We have not yet learned the details of how Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran at the state-secured guesthouse where he was staying.
The American newspaper The New York Times reported that explosives were planted in his room two months ago, while the Iranians claim that a missile was fired at the building from the outside.
Israel has neither claimed nor denied the assassination so far, but no one doubts that the operation was carried out by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
In its 75-year history, Israel has already carried out countless targeted assassinations of this kind. These events began as Nazi hunting; they first formed special units to find the fugitives of the Nazi regime in Germany one by one, and there are countless films about these.
Later, they targeted those who carried out the massacre of athletes at the Munich Olympics.
In the meantime, they carried out the Entebbe Airport Raid in Uganda, which was conducted against a hijacked passenger plane. They carried it out.
In recent years, their targets have been Iran's nuclear physicists; it even reached the point where, a few years ago, they targeted and eliminated an Iranian nuclear physicist on a highway in Iran by using a parked pickup truck equipped with a remote-controlled rifle.
The bullets fired from a rifle triggered remotely from an empty van, if I recall correctly, did not even harm his wife in the car; only the nuclear physicist died.
Now, they have eliminated Haniyeh as well.
It is clear that Israel's claim to the right to carry out all these assassinations and its resort to executions without any trial is neither moral nor legal, but this is the reality.
With the entire West, led by the US, supporting Israel, no one is debating whether these actions are legal.
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Meanwhile, there is a long article in The New Yorker magazine about who will be the new leader of Hamas after the Haniyeh assassination and about the leadership candidate Yahya Sinwar.
To be honest, I had never heard the name Yahya Sinwar; it turns out that the 62-year-old Sinwar has spent his life fighting against Israel, he is the name behind the October 7 organization and the one who planned it, he had even given clues about this beforehand, and while Israel is leaving no stone unturned in Gaza and flattening everything, it is actually looking for him, yet they still haven't found his trail.
Yahya Sinwar is believed to be hiding in the tunnels of Khan Yunis.
Sinwar's life began under the pressure of the Israeli regime, followed by 22 years in Israeli prisons, during which time Israeli doctors saved his life by removing a brain tumor; after being released a few years ago during a prisoner exchange, he became one of Hamas's most important leaders, and those taken hostage during the October 7 attacks also recount seeing him.
In fact, upon reading the article, you also get the sense that Haniyeh was not as important to Hamas as he was perceived to be, and that the truly important person is Yahya Sinwar.
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Unfortunately, there are people within Israel's current administration who have lost their common sense, as well as their notions of rights, law, and morality; for example, I read a statement yesterday by an Israeli minister saying, "It is our right to starve 2 million Palestinians, but the West won't allow it."
It is incomprehensible.
Hearing these words brings to mind the Nazi SS officers who made the decisions that exterminated 6 million Jews; they thought the same way.
Human history is also the history of the bloody national struggles of nations.
The targeting of civilians in wars—such as Hamas killing innocent Israelis first, followed by Israel targeting the innocent Palestinian people—is neither the first nor the last example of such events.
This was the case in the American Civil War, it was the same in the victories of Mandela, who ended apartheid in South Africa, it was the same in Northern Ireland with the IRA example, and there are similarities in the events that have taken place in Turkey in the recent past.
But one thing is certain.
Unless problems are solved through peace and conflict environments reach stability, more Yahya Sinwars and Netanyahus will emerge.
