Taliban Spokesman Gives Interview to Israeli TV, Unaware Who Exactly He Was Speaking With

The spokesman for the Taliban later reportedly explained that he hasn't "done interview with anyone introducing himself he is from an Israeli media", noting that some journalists might have been "masquerading".

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban*, apparently gave an interview to Israel’s state TV news channel without realising that he was dealing with Israeli media, The Times of Israel reports.

According to the newspaper, Shaheen’s interview with Israeli broadcaster Kan aired Tuesday, evoking surprise from some due to the fact that a representative of the Taliban, a notorious Islamist terrorist organisation, would consent to speak with an Israeli outlet.

As it turned out, however, the journalist who did the interview, Roi Kais, reportedly did not tell Shaheen that he or the network he was representing were Israeli.

Several hours after the interview aired, Shaheen himself also tweeted that he “hadn’t understood who he was speaking to”, as the newspaper put it.

"I do many interviews with journalists every day after the falling of provincial centres of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul to the Islamic Emirate," he wrote, as quoted by the newspaper. "Some journalists may be masquerading but I haven’t done an interview with anyone introducing himself he is from an Israeli media."

In the aforementioned interview. Shaheen said that non-Muslim minorities in Afghanistan would be protected by the Taliban, and that the organisation he represents has no ties with Hamas.

*The Taliban is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and many other countries.