There is so much poetic justice in the end of Yahyah Sinwar. On the first day of Sukkot, 2024, a new soldier just nine months into his army service, shot Sinwar dead in an operation to take out what they thought were just random terrorists.
It was only later that the IDF discovered it was actually Sinwar. Finally, the Hamas chief could trouble Israel no longer. And what timing it was too.
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The fact that it happened on the first day of Sukkot is so significant. Many Jewish people have been dreading Sukkot, as it was on Simchat Torah, the last (and supposedly happiest) day of the Feast of Tabernacles, that the October 7 massacre wreaked destruction and death on Israel. We have passed the anniversary in the Gregorian calendar, but the date in the Jewish calendar is in Sukkot, and as the tabernacles started popping up all over Israel I’m sure many have been feeling very conflicted. How could we rejoice at this time? But we are commanded to rejoice at the Feast of Tabernacles. It is known as the “season of our joy”, and is the happiest time in the biblical calendar, representing the grand finale of God’s great plan of redemption: the time when we will be able to dwell together with Him forever. Israel just gets on with life though under every circumstances, and so the Sukkot were built and decorated. But when the news that the mastermind behind October 7 had been eliminated, the sense of extreme relief was palpable everywhere.
The feast of Sukkot had been redeemed. We can rejoice again. But the timing and redemption of Sukkot is not the only aspect of poetic justice in Sinwar’s death.
There is more.
It was just a couple of days after Sinwar’s death, on 18th October, that it was another significant anniversary. On 18th October 2011, that Gilad Shalit was finally set free after being held hostage for 5 years in Gaza. Sinwar was released from prison in the Shalit deal along with 1027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli. Sinwar had been in prison serving four life sentences for the abduction and murder of two soldiers in Israel’s Nafha Prison. While he was incarcerated in Israel, they found cancer in his brain. He received life saving cancer treatment at the expense of Israel. He studied Israeli literature to understand the mindset while in prison, and then went back to plan Oct 7. He knew kidnapping was the way forward since Israelis will do practically anything to preserve lives, especially of their own people. But now he has been killed by another young soldier in his first year of service, by a bullet to the brain that Israeli doctors had fixed for him—at the expense of Israeli taxpayers.
Even more remarkable, a huge gathering of millions of intercessors had gathered to pray in Washington DC just a few days before, on the Day of Atonement. Encouraging a million “Esthers” to pray, “For such a time as this”, a declaration was made that Sinwar’s wicked rule must end.
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With the poetic justice of the Esther story in which wicked Haman was hung on his own gallows, the fine details of Sinwar’s end seem to bear the hallmarks of our gracious God. And as if that wasn’t enough, the name “Yahya” comes from the Hebrew name for God and means “God is gracious” . He earned another name: the Butcher of Khan Yunis after slaughtering so many of his own people in brutal ways. Yahya Sinwar may not have been gracious, but Yahweh certainly is.
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.
Those who see you will stare at you
and ponder over you:
‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
who shook kingdoms,
who made the world like a desert
and overthrew its cities,
who did not let his prisoners go home?’
All the kings of the nations lie in glory,
each in his own tomb;
but you are cast out, away from your grave,
like a loathed branch,
clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword,
who go down to the stones of the pit,
like a dead body trampled underfoot.
You will not be joined with them in burial,
because you have destroyed your land,
you have slain your people.
(Isaiah 14:15-20)
Picture: Government Press Office
