NPR’s Adrian Ma speaks with New Yorker editor David Remnick about his recent profile of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
ADRIAN MA, HOST:
President Biden on Friday told reporters that efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza were making progress. But he was quick to temper his optimism, stating, quote, “we’re still not there yet.” Now, any successful deal will require cooperation from Hamas. The newly named political leader of Hamas is Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar is considered to be a key architect of the October 7 attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people and led to a war with Israel that’s left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker, and he recently wrote a profile of Sinwar. To get a clearer picture of the forces that shaped him, Remnick went to Israel and the West Bank and spoke to people who have known Sinwar as a comrade and a combatant. In his profile, Remnick writes that Sinwar, who spent years incarcerated in Israeli prisons, thought of his time in prison as an academy. So I asked him why.
DAVID REMNICK: He made use of it by learning Hebrew, by reading as many books and newspapers as he possibly could. He was learning his enemy. Again, I don’t want to romanticize this guy by any stretch of the imagination, but on the other hand, I don’t take the other view that you shouldn’t try to understand the human being that you’re dealing with and in this case, someone who was bred to the bone in the armed resistance of Hamas, which began in the late ’80s with the First Intifada. And his first job when he was in Hamas was to investigate, torture and often kill people who collaborated with the Israelis, and he was particularly brutal about it. And eventually, he was imprisoned in the late ’80s, and he was in prison for over 20 years. And while he was there, as I say, he made it his mission to learn his enemy.
MA: You talk about this semi-autobiographical novel that he wrote while he was in prison. What is it called, and what’s it about?
REMNICK: “The Carnation And The Thorn” is what it’s called, and it’s highly autobiographical. It’s about his becoming an Islamist and a member of the resistance. It’s his experience of the First Intifada in Gaza. Clearly what he’s trying to do is show how brutality bred brutality and how the conditions in Gaza – its being closed off, it’s – the presence of Israeli troops and police and people who were brought in for interrogations – shaped the nature of his consciousness and his attitude toward the world and toward the Israelis.
The fury at Israel is very clear, and its ideological inclination is very clear from this book, which is not one of compromise. It is certainly nothing having to do with the two-state solution. It is fueled by the absolute conviction that there can be no Israeli state, and there can be no compromise. And this – look. This is at the heart of his ideology today.
MA: Sinwar has a history of planning and orchestrating operations to capture Israeli hostages and then using that as leverage in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. Of course, we saw that play out during the October 7 attack, and I wonder if you could talk about this tactic. Like, why do you think it’s one that Sinwar has relied on?
REMNICK: Well, I think that Hamas has seen that the Israelis historically have been willing to release a huge multiple of prisoners for one of their own. And the origin story of that, of course, is when Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier, was captured by Hamas soldiers just outside of the Gaza Strip and then brought into Gaza. He was kept there for five years. It had a huge political effect for all the time he was there. And finally, the exchange was for a thousand prisoners, Sinwar included. So it was an enormous indicator to Sinwar about what would be possible.
MA: I mean, there is an interesting divide that you shed some light on in the people that you interview in your piece, which is that, like some Palestinians are critical of Sinwar in the sense that they say that, yeah, he could have foreseen that Israel would have retaliated in such an unrelenting way. But you also say that that sort of critical eye is an increasingly minority view among Palestinians that you’ve interviewed.
REMNICK: You know, what I would say is that it is possible to be enraged at two sources at once. It’s possible to be enraged at the Israelis, for obvious reasons, for the conduct of this war and the – just the sheer amount of bloodshed, and at the same time be enraged at Sinwar for being willing to ignite this crisis which, to one degree or another, was – had to be seen as inevitable. But Sinwar’s rhetoric and – in his speeches and what he writes make it very plain that he sees this as a historic battle and he’s willing to make these sacrifices of his own people in order to attain final victory.
MA: So last question. I’m curious. You spent all this time trying to piece together a portrait of Sinwar. If you had a chance to interview him in person, what would you ask him?
REMNICK: Such a good question. I think I can imagine the answer, but I would say if you had it to do again, was this worth it? And he would answer, well, it’s not – I didn’t commit these atrocities. That’s what he would say. But you would have to press it and say, but surely you would have anticipated a massive military retaliation. I think he would say, yes, it was worth it. And that’s one dimension of this tragedy.
MA: We’ve been speaking with David Remnick of The New Yorker. Thank you so much for taking the time.
REMNICK: Thank you.
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