10/18/2024–|Last updated: 10/18/202401:54 AM (Mecca time)
Al-Azhar Al-Sharif mourned, on Friday, the “heroic martyrs of the Palestinian resistance,” refusing to call them terrorists, hours after the Israeli army announced on Thursday evening the killing of the head of the Hamas political bureau, Yahya Sinwar.
This came in a statement published by Al-Azhar through its verified account on the “X” platform, in which it said that it mourns “the heroic martyrs of the Palestinian resistance who were killed by the criminal Zionist hand.”
Al-Azhar’s statement added, “This Zionist hand has wreaked havoc and corruption in our Arab land, killing, devastating, occupying, seizing and exterminating in full view of countries paralyzed in will, ability and thinking, an international community immersed in silence like the silence of the dead in graves, and an international law whose value is not equal to the price of the ink on which it was written.” “With it.”
Al-Azhar added, “The martyrs of the Palestinian resistance were true resistance fighters. They intimidated their enemy and brought fear and terror into their hearts. They were not terrorists, as the enemy falsely and deceitfully tries to portray them. Rather, they were resistance fighters clinging to the soil of their homeland, until God granted them martyrdom as they repelled the enemy’s plots and aggression, defending Their land, their cause, and our cause; the cause of the Arabs and Muslims in the east and west of the earth.”
The statement continued, “As Al-Azhar mourns the martyrs of the Palestinian resistance, it stresses the importance of exposing the lies and fraud of the Zionist media machine, and its attempt to distort the symbols of the Palestinian resistance in the minds of our youth and sons, and generalize their description of terrorists.”
An honor like no other
Al-Azhar stressed that “resistance, defending the homeland, land, and cause, and dying for it is an honor unlike any other.”
On Thursday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the killing of Sinwar, considering at the same time that Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip has not yet ended.
According to Anatolia Agency, Israel considers Sinwar the architect of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, which was carried out by Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, against Israeli settlements and military bases adjacent to the Strip on October 7, 2023, causing significant human and military losses to Tel Aviv. It negatively affected the reputation of its security and intelligence services at the international level.
On August 6, Hamas announced the selection of Sinwar, nicknamed “Abu Ibrahim,” as head of its political bureau, succeeding Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on July 31, in an attack blamed on Tel Aviv, although the latter did not acknowledge it.