“Wherever Israel is present, there is ruin and destruction… Israel does not respect the sovereignty of states or the integrity of their territories, while working to exploit crises and conflicts to deepen divisions.”
Tucker Carlson? Candace Owens?
Nope. Not even Ms. Rachel. It’s from an editorial in our friends the Saudis’ official government’s newspaper Al-Riyadh earlier this month.
If anyone thought that the Saudi charm offensive and seeming outstretched-in-peace Arabian arm were signs that the desert kingdom was moving toward rapprochement with Israel and an embrace of the Abraham Accords, some further thinking might be in order.
Recent months have seen imams’ sermons at the Grand Mosque in Mecca – which are seen as reflecting official Saudi messages – express sentiments like those of Sheikh Saleh bin Abdullah bin Humaid, who, in his drasha, emplored his misguided conception of the Creator to “deal with the Jews who have seized and occupied, for they cannot escape Your power. Oh… send upon them your punishment and misery.”
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted on a recent podcast that, whereas in the past, “you only got these crazy terrorist clerics, the al-Qaida types [who] would be inciting against the Jews,” of late, “the [Saudi] state-owned media” was engaging in incitement.
Barak Ravid, a correspondent for Axios, said that lately “the Saudi press is full of articles that include anti-Israeli conspiracies, anti-Abraham Accords rhetoric and even antisemitic language.”
Deborah Lipstadt, the former U.S. antisemitism envoy, said about the Saudi about-face: “If this is a real pivot, and not just a momentary detour… then it’s very disturbing.” She added that the shift “also has implications for the spread of hatred, Jew hate.”
It’s not clear what has driven the change for the worse. Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, suggests that one factor may be the Trump administration’s friendly relations with Islamist leaders in Turkey, Qatar and Syria, which, he contends, sends a signal to the Saudis that you could take more Islamist positions, and it won’t hurt you with the United States.”
Edy Cohen, of the Israel Center for Grand Strategy, told Jewish Insider that he sees the Saudi shift as a sign of panic in the wake of the mass protests in Iran.
Saudi leaders, he says, “heard [exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi] say the new Iran will normalize relations with Israel, and this drove the leadership crazy.”
“Imagine Iran and Israel together,” he explained. “The Shi’a and the Jews together; it’s their biggest nightmare.”
Others point to the increasing enmity between the House of Saud and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the new face of moderation on the Arabian peninsula.
Once, not long ago, the two nations were on friendly terms, even working together in Yemen to curb Houthi influence there. But lately, the UAE has been a target of Saudi ire. Prominent Saudi columnist Dr. Ahmed bin Othman Al-Tuwaijri, for instance, wrote an article on a Saudi site attacking the UAE as “an Israeli Trojan horse in the Arab world … in betrayal of [G-d], His Messenger and the entire nation.”
After some backlash by American critics, the Saudi site took the article down. After further backlash, though, this from the Arab world, it went back online. Welcome to Arabia.
A surprisingly contrary voice was that of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, as stalwart a conservative supporter of Israel and enemy of Islamism as the chamber has ever featured.
After meeting last week with Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud and speaking by phone with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, he said “After having met with the Saudis today, I understand their concerns better. I don’t agree with everything they’ve done, but I fundamentally believe that the vision is still the same.”
“To all those who think like me and have been upset by what you’ve heard,” he continued, “I understand why you’re upset, but I would just say this: If I feel good, you should feel good.”
Brings to mind Ben Shapiro’s maxim, that “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
Is the kingdom choosing Islamism or peace? Coming weeks’ Saudi sermons and media musings will tell.
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