Opinion
Mrs Sinwar’s ‘Birkin’ shows Hamas leaders only care about themselves
The wife of the deceased terror leader was captured on video fleeing before October 7
October 21, 2024 13:19
3 min read
The wife of the deceased terror leader was captured on video fleeing before October 7
October 21, 2024 13:19It’s the advert Hermès never wanted: their iconic Birkin bag hanging off the arm of Samar Abu Zamar, aka Mrs Sinwar, as she squeezes her sizeable frame through a terror tunnel somewhere beneath the streets of Gaza on the eve of October 7.
I can only imagine the commotion at Hermès HQ on Saturday, when the footage was released by the IDF. A pack of tiny, perfectly preened Emily in Paris-esque PRs flapping around in a state of unrestrained panic. Or perhaps I’m fooling myself. Maybe, in this topsy-turvy world in which we now find ourselves, the rotund wife of a terrorist mastermind is exactly the kind of anti-influencer a luxury French fashion house would clamour to sign-up. The ultimate bad girl.
For those of you who didn’t used to work at a fashion magazine, the Birkin bag is not just any bag. It’s not even just any designer bag. It is THE ultimate designer bag. Launched in 1984, and named after the singer / actress Jane Birkin who inspired its creation, the Birkin bag became a fashion superstar when “IT bags” became A Thing in the mid-late 1990s. The Birkin’s status was cemented in the early 2000s thanks to its starring role in an episode of Sex and The City, and appearances on the arms of every celebrity worth knowing, from Kate Moss to Kim Kardashian. Prices are said to start at around £10,000 but run into the hundreds of thousands depending on the materials used (the most expensive range, the Himalayan Birkin, is made of Niloticus crocodile skin. Natch). But even if you have the money, it’s not as simple as just rocking up to your local Hermès boutique and flashing the cash: wannabe buyers often have to join a waiting list. Like converting to Judaism, they really make you work for it.
It was an IDF spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, who broke the story that Abu Zamar appeared to have gone into hiding carrying the world’s most desirable piece of arm candy – estimating that her version, if real, would cost about $32,000 (quite how he knows so much about designer handbags is anyone’s guess). “While Gaza residents have no money for food, we see many examples of Yahya Sinwar and his wife’s special love for money,” he wrote on Twitter.
While some people are questioning whether it was indeed a Birkin bag that Abu Zamar is carrying, I’m willing to take the punt that it is. Because, why wouldn’t it be? We know that Hamas leaders have accumulated obscene private fortunes – $5 billion each for Khaled Mashal, Mohammed Deif and the now-assassinated Ismail Haniyeh; $3 billion for Sinwar – and spend their days in luxurious Qatari hotels, far away from the chaos they’ve created. As a friend of mine commented: “Anyone who has spent some time working in Selfridges (ie me) knows that there’s enough sheikh wives buying out entire shop floors that a Hermès bag could make its way to the leader of Hamas’ wife.”
Israel presumably released the footage as part of their battle against the quite frankly hilarious idea that Sinwar – who earned the nickname “the butcher of Khan Younis” for his brutality towards Palestinians suspected of “collaborating” with Israel – was some kind of working man’s hero (two of the West’s foremost misogynists, Andrew Tate and Dan Bilzerian, have said he was, so it must be true). But whether they realised the status of Abu Zamar’s bag beforehand is unclear.
Obviously, none of this will do anything to dampen the deep love and respect that Western leftists have for these despicable people. I’m beginning to think that nothing short of mass lobotomies could do that.
But God willing, this video will be a wake-up call for the clear-headed people of this world who have been distressed by the images of the destruction of Gaza and the suffering of its ordinary civilians, and unclear who should be ultimately held responsible.
Here’s hoping that the sight of Sinwar – the architect of the October 7 massacre and the ensuing war – and his designer-handbag-holding wife, safely ensconcing their family underground away from the war they know will soon be raining down on their compatriots, will help them to see that far from being any kind of well-meaning freedom fighters, the Hamas leadership are cut from exactly the same self-serving megalomaniac cloth as every other despotic dictator ever to walk the Earth.
Hopefully that, in turn, will help them to finally understand that the best thing for the poor Palestinian people, as they scratch out their lives in the smoking remains of Gaza, is to be rid of these monsters once and for all.
Or, at the very least, it might force them to find more deserving recipients for their aid money – because the huge fortunes raised by the Gaza fundraisers sure as hell aren’t reaching anyone who actually needs it.