Luxury handbag found in Gaza tunnel stars in Israel’s latest campaign against Hamas

In a conflict that has already left tens of thousands of dead, an iconic Hermès bag worth thousands of dollars spotted inside a tunnel in Gaza has become the latest focus of the war between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have launched a campaign against the Islamist movement whose leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip. One of the arguments on which the campaign is based is the Birkin model made by the French firm and which Samar Abu Zamar, Sinwar’s wife, is carrying, first in her right hand and then in her left, in a video made public by the military on Saturday. Along with this luxury item, military spokesmen talked about other objects such as mattresses, television sets, bathrooms, safes, cash, food and water in underground shelters safe from bombs and to which the general population had no access. With the main enemy eliminated, the pace of the war has not slowed on the ground.

According to the official version of events, this recording was made on the night of October 6-7, 2023, a few hours before Hamas members began the massacre of some 1,200 people in Israeli territory, the mastermind of which is Sinwar according to Israeli authorities. The video, which lasts over three minutes, is used as evidence that the Hamas leader knew there would be a response from Israeli troops and that, anticipating it, he took his own people to safety while leaving the others exposed. The images show 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, but they had not shown and distributed it until now, after having liquidated the leader of the group.

“Did Sinwar’s wife enter the tunnel with him on October 6 carrying a Birkin bag estimated to cost about $32,000?!” asked IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Avichay Adraee, who speaks Arabic, in a post on X. “While Gaza residents have no money for food, we see many examples of Yahya Sinwar and his wife’s special love for money,” he added, alongside a screenshot from the video showing the woman with her bag and another image of the designer bag with its price tag. For the Israeli spokesman, the bag used by Sinwar’s wife is original, not a fake. In no time at all, the seeds of hatred and mockery germinated. First on social media, even on other official accounts; then in media outlets in Israel and abroad.

Others have expressed outrage. This is the case of Mauricio Lapchik, director of external relations for the NGO Peace Now, a veteran peace movement in Israel. “What a stupid and irrelevant opinion!” he writes on his X profile, while denouncing: “Our Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] has shamelessly lived 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 been financing Hamas for years.

Israel initially promoted Hamas, founded in Gaza in 1987, thinking it would be an Islamist movement without any political connotations or involvement in the armed struggle. It saw Hamas as a good tool to undermine the power of the Palestinian National Authority led by the then president, Yasser Arafat.

With the tunnel video, the army is seeking to counter the dominant narrative among Palestinians Many of them have found a reason to raise Sinwar to legend status after seeing photos of his corpse and video footage of him trying to confront the soldiers despite being wounded. “Even on the eve before the brutal massacre, Sinwar was busy with his survival and the survival of his family,” said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari. The Hamas leader — who was elevated to the top last August after the assassination in Tehran of his predecessor, Ismail Haniya, in an attack attributed to Israel — and his son “go up and down, equipping themselves with plates of food, water, pillows, a plasma screen, mattresses and other products for a long stay,” added the spokesman. According to him, he had toilets, a shower, a kitchen, beds, uniforms, safes and “a lot” of cash.

The recording had been concealed until now because it was one of the tools used by the army and the secret services to follow his steps. The military had already located Sinwar’s “underground fortress” in his hometown, Khan Yunis (in the south of Gaza), shortly after he escaped, explained Hagari. According to the spokesman, several times IDF forces were very close to him and reached the places where Sinwar had been hiding only moments earlier. He said that after the offensive on Khan Yunis, Sinwar fled to the southern end, Rafah, where 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.

The Birkin bag that Sinwar’s wife is holding in the video — if it is indeed an original and not a fake — has not stopped rising in price along with its popularity. It is one of the favorite models of celebrities and fashion lovers, actresses, singers and influencers; it shows up in all kinds of films and series. The snowball of consumption and the scarcity of units available for sale — under close control by Hermès — has been rolling while artisans continue to take between 12 and 18 hours to make each unit, according to Harper’s Bazaar. This magazine highlights the importance of the second-hand market and estimates that it can cost between €17,000 and €34,000 if it is in good condition. Quite an investment, adds this outlet, because in the last 35 years its price has increased by 500%. It is also common to find counterfeit bags both online and on the street.

It has now been 40 years since the British actress Jane Birkin met the then director of Hèrmes, Jean-Louis Dumas, on a flight from Paris to London. She complained that she could not find a bag that would fit all the things she was used to carrying as a young mother, the company explains on its website. It was he who started the design, and it ended up being called the Birkin bag. These days, and until October 31, the original model is on display at Sotheby’s headquarters in Paris together with other designer pieces that have gone down in history in the exhibition Excellence à la Française.

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