Jeffrey Goldberg

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Nizar Rayyan: Courtly, Humorous, and a Little Bit Evil

18 Feb 2009 01:27 pm

James Bennet writes of his encounters with Rayyan, one of my all-time favorite Hamas theologians and advocates of murder-suicide: "Rayyan said that he missed the son who had died attacking the settlement (he was 16), but that he planned to push another son to conduct an attack of his own. 'It's our home,' he said. 'It's more dear to me than my kids.' He was then looking to add a fourth wife--'I love women,' he told me with a smile--with a goal of eventually having 50 children."

James brought his lovely, and pregnant, wife with him to Gaza, and the following hilarity ensued:

When I mentioned that my wife had come with me to Gaza, where I was reporting for The New York Times, he insisted I call her down from our room. She was then almost eight months pregnant with our first child. To demonstrate how cosmopolitan he was, he made a point of shaking her hand, though in theory, Islam prohibits a man from touching a woman to whom he isn't related.
It's not that I'm competitive with James, but I just want everyone to know that Khaled Meshaal is coming to my daughter's Bat Mitzvah.

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