Goldberg: interviewer of the dead

Goran sent me this (I cite with his permission): " liked your post on Jeffrey Goldberg and the dead Hamas leaders. For some strange reason Goldberg failed to mention his scoop interview with Nizar Rayyan in his 2006 article on Gaza in the New Yorker. But of course, Mr. Rayyan was then still alive. Instead Goldberg focuses his article almost entirely on a rocket-squad leader by the name of Abu Obeidah, interviewed at night in an abandoned building in Beit Hanoun. Well, he also visited an "Abu Hussein" (who, incidently had a son named "Hussein", a fact that certainly adds to Mr. Goldberg's credibility), “a leader of the Qassam Brigades in Gaza” in his home. "Abu Hussein" was “one of [Salah] Shehadeh’s bodyguards, but he had not been on duty on the night of the attack.” Don’t the Qassam Brigades have any kind of security? Especially since Hamas leaders interviewed by Goldberg tend to end up dead: “Shortly before Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was assassinated by Israel, in 2004, he told me…” But I must say I’m impressed by Goldberg incredible courage, being so close to death all the time without ever blinking: “I was forced back by fire from a tank-mounted machine gun…” “a Hamas-fired Qassam rocket landed fifty feet from where I stood.” “While I was driving near Safed,… on a road that had become known as Katyusha Alley, one of the rockets fell eight or nine hundred feet from my car. The explosion made an enormous noise and shook the car.” But of course, he was trained in the Israeli army..."

PS I received an advance notice that Goldberg will be publishing an interview with Sa`id Siyam in the New York Times. He was able to exclusively conduct the interview three hours after Siyam's death.