Zionist regime will drown in blood of Haniyeh’s children and other Palestinians

By Wesam Bahrani

The cowardly killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s three sons and four grandchildren in Gaza only exemplifies the fact that the murderous occupying entity is on a deathbed. 

The latest diabolic crime committed by the apartheid regime first and foremost shows its desperation and hopelessness and its inability to achieve any of the stated military goals it quite ambitiously outlined before embarking on the latest genocidal campaign. 

The regime was under the illusion that by assassinating the resistance leader’s family members, the Zionist entity might get some form of leverage at the negotiating table. 

If anything, Benjamin Netanyahu has made it harder for himself and his US masters. 

The leaders of many resistance groups in Palestine have offered their sons and family members as martyrs to the cause of liberating their land from the Israeli occupation. 

After receiving the news about the killing of his children and grandchildren on Wednesday night, Haniyeh appeared calm and composed, thanking God for the “honor” of bestowing martyrdom on his close family members. That’s the trait of great leaders.

He said almost every family in Gaza has paid a heavy price with the blood of their children in the past six months and before that, and he is only one of them.

Importantly, leaders of the Axis of Resistance in other parts of the region have also offered exemplary sacrifices for the greater cause, the bigger cause, against the aggressors. 

This shared legacy of sacrifice and martyrdom has only strengthened the steadfastness of the Axis of Resistance and its leaders, from Palestine to Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen. 

Among the most notable examples is the son of Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. 

18-year-old Hadi Nasrallah was martyred by the Israeli forces in 1997 in southern Lebanon. 

The important aspect here is the reaction and position of these resistance leaders when their sons or family members are killed by the Israeli occupation. 

Do they regret and repent? Do they grieve and complain? Does it become personal, and does that personal aspect make them succumb to pressure or give up on the cause? 

Unfortunately, for the apartheid Israeli regime and its delusional despots in Tel Aviv and Washington, the blood of all the resistance factions, their leaders and their sons and family members is the driving force that will eventually end the illegal and brutal occupation. 

One day, after the martyrdom of Hadi Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General delivered a thumping speech in which he explained how painful it was for him before to visit the parents of the Lebanese resistance movement’s martyrs and look them in the eye. 

Hadi Nasrallah wasn’t the only one martyred by the Israeli occupation forces. Many more offered exemplary sacrifices. Hadi’s body, like those of others, was held by the Zionist entity. 

“I tell the families of the martyrs whose bodies remain captive that we also share this common feature now,” the Hezbollah chief said in September 1997. 

At the funeral service the same month, he added, “The martyrdom of Hadi is a message that the leadership of Hezbollah doesn’t leave aside its sons to enjoy the (post-occupation) future. When our sons head to the frontline, that is our pride, and when they are martyred, this allows us to hold our heads up high”.

Over the next three years, Hezbollah inflicted heavy battlefield casualties on the Israeli occupation, forcing it to withdraw from the Lebanese territory in 2000 in humiliation. 

The Arab country regained its sovereignty, independence, security, and honor as a result of all the blood given by resistance fighters, founders, leaders and their family members.

History is repeating itself. Now the resistance has grown in faith, determination as well as in military terms while the Israeli regime is reaching its dead-end. 

There is nothing the rogue, child-murdering Netanyahu regime can boast of after half a year of US-backed genocide in Gaza. The resistance has prevailed and the occupation has lost. 

The video that went viral showed the moment Haniyah (visiting wounded Palestinians at a hospital in Qatar) was informed, via a crying voice message on the phone from Gaza, about the killing of his three sons, three granddaughters and one grandson, without a scintilla of pain visible on the Hamas leader’s face is because this resistance, unlike the US and its proxy, has a clear vision for Gaza and Palestine. 

“God will rest their souls.” He nods his head. 

“Shall we end the visit?” an aide asks. 

“No, let’s continue” he responds. 

The strategy of the resistance is inked in the blood of its martyrs, which sends a clear message to the United States that it prefers martyrdom and dignity over a life of humiliation.

“The enemy believes that targeting the families of the leaders will push them to give up the demands of our people,” Haniyeh said, putting up a tough front. 

“Anyone who believes that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional,” the Hamas leader hastened to add.

This has been the position of all resistance groups and their leaders in West Asia for more than four decades now. The principles of the cause overshadow personal considerations. 

The people of Gaza are indeed the most oppressed people on the planet right now. 

Yet the disinformation campaign by mainstream Western and some regional media that the Hamas leadership is enjoying a life of luxury in exile is aimed at discrediting the resistance.

Has the same media forgotten, so quickly, that Haniyah is among the millions of Palestinians who have been arrested and served time in Israeli jails, tortured and abused? 

Was he not on the ground in Gaza when it was blown to pieces many times before and the founders of Hamas, along with many of its senior leaders, were assassinated by the murderous Zionist regime? 

Was it, not Haniyah who emerged from a building in Gaza that had been razed to the ground by an Apache helicopter missile 20 years ago, holding the lifeless body of a toddler and carrying it in his arms to an ambulance?

Haven’t his three sons and four grandchildren in addition to some 70 other close relatives been killed in Gaza since October 7? 

Many Western leaders know the answers to these questions. But exposing them would expose US-backed Zionist war crimes in the territory. 

Hamas leaders now living in exile spent the majority of their life on the ground in Gaza and witnessed firsthand the movement’s spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s assassination in 2004 and that of the group’s co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi after Yassin. 

Many want the world to believe that the genocidal war on Gaza and the wider ethnic cleansing of Palestinians started when the clocks of Western mainstream media and their military-industrial complex-affiliated analysts decided to start it on October 7. 

All the leaders of Palestinian resistance movements have sacrificed their family members over the past decades to free their country from its Nazi-like colonial rulers. 

In the case of Hamas, which is leading the negotiations on behalf of all the Palestinian resistance factions and people in Gaza, the group hasn’t been deterred by US-made bombs to relinquish its demands for a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of all occupation forces from the entire strip and a return of all the displaced Palestinians to their homes. 

All the signs indicate that no level of ignorance on behalf of the US and its illegitimate proxy regime in West Asia will make the group climb down from its negotiating position. 

The prayer of the dead has been read over the bodies of Haniyah’s sons in Gaza, just like they were read for more than 33,300 others in harsh conditions. 

The path to liberating occupied al-Quds and al-Aqsa Mosque is a marathon, not a sprint. But the finish line is within reach and will be crossed by the resistance, their leaders, and their family members. 

Wesam Bahrani is an Iraqi journalist and commentator.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

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