Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - EMERGENCY EPISODE: SINWAR DEAD — with Nadav Eyal & Haviv Rettig Gur

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Yahya Sinwar is dead. To help us better understand what happened in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the reaction in Israeli society, and what is likely to happen next in Gaza and in Israel, Nadav Eyal and Haviv Rettig Gur join us for an emergency episode of the podcast. NADAV EYAL is a columnist for Yediiot. He is one of Israel’s leading journalists. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. Haviv is the senior political analyst at The Times of Israel. He was a long time reporter for the Times of Israel. He’s also working on a book. Haviv was a combat medic in the IDF where he served in the reserves. 

This operation of the IDF and the way that Israel conducted itself in the recent year has led to the deaths of Hassan Esraala, the leader of He Hamas for this raid, incursion, invasion of Israel aimed at murdering as many Israelis as they can. And now the killing of Yechir Sinwar. And this is so meaningful. It took the United States many years to kill Osama bin Laden. It took Israel less than a year to get all of those bad actors. It's 1130 a.m. on Thursday, October 17th here in New York City. It is 630 p.m. on Thursday, October 17th in Israel, as Israelis are learning that Yechia Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, the architect of the October 7th massacre and ongoing war against Israel, has been killed in some kind of IDF operation, which we will discuss more in detail. And to discuss this and learn more about what's going on on the ground in Israel, we are joined by Nadav Ayel and Haviv Redegur, both of whom are well known to our

audience, to our listenership. And Nadav and Haviv, I appreciate the quick callback. You two really have been a part of our community, of the Call Me Back community, for many, many months now. So it's quite fitting that I'm with you both on this historic day. And given that it's such a historic day, I just thought before we get into the details about the what actually happened, what the immediate implications are, this is an extraordinary moment, perhaps an inflection point for Israeli society since October 7th. I mean, I can't quite think of anything like it. I'll start with you, Nadav. Can you just give me your immediate reaction as you learn the news? This is, you know, a solemn moment for Israelis, almost exactly a year before Sinoir ordered his forces together with Mohammad Dev,

the chief of staff of Hamas, also already dead, to invade Israel and to commit the most massive ethnic cleansing the Jewish people has seen since the Holocaust. I think for Israelis everywhere, and not only for Israelis, this is a good moment. And my second thought was about the hostages. And I think that to some extent, the hostages' families, I really feel for them right now. I know that they are fearful that their loved ones might be harmed, jeopardized as a result of the death of Sinoir, because we are dealing with this terrorist organization. And I knew in the first hours after hearing about this, we couldn't publish everything in Israel, that it was critical for the IDF to make sure that there are no hostages that were hit together with this small group of people, three to four people that were hit by the IDF. My sense of relief was strengthened when I heard that as far

as the IDF knows now, no hostages were hurt or killed or wounded or found in the premises there. Javier, your reaction and your sense of what this means for Israeli society? SINWAR is dead and there is tremendous celebration. Lifeguards on the beaches of Israel announced it through their loudspeakers. People cheered, and it is a holiday. A lot of people are at the beach. There's no schools. The kids aren't in school.

So, the news traveled very, very quickly. Then immediately, immediately, and you see it in the news websites of every website right at the top and on social media, the fear for the hostages swung into action. Sinoir, when you talk to Palestinians about Sinoir, they tell you that Sinoir is not a strategist who is willing to use unspeakable cruelty. Sinoir likes unspeakable cruelty. The Palestinians called him the butcher of Hanunis for what he did to Palestinians long before he ever got around to killing Jews. And the question that Israelis are now asking in trepidation

is what are his orders for when he dies? His brother Muhammad is, in theory, the number two of Hamas right now. This is the man who led the Shalit kidnapping and negotiations over Shalit's release in 2011 that freed Yechia Sinwar. And he is famous in Gaza for his cruelty. He murders people on the street for looking at him the wrong way. Muhammad Sinwar is pretty much the last man standing in the top ranks of Hamas. Death is gone. And so the question is, what is Yechia's orders

upon his death? Are the hostages all going to be executed now by whoever's holding them? And what is Muhammad going to do, even irrespective of Yichas' orders? So there's a tremendous fear there, and a hope that the Israeli government acts on that. And so that's the conversation. Fear for the hostages, tremendous celebration over the death of Yichas Yenuar. Nadav, back to what we're actually learning, and I know you have been talking to your sources throughout the night and this morning. Let's start with that. How did it happen? Aviv alluded to a little bit of what we know how it happened. Can you just flesh that out? is just the regular activity of the IDF in the southern part of Gaza, known to be a stronghold of Hamas, a specific neighborhood there in which they are going alley to alley and house to house

and are trying to clear this area. Now, this area doesn't have any civilian population left there. So the basic assumption is that if you see young men in these areas, specifically if they are armed, of course, and they're not the IDF, these are Hamas terrorists. And yesterday, beginning in the morning, there was a series of interactions between IDF forces in that specific neighborhood and between small groups, two to three people of Hamas, and these were basically gunfire. So you had their not too dramatic house-to-house fire shot at soldiers, soldiers directing their own drones. Some drones are used by the IDF on the ground, by the units operating them. This is not a major operation of the IDF.

It's part of its continuous presence in the southern part of Gaza. So they were using drones that were affiliated with those infantry divisions and regiments that were operating them there. Now, the specific regiments that we're talking about is the 450 regiment and some forces from the 460 regiment that come basically from the IDF training infantry and training tank branches. So these are by no stretch, you know, elite IDF

forces. These are good infantry forces of the IDF, but this is not commander units operating there. And they, at a certain point, had some intelligence. They actually saw people in a specific house armed, actually a specific person, not even people in a specific house. They directed fire to that house with a tank that was operating with them. The tank shot a few shells into the house, knowing there is an armed Hamas terrorist there. And in the morning, early in the morning, they came and also using a drone, they tried to see who was there. And the first body that they found there was the regiment commander of Hamas in Hanunis. And that's important because regiment commanders for Hamas, you don't come across them that often. Now, the reason they knew it's this regiment commander is because

that regiment commander of Hanunis was caught with his ID, with his Palestinian ID on him. So it was very easy to see that this is the same person. And next to him, the soldiers found a body of a man that very obviously, and there are photos traveling through the Israeli web and also appearing basically in Israeli media news sites of a man who has striking similarity to Yechia Sinwar. And for the soldiers there, it was almost immediate that this is Sinwar. And at the point that we're recording this, Dan, we have sources within the Israeli police that are saying that they have compared dental photos that they have of Sinoir from the time that he was in prison, in Israeli prison, for the heinous crimes that Haviv alluded to during his time in Hanunas that had, by the way, nothing to do with killing

Israelis at the time, but murdering Palestinians that he accused of collaborating with Israeli forces. And at any rate, they have their dental records, they were compared with that body, and they came to the conclusion that this is the same person, and that Sinoir is dead. Hamas sources are also saying now Sinoir is dead, and the Israeli defense apparatus is still waiting final DNA approval, which might be already, as we are recording this, already in their hands, but I cannot say that this is the case as we are recording it now. Generally speaking, what the Israeli entire defense apparatus is saying and has told me since 6 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time that Yechia Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, is dead. He was killed by the IDF during this operation. And one thing that I should add that

we can say now is that Israel has strong indications that Yechia Sinwar was present at the same tunnel and maybe, maybe in the same time, in which the bodies of the six murdered Israelis were found. So Israel has strong indications that he was in that same tunnel. Israel, at this point, or the Israeli defense apparatus, cannot say if he was there when they were murdered, but the IDF is now inspecting the possibility that the six hostages murdered were murdered because they were with Sinoir while IDF forces were coming close to the tunnel. And in order to allow his escape quicker, they murdered the hostages. Now, I need to stress this. This is not certain. All they have now is the indication that he was there. It's a strong indication that he was there

at about the same time. But since they didn't catch or kill the murderers of these six hostages, all of them for certain, they don't know for certain, but there's a strong indication. And this indication is also correlating with the fact that it's not far from that place in which the six murdered Israeli bodies were found that Sinoir eventually was killed. And those six hostages, their bodies were found at the end of the summer. And those six hostages, their bodies were found at the end of the summer. And those six hostages, which we hear about quite a bit, I just want to say their names, Hirsch Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalami, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Carmel Gat. We've been told all along that it is likely that Seymour always had hostages

around him to protect him. So if what you are saying bears out, that that was true, that he always had hostages around him. And oh, by the way, some of the most quote unquote valuable hostages, as some have interpreted them, because some of these hostages had such a high profile. So these hostages were with him as a kind of security tool. And the only thing that changed is the IDF was getting close, so he had to dispense with his hostages so he could be more mobile, so he wasn't traveling with the pack? So Israel doesn't know that they were murdered as part of Sinois trying to flee. Israel doesn't know that he was moving around with these specific hostages. All Israel knows now is that, and we can publish

now, is that there are strong indications, we cannot elaborate as to, that he was there in the tunnel, at the same tunnel in which the bodies were found. And the type of indications is as such that it's easy to conclude that he was there at about the same time in which the hostages were there, but it's not for sure. So I don't want to take this into the speculative realm of how this exactly happened, but we do know that at a certain point he was traveling near hostages. We also know that security sources were saying, and I quoted also them saying, look, the idea that he's traveling everywhere with 20 or 12 hostages, it's not what we are thinking that is really happening. And the reason for that is because when you travel around in

these tunnels with hostages, everything produces intel. For instance, people need to eat, so you need to have more food be brought in. And there's also the speed in which you can move. The hostages that were found, the murdered Israeli hostages, were in really bad shape physically. Their health has been deteriorating. The weight, their ability to run through the tunnels after Sinoir would have been limited to begin with. So saying that he was there in the tunnel can also lead you to the conclusion, Dan, that this was a sort of a mini headquarters of Sinoir during that time, and not necessarily that he was traveling with them in the tunnels. So we still don't know. And I don't want to make this a focus of the death and Sinoir being killed. I think that what's important to

acknowledge here, and this is the reason I brought it up, is how intertwined was this man, this murderer, with the condition of the hostages. He was hands-on. This was him that was not only responsible for planning and executing October 7, but also him that was responsible for the fate of the hostages. And one of the things that we said in previous chapters is that the U.S. administration was struck and surprised by how Hamas reacted to the murder of these hostages during the negotiations for a deal, and the way that they, to an extent, owned up to the murder of these hostages. And now we know that Sinoir, later killed, you know, in the last 24 hours, killed by the IDF, was actually the same tunnel in which the bodies of the hostages were found.

And you can see his fingertips all over this entire tragedy from beginning to the end. But here's the bottom line. This operation of the IDF and the way that Israel conducted itself in the recent year has led to the deaths of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, who has opened fire and began a war against Israel on October 8th, his chief of staff that was killed before him, Ismail Haniya that was targeted in Tehran, Mohammad Def, who was the chief of staff of Hamas and actually the man who prepared Hamas for this raid, incursion, invasion of Israel, aimed at murdering as many Israelis as they can, and now the killing of Yechir Sinwar. And again and again on your show, I think Habib said that, I said that too, it's about Israel's

presence in the region. It's about people across the region understanding that Israel is here to stay. It's about deterrence. It's about trying to build up the Israeli deterrence again after it was shattered. It didn't exist on October 7th. It didn't exist on October 8th. It didn't exist when the Iranians attacked in April. Maybe it doesn't exist to the extent that we want it to exist as the Houthis attack us on a daily basis. But now

we are seeing, and the region is seeing the price. And this is so meaningful. It took the United States many years to kill Osama bin Laden. It took Israel less than a year to get all of those bad actors, all of them. Now, it's a much smaller territory. It's a much less of a challenge to the Israelis as getting Osama bin Laden somewhere in caves in Afghanistan or in Pakistan. But Israel is not the United States. It's not a superpower. And the fact that the Israelis got that and got that right is meaningful for any person who wants to have this area. I don't want to say in any sort of peaceful vision, because I don't want to say in any sort of peaceful vision because I don't want to fantasize about that. But to have some sort of security and stability in the area.

And I see the messages that I'm getting now from my Saudi friends and others in the region. And, you know, some of them are saying they're even posting this online. Now go for the leader of the Houthis. You're not done yet. By the way, Nadav, I'm not going to say names. They know who they are. They're probably listening to this episode. I have gotten similar messages, and they don't limit it to the Houthis.

They want Israel to take this to Tehran. Two things. One, what you were alluding to a few minutes ago, you and I were at a conference together, an off-the-record conference, or Chatham House Rules conference, which I was told Chatham House Rules for Israelis means that they can't tweet about it until 10 minutes after the conference. That's Chatham House Rules for Israelis. But in all seriousness, it was we can't talk about who said what. We can just report on the information. You and I were together there with a senior official from the Biden administration who has been intimately involved in the hostage negotiations. And I just want for our listeners to understand this point that he

made, because I think this is what you were referring to. He said that when those six hostages were killed, they were in the middle of negotiations. And a number of those hostages, of the six that were executed that day, were on the list that was being negotiated for release in the first phase of a deal. And it was so gut-wrenching to learn of the deaths of hostages whose names were on a piece of paper to be released if they could reach a deal. And they honestly thought that the interlocutors from Hamas would express some level of remorse, that they would be, you know, have some explanation, even if they didn't entirely believe it. Like, look, we had some guard in a tunnel with these hostages and he lost his cool or he got spooked by the situation and he overreacted and we feel terrible because it really

did blow up what those negotiations, if you believe they were actually real. And what the administration official said to us, you'll recall, Ndav, is not only did they not express any of that, but within no time they were releasing propaganda videos of the hostages to torment the Israeli public. And Biden administration officials' point was, seriously? Like, we're negotiating with an organization when we're actually talking about people to be released and those people get slaughtered? And the group we're negotiating with releases a propaganda video celebrating and tormenting their suffering. What is this? I think the fine point you're putting on this is Sinwar was damn close to these hostages physically and was very hands-on.

He wasn't doing this by remote control. Haviv talked a little bit ago about who will succeed. Sinwar, can you just give us your quick take and then we'll let you go and Haviv can pick up? So probably Israeli sources are talking about the brother of Yashar Sinoir, who has been a close associate of Sinoir and no less brutal than he is, even personally, no less of a murderer than he is, but they don't know yet. And as we speak, I should say that Hamas has issued a notice basically denying that Sinoir is dead. And at this point, in what's happening in the Gaza Strip, there's a huge question within Hamas who can actually assume control. There are very few people who could do that. Very few people, for instance, think that Khaled Mashal

could be the successor to Yechia Sinwar. And the question is even much bigger than that. Who can, for instance, strike a deal, if at all, with the Israelis? Will the killing of Sinwar lead to a scenario that the Israelis have been deliberating since the beginning of the war, that the leadership of Hamas will agree to leave the Gaza Strip and release the hostages to get in return some sort of an immunity, a short-lived immunity, of course, but they'll be willing to do that. So my security sources said again and again that until Sinoir is dead, there is absolutely no ability to achieve this kind of deal that Israel at the time had with the PLO in Beirut, in which the PLO leadership left Beirut. But this is not the PLO, and this is not Beirut, this is Gaza. And it's on the border with Israel. And many Israelis would say now, we don't want this deal to happen if Sinoir is dead.

We just want them to release the hostages. And I want to use the time that I still have left to read to you my translation of the hostage family's headquarters. What they are saying immediately after they heard about the killing of Sinoir. The headquarters expressed its deep gratitude to the IDF and security forces for eliminating the brutal terrorists, the mastermind of the executor of the October 7 massacre, responsible for the abductions of over 250 people from within Israeli borders. At the same time, the families of the hostages expressed grave concern for the fate of the 101 hostages still in Hamas captivity in Gaza

and urged the country's leadership, Israel's leadership, to turn this military achievement into a diplomatic one and to pursue an immediate agreement for the release of all 101 hostages, the living for rehabilitation and the deceased for proper burial in their homeland. Sinoir's elimination marks an important milestone on the road to true victory, which will only be achieved with the return of the 101 hostages. And for me, this is, I know that strategically speaking, I just addressed that, the level of deterrence in the region, the fact that Israel got to the people responsible not only for October 7, but also joining the war against Israel. I know this is extremely meaningful, and I'm not going to downplay this, and it's a moment for history, but I think this is what many Israelis feel now. This is what we are left with. We need to get the hostages back in order for this to be a full and complete and that absolute victory that Prime Minister Netanyahu

talked about. And I'll tell you something that you might find surprising. I believe that the Prime Minister, to an extent, understands this now that sinuar is dead this is so important now the question is could it be done is it feasible do you have someone to negotiate with with hamas this deal now is not going to be the same deal as it could have been months ago when israel was pressuring for a deal now that that Sinoir is dead, a major block on a possible deal was set aside. And now maybe there could be rethinking within Hamas, as there is, as we know, rethinking within Hezbollah ranks. Did they make the right call

while entering the war on October 8th? And I think this is the hope that is right now engulfing the Israeli society, together with a very legitimate celebration that Haviv alluded to, for getting man who is responsible for so many deaths and despair, not only in Israel, but across the region. Nadav, thank you. Haviv, I just want to pick up on what Nadav said. You and I have talked a lot over this past year, particularly in the early months after the war began, about the story that Palestinians tell themselves, the story they tell themselves about their own struggle, about their own society, and the story they tell about you, about the Jews, about the Jews in Israel, about the Jewish story. where, if anywhere, does this development, in your view, as a student of Palestinian society and the history of the

Palestinian people and the history of this conflict, where does this fit in, this development, into that story, if anywhere? And it may not change anything from their perspective. Sinoir's supporters had a long time now, for a year, and also before October 7, an explanation for what Sinoir means and what he represents, what Hamas means and represents in the Palestinian story. A lot of Palestinians know several contradictory things all at once that all flow from their experience. They know that Hamas gave the 1996 election to Netanyahu with the suicide bombings that froze the Oslo peace process for quite a while. They know that the Second Intifada was initiated to some significant extent by Hamas, not only Hamas, of course, that shattered the

Israeli left. They know that peace offers that improve their situation. Really, that government that it shattered when the Second Intifada began was the most left-wing government in israeli history so the message to the israeli left is you go this far you take these risks and you get the biggest terrorist massacre wave wave of terrorist attacks in israeli history right in 97 98 the israeli army starts massively withdrawing from all the palestinian population centers and within two years 140 suicide bombings are blowing up in Israeli cities, and the Israeli left has never recovered from that, from that simple fact. Israeli Arabs, who are Palestinians who know Hebrew and know Israelis and live and work with Israelis daily, know exactly that that is what the Jews experienced and why the left is shattered.

Hamas imposed a tyranny in Gaza, and a pretty bitter and brutal one. Hamas in 2013 dragged Gaza into the Egyptian civil war on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood, and got that border, the Gaza-Egypt border, sealed up, causing Gazans untold suffering that had nothing to do with Israel. And so Hamas is an organization that Palestinians have been experiencing as massively destructive of themselves, of their cause, and of their capacity to influence Israelis and Israeli politics, which is the arena that matters spectacularly to their future. At the same time, Hamas holds out this one great promise, which is resilience at all costs for all time will pay off with absolute redemption.

And that story that Hamas gives Palestinians, that we are the front lines of a war that is far bigger than Israelis and Palestinians, and we are that front line. We are the altar on which Islam will, we make that sacrifice, which will bring Islam back. That story transforms a century of Palestinian experience and culture and discourse about displacement and suffering, transforms it into a great story of salvation and this great historic arc. So, Hamas gives Palestinians the most dignified version of their story, while at the same time ruining everything every single time like clockwork. How is the death of Seymour going to be understood? I think in a sense,

we haven't seen reactions. I mean, we have Arab reactions, by the way, and they're all over the place. There are Arabs saying, thank God he's dead. We can begin to, you know, breathe and recover. There are Arab reactions saying he's not dead, he'll never die, he's the great Mujahideen. In other words, even if he's dead, death is a sweet gift from a god to those he loves, and the resistance will only raise a thousand for every Sinoir who is killed by Israel. Both of those reactions could frankly be made in many times by the same exact people at different hours of the day. In other words, these are stories that echo inside the discourse and kind of tears people apart. Which direction do we go? I think that over the last year, October 7 was Hamas putting everything into one basket. It was Hamas saying, we're doubling down, tripling down. In fact, there is nothing else. There is only this. We build these tunnels,

we dig into those tunnels. no civilian is allowed into those tunnels, the purpose of the civilian is to suffer and die, and we force the Israelis into a war. October 7 was meant to start the war that it started. It was built for it, it was engineered for it very carefully, they live-streamed for a good reason and in specific ways. And the war will destroy Israel, but it will destroy Israel through the sacrifice of Gaza, of Gazans. Everything was at stake, and it was either going to be this dignity story of Islamic salvation and redemption through holy war,

or everything will be destroyed. And we're a year in. For many years, Israel tried to kill Muhammad Def, the military commander of Hamas on the ground, failed. And that created an aura and a mystique of sort of glory and grandeur around him that suggested there was a secret strength to the Palestinian resistance that even the great machine of the Israeli state couldn't possibly find. Sinoir was beginning to develop that aura around of the Israeli state couldn't possibly find. Sinoir was beginning to develop that aura around him because the Israelis couldn't get to him. The death that he just experienced was the worst possible death in relation to that story,

because he died pathetically. Pictures of his dead body are everywhere. And by the way, I don't even think it's an intentional thing by the Israeli army. I think hours later, Israeli intelligence is okay that it happened. It serves Israel's purposes. No, the photos just started appearing on Arab accounts on Telegram. Who picked it up from the soldiers. Right. Who posted it online because of terrible discipline in that particular unit, which I'll talk to them

about in a month. Okay, I'm not going to deal with that right this minute. By the way, we're seeing a lot of that stuff coming out of Lebanon, soldiers posting their thoughts and showing, you know, here's a bunker of just post soldiers with their own cell phones doing that from Lebanon. I don't know how they get reception and how the Israeli cell carrier is giving them right how much they're going to pay their cell bill this month through the Lebanese antenna. Anyway, back to the topic. But that picture of him, pathetic and broken, and the fact that a trainee in a tank commander's course for Division 198, you know, I happen to think these people are heroes. I hope they are because I served in nothing more prestigious than that. But nevertheless, it was not the great,

you know, commandos who were sneaking into places and fighting complicated wars underground. And it wasn't McCall, it wasn't some assassin of the Mossad deep in Dahia in Beirut. It wasn't any of the things that you would do a Fauda episode about. It was ordinary grunts on patrol. And all of that is a pathetic death for a man who drove Gaza into this catastrophe. And so I suspect, and we're seeing it, put it this way, the part of Gazan discourse on social media that says a thousand will come out of this one dead is the expected part. Watch for the part that says, thank God he's dead, that the dog, he deserved no better. Watch for that, because that's the part that says we feel courage.

Now, his brother now has to deal, if he's alive, we don't quite know who else died with him. Still, the reports are very early. But his brother now is going to have to crack down. He's going to have to try and hold things together. He's going to have to try to explain how Israelis who can kill Sinoir and Haniya from deep within Tehran, and Nasrallah and Shukr and Def and all of that, why he thinks he won't die, and why he thinks he can deliver anything better. The direction of this Islamic war seems to be a direction of catastrophe, and they had better turn it around, or the entire premise, the premise that joins radicalist Sunni

and radical Shia into this larger Iranian proxy system, the premise that this kind of war works, Israel's beginning to undermine it catastrophically. And if it doesn't work, what have you just done to Gaza, Mr. Sinwar, is the question Gazans are asking. All right, Haviv, I appreciate it. We're going to leave it there. We're going to pick up with you guys in the days ahead, because there are so many more issues to get to and process, but we just wanted your immediate reactions now. I'm grateful for you doing this. So, for those who are completely offline and completely disconnected, as well they should be, all the power to them, they will not learn about these details unless someone tells them in synagogue or... Oh, knock on the door of your observant neighbor and to them, they will not learn about these details unless someone tells them in synagogue or...

Oh, knock on the door of your observant neighbor and tell them, for God's sake. Exactly. Until Saturday night. Right. And so, Aviv, thank you, as always. And I'll be back in touch with you shortly. We'll catch up. On the podcast, but offline very shortly.

From strength to strength. Yeah. Thank you. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.