Me and Hamas

How the terror group’s political leader, named in DoJ murder charges this week, tried to spin me in Doha

IN THE SUMMER OF 2014, I flew to Doha to interview Khaled Meshaal, then the political chief of Hamas. It was in the midst of an earlier Hamas-Israeli war provoked by the kidnapping and brutal killing of three Israeli teenagers on the West Bank. Meshaal, widely seen at the time as relatively pragmatic despite having been designated by the U.S. government as a “specially designated global terrorist,“ had a specific purpose in agreeing to see me: to distance the Palestinian resistance group from the murders that triggered the latest round of the conflict—and, most of all, distinguish Hamas from another terrorist group that was just then triggering international revulsion.

Khaled Meshaal in early 2015 after a visit to Iran, a few months after Michael Isikoff interviewed him in Doha (AFP)

The day before I met with Meshaal, the Islamic State had released a gruesome video showing its beheading of American journalist James Foley.  After I was taken to an unmarked building in a gated Doha community and underwent an intensive security check by Meshaal’s menacing looking bodyguards, my interview with Meshaal quickly started with the news of the day, the Foley video.