Early on in the war against terrorism, when President George W. Bush faced off against Osama Bin Laden, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon discovered his alleged clone in Yasser Arafat. The war against terror now was developing along parallel tracks and also generating its own competition.
In lock step with the American administration, the Likud government of Ariel Sharon began to seek out its own terrorist enemies and to draw the Bush administration into a moral equivalency: you cannot fight some terrorists in Afghanistan and then make excuses for other terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza. Therefore a rationale was needed to link America’s war with Israel’s war on terrorism. Enter “Islamic terrorism.” The media was called to support this joint “war on terrorism” with a continuous barrage of propaganda that Islam gives birth to Islamic activism, Islamic activism produces Islamic radicals, and Islamic radicals metamorphose into Islamic terrorists. To abbreviate this process, Islam becomes synonymous with terrorism.
The Israeli lobby had to take on the increasingly vocal American Muslim population by stereotyping and distorting the lobbying efforts of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian organizations. In the process, the Zionist lobbyists stumbled upon a huge fact: the Saudi Arabian government seems to be either indirectly or ultimately responsible for many, if not all, of these recent newcomers to the American political process. At this point, the American Zionist-Jewish lobby began to turn its verbal guns against Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia offered American observers a convenient distraction from the political vices of Israel.
The Palestinian issue is so central and so sensitive to the Muslim public throughout the Middle East that it would become politically dangerous for any government to walk away from this issue —- and suicidal for any Arab government to side with a biased American foreign policy that supports Israel recklessly and foolishly. Saudi Arabian support for the Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat, as well as the popular support that flows between the people of Saudi Arabia and the people of Palestine, is no secret. Hundreds of millions of dollars have moved from Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian people and their institutions.
Another issue the American Zionist lobby can whip up against Saudi Arabia is the Saudi opposition to an American-led military attack on Iraq. Saudi Arabia is pivotal in this regard because of the considerable weight it swings among the Gulf countries.
The American Zionist lobby may wish to add the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran to its case against Riyadh. In the conspiratorial Zionist mind this narrowing of the distances between Riyadh, Tehran, and Baghdad is becoming worrisome, especially if one adds Syria and Lebanon to this troubling “axis of evil”.
The Israelis know that they are in no shape to take on the whole Muslim world. For this reason they are depending on their Zionist assets in the United States to thoroughly demonize Islam and the Muslims and in the process reinvigorate a “Crusader” mentality throughout the West.
This is not the first time that the governments in Riyadh and Washington have not seen eye to eye on particular issues. They have had their differences before. They parted company concerning the recognition of the Taleban government in Kabul and concerning Iran. Riyadh has resumed full diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran while the United States has refused such recognition. Never, however, did these types of divergent Saudi-American views cause a media upheaval in the American press against Saudi Arabia. So, the question becomes, why now? It would be quite difficult to figure it out if it were not for Israel’s intervention in American policy-making and American internal affairs by distorting America’s enlightened national interests.
How do you (as a Zionist) spoil this Israeli-Saudi competition for the heart and soul of America’s executive and legislative governance? Enter Wahhabism. The Zionist pens and tongues have been ululating recently against Wahhabism, which they discovered to be the fire in the belly of the Saudi beast. They finally found something on which they can hang all the Islamic dirty laundry from the jungles of the Philippines to the desert of Somalia.
When Israel wants to tap American military capabilities to serve Tel Aviv’s foreign-policy objectives, American commentators, media talk-show analysts, and all types of “authorities” on Islam suddenly discover Wahhabism and its spewing of hatred around the world and around the United States in Saudi-financed schools and Saudi-financed mosques! Saudi Arabia, with tens of thousands of Americans in it all along, was not a Wahhabi specter. But now, due to Israeli priorities, the American media has at long last discovered “human rights” and attacked Wahhabi extremism as the key to untying the Saudi-American knot!
The American press and media have discovered another Saudi Arabia which no one before ever knew or heard of. Now Saudi Arabia (which has been the same Saudi Arabia all along) has no human rights. It discriminates against women, minorities, and foreigners. Saudi Arabia has been misbehaving recently. It has not permitted the American military to launch military attacks from the Kingdom into Afghanistan. The Saudis want this war against terrorism to be concluded as soon as possible and with a minimum amount of casualties. Saudi Arabia is also disloyal because it refuses to bend to American orders and seize or freeze bank accounts or investments that belong to its own citizens in the absence of credible and court-quality evidence. But all of this Saudi disloyalty dwarfs beside the Saudis’ cardinal sin of showing understanding and support for their Palestinian brethren. This unforgivable sin alone is enough to place the Saudi Arabian government high on the list of those supporting and abetting terrorism.
Saudi Arabia per se is not the ultimate target of these Israeli-inspired American statements and positions. All that the US government has done in seizing properties and bending laws to stifle lawful Islamic organizations and law-abiding Muslim American citizens is at the beck and call of the Zionist lobby. The media demand that Saudi Arabia exorcise itself of its Wahhabi spirit, but the entire world demands that America exorcise itself of the Israeli spirit.
Zionists are winning the propaganda war and have made significant gains in their attempt to divide the American nation, further demonize Islam, and bolster a “Crusade” mentality in the United States and Europe. Their divide, terrorize, and conquer tactics, however, will fail in the long run. The spirit of Islam has deep roots throughout Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world. The secularization of Europe cannot be replicated throughout the Islamic world. And the “Israeli moment” cannot eclipse more than half a century of Saudi-American vital, strategic, and shared interests.
The anti-Saudi campaign in the American media aims not at the religious character of Saudi Arabia per se, but rather at the political course that Crown Prince Abdullah has taken vis-a-vis the rights of the Palestinian people. It is high time for American senators and congresspersons to recognize the real forces that are at work in America’s growing confrontation with Saudi Arabia and the entire Muslim world.
