By Humaira Ahad
On a busy street in uptown Cairo, a sound of loud cheer and applause greets passers-by. On turning back, they realize the sound is coming from a coffee shop where people are glued to a TV screen watching a man who has caught the imagination of the world.
Wearing a green camouflaged military uniform, face covered with a red keffiyeh, the videos of Abu Obaida, the spokesman of Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas resistance movement, have been doing rounds on social media since October 7.
Abu Obaida has emerged as the face of the Palestinian resistance in recent weeks and a hero for the fighters and supporters of the resistance throughout the world.
However, very little is known about the al-Qassam brigade’s military spokesman.
In 2002, Abu Obaida came to the limelight at various press conferences. He, however, never uncovered his masked face, following the example of his predecessor Imad Aqel, who was killed by Israel in 1993.
After the Israeli regime’s withdrawal from the besieged Gaza Strip in 2005, Abu Obaida was introduced as the official spokesman of the resistance movement’s new media unit.
Abu Obaida has now been the group’s only spokesman for the past 18 years. In the last seven weeks though, his popularity has grown not only in Palestine but across the world, including in the Western media.
The Hamas military spokesperson has been regularly appearing on television screens since the October 7 Operation Al-Aqsa Storm (also known as Al-Aqsa Flood), delivering powerful speeches.
At regular intervals, his prerecorded messages are defining the way the world is looking and analyzing the Palestinian resistance in the face of the Israeli regime’s no-holds-barred aggression.
Abu Obaida’s statements have consistently been in sync with the actions of resistance fighters.
While the Zionist regime has been spreading lies against Hamas and its armed wing, Abu Obaida has been unfailingly debunking those lies with documented evidence straight from the battlefield.
The spokesman who has emerged as an Arab hero has helped al-Qassam build an image of military resilience, courage, shrewdness, and strategic creativity amid a war that has busted the myth of the occupying entity’s military and intelligence invincibility.
“Our steadfast people”, “Our Arab and Muslim nations,” and, equally important, “Free people of the world”, this is how he has been addressing people in his tremendously popular videos.
Abu Obaida’s statements
When the Hamas military spokesperson delivers his messages, the world listens and listens carefully.
First appearing in 2006 in a video to claim responsibility, on behalf of al-Qassam Brigades, of a military operation in southern Gaza that led to the killing of two Israeli soldiers and subsequent capture of Gilad Shalit, Abu Obeida’s voice has become synonymous with the power of the Palestinian resistance.
The operation was a direct response to an Israeli regime strike targeting the Palestinian Abu Ghalia family while they were picnicking on a beach in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.
Since October 7, his five-to-ten-minute statements have been covering all the latest developments on political and military fronts in the besieged Gaza Strip. The language he uses is easily understood by the masses.
The sharp-witted spokesperson even makes use of sarcasm to lay bare the lies and obfuscations of the Zionist regime.
In a statement after the October 7 operation, Abu Obaida claimed that the Israeli military infrastructure that appears to be monstrous is in reality extremely feeble and vulnerable.
“We saw God’s victory manifest as we stormed the enemy’s fortresses on October 7th, which crumbled before us like a spider’s web,” he remarked at the time.
Addressing the Israeli regime premier Benjamin Netanyahu on October 8, a day after the surprise operation was launched, Abu Obaida said “Threatening Gaza is a losing game.”
“You threaten us with any army, Netanyahu, with your soldiers who fled like locusts in front of the Qassam fighters in their hundreds, leaving everything behind,” he remarked with extreme poise.
His statement exposed the regime’s claims of invincibility in the military field and made the world aware of the hoax that Israel is one of the most powerful militaries in the world.
“Despite the enemy’s possession of advanced security and military technology, they have failed to confront our fighters on the ground for over 60 hours,” Abu Obaida stated.
On October 17, he said, “The enemy thought that by closing the al-Aqsa Mosque to our people and releasing herds of settlers to ignite a religious war… they would escape punishment for their crimes.”
And then he went on to tell the occupying regime that its “era” had “irrevocably ended” with the October 7 operation, “giving way to an era of defeat and setbacks.”
‘Palestinians don’t fear’
On October 9, the spokesman for the al Qassem brigade made it clear to the settler-colonial regime that Palestinians don’t fear the Israeli regime’s threats after the rhetoric about the ground invasion.
“Threatening us with ground invasion does not intimidate us, and we are ready to deal with any brutal force,” he said. “Gaza will only be a graveyard for its invaders and its sands will swallow you up.”
“We tell the enemy who threatens a ground invasion daily that we are still waiting for him. We will make the enemy taste a greater defeat than he expected or feared and teach the whole world the meaning of (Palestinian) heroism and (Israeli) deception,” he hastened to add.
Abu Obaida also opened the Pandora’s box of lies peddled by the regime about the October 7 attack.
“A number of our fighters were able to withdraw safely from the Urim base [in the Negev Desert], which houses the Israeli regime’s intelligence Unit 8200, after completing their mission there and finishing off a large number of enemy forces,” he said in one of his statements.
“The era of selling illusions to the world about the myth of the invincible army, the invulnerable Merkava (tank)], and alleged military and intelligence superiority has ended after we shattered it in front of the world in the ‘Gaza envelope’ (the occupied region close to Gaza border) and all of Palestine.”
Through his statement, Abu Obaida told the regime that the Palestinian resistance could strike wherever and whenever it wanted to, including deep in the occupied territories, until the liberation of Palestine.
“The era of Zionism’s decline has begun, and the curse of the eighth decade will befall them,” Abu Obaida said in one of his statements, reading the obituary of the regime.
The military spokesperson’s statements, however, are not limited to updates on Israel’s war on Gaza. He has also passionately spoken about Muslim and Arab unity in his recent speeches.
In a recent statement on November 25, Abu Obaida called on the Jordanian people to escalate all forms of popular and mass resistance against the occupying regime.
“You, our people in Jordan, are the nightmare of the occupation that fears your movement and strives tirelessly to neutralize and isolate you from your cause,” he remarked.
In one of his viral video statements after the October 7 operation, he thanked all those supporting the resistance, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, for making the operation possible.
“Since Allah graced us with this development [of the Al-Qassam Brigades], and with this victory and this humiliation of the enemy, we have to thank those whom Allah enlisted to take part in this development… first and foremost the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.
He hastened to add that Iran “did not withhold from us funds, weapons and other [forms of aid] and helped us in our resistance by supplying us with missiles that pulverized the Zionist strongholds during the attacks and battles we waged against the occupier, and also supplied us with quality anti-tank missiles that crushed the legendary Zionist Merkava [tank].”
The faceless nom de Guerra has become a household name today, which only points to the tremendous success of the resistance movement he represents against the occupying entity.
