Hamas and Hezbollah barbaric terror out of this narrative
4. An AK 47 bullet lighter: A reminder that Vladmir Putin, together with Iran and Qatar, form the axis of evil that is the darkness which Israel is fighting against.  Not just for our country, but for the future and liberty of the entire western world, and our common values.

Sinwar’s last moments, as he was mortally wounded and suffering like the cornered rodent he was, knowing that his enemies are closing on him, sound like a scene from O Brien’s book:

Together we understood what terror was: you’re not human anymore. You’re a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, … You know you’re about to die. And it’s not a movie and you aren’t a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait.