The champion of globalization is the New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. He started writing about Saudi Arabia more than five years ago before he had visited the country. He chooses to give this country an ugly face and a bad reputation in the USA and the world at large.
When we met last April in Jeddah, he told me the reality and conditions in this country would not make him tell the truth and his readers would not doubt his words. He decided to take this line of writing about us because of the supportive stands the Kingdom’s government takes toward the Palestinians who are slaughtered by their enemy on their own lands and for Saudi Arabia’s failing to join the World Trade Organization. Friedman’s articles are published around the world, including this country and translated into many languages including Arabic. He seems to maintain excellent contact with many Saudis via the Internet. And judging by his writing, he is in close touch with all Saudi gossips. All this proves that we do not live under a police state as he claims. It also cannot be true or fair for US media to publish without proof that the Saudi press is directed by the government to criticize the US and Israeli Governments and praise only Saudi royal family.
The royal family is part and parcel of this country and should enjoy as much privacy as other Saudi families who are not subject to newspaper coverage in accordance with our customs and traditions. Family life is a private affair and should not be invaded by Tom, Dick and Harry. Those in Government, royals an non-royals, are not personally criticized, but their deeds are open to evaluation and criticism especially in the local press.
The people of this country desire to maintain the best of relations and understanding with the US and other countries. They wish to deepen their friendship with all of them. They are at a loss, not because the media of the West in general and the US in particular seem to have gone out of their way to give the Saudis ugly faces but because their friends are silent observers to such atrocities.
My son who is 22 and will graduate from a university in the West in a few months tells me that whenever people there know his nationality, they avoid him. He fears that his father’s generation has ruined his future before he has even started his working life — and for no fault of his. I ask my friends and countrymen to join me in asking for a helping hand so that the young people of this country can receive fairness in the West.
