SHALOM, KHATTAB!

At a press conference held in Moscow on September 29, Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the pro-Moscow Chechen civilian administration, discussed his recent trip to four Middle Eastern countries. At one point, according to the online daily Gazeta.ru, “Kadyrov said that in Iraq he had discovered something interesting about the notorious and elusive warlord Khattab. Iraqi officials informed him that Khattab ‘is not a Jordanian, but a Yemeni Jew.'” “The information according to which [Khattab] is a Jew,” Kadyrov went on to underline, “is clearly correct, for he named his daughter Sarah” (Gazeta.ru, October 2). The Russian media reacted to with considerable mirth to Kadyrov’s clumsy and bizarre anti-Semitism. “Shalom, Khattab!” the weekly Obshchaya Gazeta (no. 40, October 3) ironically titled its commentary.