Samidoun: Commemorating the martyrdom of Yahya Sinwar, hero of the global intifada

On 16 October 2025, we mark the first anniversary of the martyrdom of Yahya Sinwar, Abu Ibrahim, Palestinian national leader, chair of the political bureau of the Hamas movement, one of the architects of the Al-Aqsa Flood, liberated Palestinian prisoner leader, and, now, immortal symbol of the relentless will to liberation in the face of colonial brutality and injustice. He was martyred in battle as he confronted a whole battalion of occupation soldiers, after directly participating in leading the confrontation of genocide alongside his fellow resistance leaders, he threw the stick in his hand – his last weapon – at the drone targeting him, even after he had already lost his arm.

The occupation released the video of his last battle in order to prove his martyrdom and to declare their “success” in eliminating a great leader of the Resistance. However, in doing so, they also revealed the reality: one in which this leader stepped forward to the front lines of battle, engaged alongside his people, and who fought with his last breath until the end in their defense. The revelation of the circumstances of his martyrdom only cemented Sinwar’s place in the pantheon of revolutionary leaders, from Che Guevara to Omar al-Mukhtar, representing the defiant rejection of oppression and colonialism, and the boundless will to struggle for liberation.

Few leaders such have played such a crucial role in strengthening the capabilities of resistance of his people as the revolutionary martyr Yahya Sinwar. Aware of his historical position, Sinwar fulfilled a prominent role in organizing the Palestinian resistance and its central base of organizing and popular support in Gaza, its military network throughout the region, the heroic operation of Al-Aqsa Flood, and Axis of Resistance as a whole. The son of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from Majdal Asqelan, raised in the midst of the atmosphere of resistance in Gaza during the 60’s and 70’s, Sinwar was an exceptional representative of the Palestinian popular masses. Sentenced to four life sentences by the illegitimate Zionist courts in 1988, he remained incarcerated until 2011 when he was liberated as part of the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange.

Whereas some have thought that it was too difficult to fight against the foreign occupiers, too hard to oppose them; that it is easier to capitulate, to surrender, to compromise with them, Sinwar never ceased to believe that a Palestine liberated from Zionism, from the river to the sea, was and always remains an open historical possibility. That a liberated, sovereign Palestine, comprising the entire territory of historical Palestine, was not only conceivable, but achievable and beyond negotiation.

As he confidently remarked to his torturers during his 1988 imprisonment by Israeli authorities:

“You know that one day you will be the one under interrogation, and I will stand here as the government, as the interrogator. I will interrogate you.”

No matter the circumstance, whether in the student movement at the Islamic University of Gaza, during his 22 years in Zionist dungeons, or as the unbowed national leader he always was, his efforts in and for the resistance never wavered. As a political prisoner, he led collective hunger strikes, wrote books on the colonial security and intelligence apparatus, and organized study circles of the occupation forces’ tactics among imprisoned Palestinians. As a national leader, he not only commanded defensive operations against Israeli invasions of Gaza during the 2010s but envisioned and planned the bold counteroffensive of Al-Aqsa Flood. He always kept his eyes on the dreams, suppressed potential and freedom of his people, and his responsibilities to his fellow Palestinian prisoners locked inside Zionist jails. He engaged in and embraced the battle to bring an end to massacres, destruction and siege, to place the Palestinian cause in the center of the Arab, Islamic and international arenas, to fight for the lives and futures of the young people of Gaza, and to free the prisoners left behind when he was liberated by the Resistance.

With spear-like precision Sinwar understood that it is correct and necessary to fight, and that our task remains to know how to fight better and more effectively. As long as there is oppression, there will be resistance; as long as there is occupation, there will be national liberation; Where one falls, ten will take his place. The Zionist entity seems to understand this quite acutely. As released prisioner Ayman Kamamji recently reported to Al-Aqsa Channel, incarcerated Palestinian resistance leaders have been subjected to especially brutal abuse inside prisons, and the occupation refueses to hand over any of them in the recent prisoner exchanges, “because it does not want a new Sinwar”.

Zionists and imperialists have attempted to demonize Sinwar as a “terrorist,” while attempting to terrorize people against even mentioning his name, European governments have banned vigils in his memory, while the occupation has imprisoned Palestinians for posting about him. Occupation torturers and jailers have attempted to force the prisoners to curse him. All of this is because the reality strikes them with a great fear for the future of the colonial project in  Palestine: Yahya Sinwar was a peoples’ fighter who was martyred in battle against the national enemy. He gave his life in the struggle for the welfare of his people and in service of all free peoples of the world. He joined the thousands of martyrs who fought against the chains of colonialism from Vietnam to Lebanon to Cuba. His leadership, bravery and devotion to Palestine and his people requires our most profound admiration and respect. His behavior and life is a model and inspiration for all of us. All democratic and progressive people in the world must uphold his memory and legacy. Each one of us should strive to devote our lives to the task of liberation, in the Palestinian, Arab and international arenas, like the revolutionary martyr Yahya Sinwar did.

“I say that the greatest gift the enemy and the occupation can give me is to assassinate me, and that I meet God Almighty as a martyr at their hands.” – the leader and martyr, Yahya Sinwar

Glory to the martyr Yahya Sinwar and all the martyrs of Palestine and the Resistance. Return, liberation and victory to Lebanon, to Yemen, to all the forces of the Resistance. Victory for Palestine, all of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Read more: Prisoner, Leader, Martyr: Yahya Sinwar, the great hero of Palestine