Public criticism of Saudi Arabia in the mainstream American media has escalated to new heights in recent months. When newscasters and columnists have exhausted their accusations that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein has amassed weapons of mass destruction that could be used to harm Israel or supported terror, they revert to tirades against the Saudi monarchy. Why the relentless attacks? And who benefits from a US media campaign vilifying Saudi Arabia along with Iraq?
In addition to the media’s anti-Saudi diatribes, both Democratic and Republican legislators are goading the Bush administration into a public confrontation. Nor are the names of those pushing the buttons unfamiliar ones: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Joseph Lieberman, (D-CT), and Representatives Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) are among those on both sides of the aisle waging a campaign to discredit Saudi Arabia. Charging religious intolerance, they are demanding that the Bush administration place Saudi Arabia on a list of countries of “particular concern” — thereby opening the door to possible diplomatic or economic sanctions.
This tried-and-true strategy already has been used most effectively to isolate and demonize Iraq, Iran, Libya, and even a fledgling Palestinian state. Perhaps it is no coincidence that all are considered enemies by one country — Israel. When Israel feels threatened by a rival nation’s real or potential military arsenal, it is usually successful in convincing Washington that the country in question is evil, harms its own people, and is a breeding ground for terrorists. Then, presto! Sanctions, leading to economic hardship and political ignominy soon are imposed on the Israel-offending state.
Since 1990, Saudi Arabia has purchased — paying cash — $39.6 billion worth of military equipment from the United States — hardly hostile behavior. Israel, however, is infuriated by Riyadh’s financial, spiritual and political support of the Palestinian cause and its ability to rally international support. America’s Israel-first journalists and politicians thus work diligently to transform the public’s perception of Saudi Arabia from that of a vital longtime partner and ally into an American enemy.
For example, Israel and its American supporters were quick to criticize and downplay Crown Prince Abdullah’s Arab-Israeli peace plan. In mid-January, when Saudi diplomats proposed a way to defuse the crisis in Iraq, their country’s motives were analyzed more than their proposed solution.
Long before 9/11, the US media and film industry has engaged in Arab- and Muslim-bashing. Fair-minded Americans who attended school, worked or lived with Saudi Arabians and other Arabs soon became friends with them, and ignored the media’s slant. After 9/11, individual Americans across the country reached out time and again to their Muslim and Arab neighbors - even to strangers — to show they cared.
Like people around the world, Salah Obeid of the Saudi Arabian Public Relations And Information Office was devastated by the attacks, and mourns friends lost in both the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers. The Saudi diplomat remembers his neighbor’s concern for him as he offered Obeid a ride into his Washington, DC office the following day. Obeid’s friend said he, for one, could not punish his neighbor for someone else’s crime.
While most individual Americans still do not blame a nation or religion for the crimes of a few, that may not remain the case. Among the media and US legislators are those working overtime to point fingers and whip up American anger and generate calls for revenge. They promote the un-American concept of guilt by association. Hence the media’s relentless attack on both Saudi Arabia and Iraq as the US is dragged closer to war in the region.
“The evil done by a few Muslims has been expanded in the American media to include all Muslims,” explained Khaled Al-Maeena, editor-in-chief of the Arab News. “The anti-Islamic hysteria and the defamation of Muslims and their leaders has been a well-planned, well-orchestrated effort.” Most front-page stories in the mainstream US press describe the Saudi response to the anti-terrorism campaign as “grudging.” Allegations that money given by the Saudi ambassador’s wife for medical aid may have been diverted to two of the 9/11 attackers received much excited media attention.
Media outlets are fed by various “think tanks” working together to spew out anti-Arab and pro-Israel propaganda. Among those is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) in Washington, DC, which, in addition to its briefings, arranges free trips to Israel for journalists and public officials.
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also based in the national capital, boasts a bevy of Middle East terrorism experts, including Matthew Levitt and Patrick Clawson, who can be counted on for sound bites calling Saudi Arabia a “state facilitator” of terrorism. Rarely if ever is the institute identified as a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s Washington lobby.
The Washington Center for Peace and Justice, Inc., a charitable organization based in Arlington, VA, has an elegant Web site that focuses on “victims of Saudi kidnapping” and calls for a boycott of Saudi oil import. Featured on the Web site are the gripping June 2002 testimonies before the US House of Representatives by Monica Stowers, Pat Roush and Ria Davis. Also to be found on the Web site is a statement by discredited terrorist expert Daniel Pipes, who wages a vicious personal crusade against Islam in the press. Thanks to this organization, Saudi Arabia, whose nationals are involved in 46 child custody cases, receives more adverse publicity and public scrutiny, than, for example, Germany, with 116 similar “kidnapping” cases.
Saudi Arabia also is a favorite target of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which, in addition to spreading disinformation about the Middle East conflict, censors, criticizes, reviews, and protests any activities, articles or speeches it perceives as being anti-Israel (as being, by definition, “anti-Semitic”).
In October 2002 the Council on Foreign Relations released a report blaming Saudi Arabian charities and individuals for funding Al-Qaeda. The council, which is chaired by Maurice Greenberg, chief executive of American International Group (AIG), and whose members include former CIA and FBI Director William Webster, and Stuart Eizenstat, deputy Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, called for a tough campaign to denounce countries such as Saudi Arabia for not cooperating in curbing terrorist financing, threatening them with sanctions if they fail to improve.
A Rand Corporation study presented on the Hill at a Defense Policy Board briefing on July 10 raised a ruckus when it accused the Saudis of complicity “at every level of the terror chain.” The study recommended that the US threaten Saudi Arabia with military and financial measures, including seizing Saudi oil fields and Saudi assets in the US, unless the Kingdom ends its support for “Islamic insurgency groups.”
The deviously misnamed Saudi Institute for Development and Studies, a think tank in McLean, VA, produces aggressive hate-filled media releases to discredit the Kingdom. It recently initiated a joint project with Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to track and study “the spread of hate against Americans” by Saudi Arabians. The institute also urges the American people and their leaders to respond “appropriately” by expelling Saudi diplomats.
These are but a few of the organizations working night and day to promote hatred and distrust between two old friends. One has to wonder at the extent of this “interest” in a long-time US ally. Nevertheless, at the prodding of Israel-firsters from these and other think tanks whose goal is to isolate and neutralize Saudi Arabia, Washington appears willing to toss aside decades of friendship - not to mention a key ally in a vital region.
Domestically, the American media and government are creating a climate of hysteria and fear in which distrust of Muslims and Arabs can flourish. A recent FBI bulletin stated: “In selecting its next targets, sources suggest Al-Qaeda may favor spectacular attacks that meet several criteria: High symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the US economy, and maximum psychological trauma.” The press leaks periodic warnings of impending attacks and hypes nationwide searches of “foreign-born men” that turn out to be bogus. In this highly charged climate, the INS and FBI have inflicted humiliating interrogations on Saudi businessmen, students and their associates. Males aged 16 and older from Arab and Muslim countries now are required to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and many of those who have voluntarily complied have been arrested and/or deported. Since 9/11, the government also has shut down Islamic- and Saudi-funded charities and businesses, frozen their bank accounts and detained their officers without charges.
Not surprisingly, in the past year Arab business and tourist travel to the US has plummeted, according to a Nov. 26 Washington Post article, “costing American businesses hundreds of millions of dollars. US exports have dropped by 25 percent from last year, costing the United States at least $1.5 billion.”
The impact of scaring off Saudi Arabian business “is more substantial than people realize or want to recognize,” noted Charles Kestenbaum, a former US Embassy commercial officer in Saudi Arabia. “We’re treating all Saudis as if they’re terrorists. Our inability to distinguish between who is a friend and an enemy turns everyone into an enemy. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The Nov. 26 Post article quoted Mohamed Al-Ghamdi, a Saudi journalist who studied in the US, as saying: “We are hurt. We don’t go to America anymore. We are afraid of you. America is engaged in war and thinks we’re responsible.”
“It hurts my feelings when I open up the newspaper and read something bad about my country,” Abdul Mohsen Al-Yas, Saudi Arabia’s director of information, told the Washington Report.
At the Dec. 3 news conference cited at the beginning of this article, Al-Jubair announced both new and existing counter-terrorism measures, denying press claims that his government had dragged its feet in fighting terrorism. The press conference was an attempt to explain to the press what Riyadh had been doing quietly, out of the limelight. After 9/11, Al-Jubair said, the Kingdom froze 33 suspicious bank accounts worth $5.6 million, questioned more than 2,000 people, ordered financial audits of Saudi charities, and established new rules for sending humanitarian donations outside the country.
While the media reiterate that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian nationals, rarely is it mentioned that Al-Qaeda has been as determined to damage Saudi Arabia as it is to attack the US In fact, Al-Jubair charged, “We believe Al-Qaeda chose Saudis to give the operation a Saudi face and drive a wedge between the two countries.
“What we need to do, as we have done,” he told the assembled American reporters, “is join hands, wrack our brains together, and find ways to fight the scourge of terrorism.”
After all, the only beneficaries of an end to the longtime friendship between the United States and Saudi Arabia are Israel and Osama Bin Laden.
— Delinda C. Hanley is the news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.
Features 2 February 2003
