‘It is our duty to take revenge’: Five Tweets on this week’s assassinations of terrorist leaders in the Middle East

This week, several top commanders and leaders of terrorist organizations in the Middle East were assassinated, some more than likely at the hands of Israeli forces.

The first assassination took place on Tuesday. Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander lost his life in an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) strike in Beirut, Lebanon. Shukr had been identified by the IDF as a senior commander of Hezbollah’s precision missile project. He was also wanted by the United States government for his role in the 1983 bombing of an American Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. military personnel. The IDF eliminated Shukr as a response to last week’s Hezbollah rocket attack that killed 12 Druze children as they were playing soccer in the town of Majdal Shams, located within the Golan Heights.

On Wednesday, Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Tehran. Haniyeh was in Iran’s capital to attend the inauguration of the country’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Haniyeh, a billionaire who has lived in Qatar since 2016, was vital to the Hamas regime and had an apparent fondness for the devastating October 7 attacks, in which Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 240 hostages, of which 116 are likely still trapped Gaza. He was also a key negotiator in the Gaza ceasefire talks. Hamas has blamed Israel for his murder, though IDF spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Israel only carried out the attack on Shukr in Lebanon. At the time of writing, the IDF has not taken responsibility for Haniyeh’s killing.

Israel also confirmed this week that it did, in fact, assassinate Mohammed Deif—a Palestinian terror leader of the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. Deif was one of the decision-makers who ordered more than 3,000 Hamas militants to invade Israel during the October 7 attacks. He was killed in July.

Here are five Tweets on the trio of terrorist assassinations.

The IDF confirmed the assassination of Hezbollah’s Shukr explaining that he was in charge of “the majority of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponry, including precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets and UAVs.”

Shukr was eliminated in Dahieh, a suburb of Beirut. Israeli Air Force pilots carried out the assassination, which took down an apartment complex

Explaining the assassination, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant wrote on his X account that Shukr “[had] the blood of many Israelis on his hands. Tonight, we have shown that the blood of our people has a price, and that there is no place out of reach for our forces to this end.”

In response to the killing of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh, the “red flag of revenge” was flown above Jamkaran Mosque in Qom, a city 120 km south of Tehran. The flag represents a promise of “harsh revenge,” according to reporting from Agence France-Presse.

The flag has been raised before, namely after the U.S.’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a lead commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force who was responsible for the deaths of several American soldiers in Iraq.

Canadian-born Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO and UN watchdog based in Geneva, Switzerland, tweeted a translated video featuring former United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) official Ahmad Oueidat in a interview.

In the discussion, held earlier this year, Oueidat says, “UNRWA schools were giving rise to leaders. Many familiar names of politicians and leaders. First and foremost, we can mention Ismail Haniyeh, who was an UNRWA teacher…”

UNRWA has come under hot water recently for their links to Hamas. The Israeli government insists that, “Over 10% of senior UNRWA educators in Gaza (school principals or deputy principals, directors or deputy directors of training centers) were found to be members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.” Israeli intelligence indicates that Hamas considers UNRWA to be an “essential asset both for maintaining its rule over Gaza and for exploiting its facilities to build terror infrastructure.”

UNWRA vigorously disputes these claims saying they work in “complex environments, including in areas under the control of a de facto government or armed groups,” engaging with local authorities strictly to deliver humanitarian aid and protect their staff.

After a pause this year to address evidence that UNRWA staff took part in the October 7th attacks, Canada resumed its funding of the UN agency.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued an order for Iranian forces to strike Israel directly as revenge for Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran.

This deadly retaliation raises questions about what many expected to be an impending Gaza ceasefire and furthers the risk of an full-scale war between Israel and its hostile neighbours in the Middle East.