An iconic Hermès brand bag worth thousands and thousands of euros in a Gaza tunnel is the latest protagonist, among tens of thousands of deaths, of the war between Israel and Hamas. The Jewish State’s army has launched a campaign to torpedo the Islamist movement whose leader, Yahia Sinwar, it killed on Wednesday in the Palestinian Strip. One of the arguments they base on is the Birkin model from that French brand that Samar Abu Zamar, Sinwar’s wife, carries, first in the right hand and then in the left, in a video made public by the military on Saturday. Along with this detail, military spokespersons warn of objects such as mattresses, televisions, bathrooms, safes or cash, food or water in underground shelters safe from bombs to which the population did not have access. With the main enemy eliminated, the pace of the war has not slowed on the ground.
This recording corresponds, according to the official version, to the night of October 6 to 7, 2023, a few hours before Hamas men undertook the massacre of some 1,200 people in Israeli territory and whose mastermind is Sinwar, according to State authorities. Jew. With those more than three minutes they accuse the leader of knowing that there will be a sure response from the Israeli troops and that, in anticipation, he is keeping his own people safe while leaving others exposed. In the images appear Sinwar, who makes several trips introducing things into the tunnel, his wife and two minors who could be his children. Israeli agents obtained the video several months ago, although until now, after having liquidated the leader of the group, they had not shown and distributed it.
“Did Sinwar’s wife enter the tunnel on October 6 carrying a Birkin bag whose price is estimated at around $32,000 (about 29,500 euros)?” asks Avichay Adraee, Arabic spokesman for the Israeli army, in his profile on the social network The woman appears with her bag and another with the bag with the aforementioned price. In a short time, the seed of hatred and mockery germinated. First on the social networks themselves, even on other official accounts; later, in the media in Israel and abroad.
هل زوجة السنوار دخلت معه إلى النفق في السادس من أكتوبر وبحوزتها حقي بة لشركة بيركين التي تقدر كلفتها بنحو 32 ألف دولار؟! أترك لكم التعليق.
بينما لا يملك سكان غزة الأموال الكافية لخيمة أو للمواد الأساسية نر أمثلة كثيرة لحب يحيي السنوار وزوجته الخاص للأموال… pic.twitter.com/sGft4Qg9s8— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) October 19, 2024
There are those who have also been outraged. This is the case of Mauricio Lapchik, member of the NGO Peace Now. “What a stupid and irrelevant opinion!” he writes in his X profile, while denouncing: “Our prime minister [Benjamín Netanyahu] has lived shamelessly in luxury for years, while young men die every day, literally every day, in his war of survival and destruction.” For him, the campaign is “pure propaganda” after Netanyahu and his successive governments have financed Hamas for years.
With the tunnel video, the army intends to counter the dominant narrative among Palestinians. Many of them have found a reason to mythologize him by seeing photos of Sinwar’s body and the video images in which he tried to confront the military, despite being injured. “On the eve of the brutal massacre, Sinwar was busy with his survival and the survival of his family,” said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari. The head of Hamas, elevated to the top last August after the assassination in Tehran of his predecessor, Ismail Haniya, in an attack attributed to Israel, “went and came with bags of food, water, pillows, a plasma television, mattresses and other supplies for a long stay,” the spokesperson added. According to him, it had bathrooms, a shower, a kitchen, beds, uniforms, safes and “a lot” of cash.
This recording has been hidden because it has been one of the tools used by the army and the secret services as a key to following in his footsteps. The military had already located Sinwar’s “underground fortress” in his hometown of Khan Younis (southern Gaza) shortly after he escaped, Hagari explained. “Several times our forces were very close to him and arrived at the places where he had stayed shortly after he managed to escape,” he explained during an appearance. He said that after the offensive on Khan Yunis, Sinwar fled to the southern tip, Rafah, there he took refuge in another tunnel that he described as “VIP”, where they even found his DNA on a handkerchief with which he blew his nose, before finally finding death in a confrontation with the Israeli military, already separated from his family.
For years, Israel promoted the existence of Hamas, born in Gaza in 1987, thinking that it would be an Islamist movement without political connotations or involvement in the armed struggle. He considered it a good tool to undermine the power of the Palestinian National Authority led by the then president, Yasser Arafat.
The Birkin bag like the one Sinwar’s wife wears in the video—if it is the original brand—has continued to rise in price in parallel with its popularity. It is one of the favorite models of celebrities and fashion lovers; actresses, singers, influencers; appears in films and series… The snowball of consumption and the scarcity available for sale – under the close control of Hermès – has been rolling while the artisans continue to take between 12 and 18 hours to make each unit, depending on Harper’s Bazaar. This magazine highlights the second-hand market and estimates that it can cost between 17,000 and 34,000 euros if it is in good condition. Quite an investment, this medium adds, because in the last 35 years its price has increased by 500%. It is also common to find it falsified on-line like at street level.
It has been 40 years since the British actress Jane Birkin met the then director of Hèrmes, Jean-Louis Dumas, during a flight from Paris to London. She complained that she couldn’t find a bag that matched everything she used to carry as a young mother, the company explains on its website. He set the design in motion for it to exist. And it ended up being called Birkin. These days, and until October 31, the original model – whose idea germinated in an airplane in 1984 – is on display at Sotheby’s headquarters in Paris along with other design pieces that have gone down in history in the exhibition. Excellence à la Française. For the Israeli spokesperson, Sinwar’s wife’s bag is original and does not consider it to be a copy.