The Israeli dentist who saved Yahya Sinwar’s life and then lost a nephew in the October 7 attacks

To understand this drive for violence, it is essential to know his time in Sinwar prison. This is recalled by several articles published in ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The New Yorker’, which recount the terrorist’s experiences in the more than twenty years -1989 to 2011- that he spent behind bars. In this sense, the testimony of the Israeli doctor is very significant. Yuval Bittonone of the medical officers of the prison where he served his sentence. In 2004, after a sick Sinwar asked for help because he was suffering from intense pain in the back of his neck and could barely stand, Bitton said his symptoms reminded him of a brain tumor. Thanks to his warning, Sinwar was admitted to an Israeli hospital and managed to save himself. However, in a tragic twist of fate, Bitton’s nephew became one of the victims of the October 7 attacks, planned by the man his uncle had saved two decades earlier.

“He told me he owed me his life,” Bitton recalled in ‘The New York Times’. “I wanted him to understand how important this was in Islam,” he explained. The new bond between the two – marked by a base of mistrust, like two enemies who observe each other with curiosity – translated into frequent conversations, in which they drank tea and debated topics related to Hamas and with the fissures of Israeli society, about which Sinwar was especially curious.

a scholar

From Bitton’s testimony, and from other information collected by the American media, it is deduced that Sinwar He decided to use his years in prison as a training period. In fact, he learned to speak Hebrew and translated the clandestine biographies of Israeli Intelligence officers, as revealed by the discovery of a notebook in his cell, with pages and pages full of careful handwriting. His objective was to become familiar with the agents’ procedures and make them known to his fellow soldiers. «They wanted prison to be a tomb for us, a mill where we grind our will, determination and bodies. But, thank God, with our faith in our cause, we turned the prison into sanctuaries of worship and academies of study,” Sinwar confessed in an interview, according to ‘The New York Times’.

The confinement consolidated Sinwar’s leadership and prestige among his followers. His fame was already terrible. Born into a family of displaced people in 1948, he approached Hamas very early, where he was commissioned to direct the security service. Al Majdan arm of repression that punished all Palestinians who showed themselves close to the Israelis. In prison, his reputation as an implacable man was consolidated, becoming the terror of all those who felt tempted by denunciations. But, at the same time, he also became a beloved figure for those who perceived him as a leader without fissures.

Sinwar was stubborn: “He was willing to pay a high price for his principles,” Bitton said, according to ‘The New York Times,’ “even if the price was not proportional to the objective.” He once tried to get more than 1,500 Hamas prisoners to join a hunger strike to protest two inmates whose solitary confinement they considered excessive. In fact, Israel blamed him for blocking talks in favor of a ceasefire between Tel Aviv and the terrorist organization.

His departure, the condemnation of Adar

Sinwar’s four life sentences tied him to life in prison, even Bitton believed it. However, the power he exercised from his cell led him to promote the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers to offer them for exchange for Hamas prisoners. In 2006, a raid by terrorist group militants through a tunnel from Gaza left two Israeli Army soldiers dead and another kidnapped: Gilad Shalit. Social pressure in Israel led Tel Aviv to finally accept the exchange in 2011 of more than a thousand Palestinians in exchange for the soldier.

Sinwar’s rise within Hamas was dizzying until he was positioned as leader of the Islamist movement in 2017. He waited patiently until Israel suffered an internal crisis to launch an unprecedented offensive. Just when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at his worst, publicly questioned and under the scrutiny of jurisprudence, Sinwar orchestrated the October 7 attacks, where around 1,200 Israelis died and another 250 were captured. Bitton acknowledged that Sinwar had warned him, precisely, that he would take advantage of a moment of division in Israel.

Kibbutz Nir Oz suffered that day one of the many terrorist hordes poured into Israel. To the worse luck of Dr. Bitton, his nephew named Tamir Adar and a farmer by profession, disappeared. Six months later they learned that he had been kidnapped by Hamas.

As a result of the impossible relationship between Bitton and Sinwar, Adar’s mother and the doctor’s sister was tempted to persuade him to contact the terrorist leader. However, the impossibility of exchanging phone numbers, despite having been a request from Sinwar, led him to appeal to a supposed respect between them to prevent him from being mistreated. “In my opinion, I would treat him the same way I did, saving his life despite being an enemy,” Bitton said, according to the American media. Although Israeli Intelligence revealed that Sinwar had been concerned about Adar’s health, it later came to light that the young man had been wounded while defending the kibbutz and had died during the transfer to Gaza.

In retrospect, Bitton recognizes that he could not have acted differently. However, the question with which the doctor was approached parallel to the interview, according to the ‘New York Times’, is appropriate: “Why did you save him?”