The underassassinated genius

This article opens another view on the man behind the explosive belt.

As a child growing up in this town of nothing much, Khaled Meshaal was known as the kid with all the answers.












"Khaled was a genius," Sheik Abdulhai Ayed, 51, an imam at Silwad's largest mosque who attended elementary school with Meshaal, said recently. "His specialty was problem solving. If there was a question we couldn't answer, the teacher would bring Khaled from the lower grade ... He solved the problem and went back to class. "

But even the admirers of the self-made genius are beginning to have their doubts:

"Khaled was stubborn. He hated sports and was completely focused on school. He will work hard for us," Sheik Ayed predicted shortly after Hamas was elected. In recent days, the imam has changed his mind: "Things have gone from bad to worse," he reflected yesterday.

I have a question for the genius: what should be done with a person who sends his brothers and sisters to die and to kill other people in the name of Allah the merciful, knowing perfectly that, aside of killing and being killed, there is no sense whatsoever in the death and destruction? The person in question sitting in his armchair in Damascus, protected (ostensibly) from getting his dues?

I know it is not nice to wish for a death of another human being. However, this is one of the cases where it could not happen to a more deserving person.

"Khaled will never bend to accommodate what outsiders want. His head is hard," an aunt said months ago.

Hard enough to stop a bullet?

Cross-posted on Yourish.com