Melania Trump, President Trump, and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. (photo:
Getty)
The Problem Today in Both East and West Is That Our Governments Are Not Our
Friends
By Robert Fisk, The Independent
11 August 17
There are still honourable Israelis who demand a state for the Palestinians;
there are well-educated Saudis who object to the crazed Wahabism upon which
their kingdom is founded; there are millions of Americans, from sea to
shining sea, who do not believe that Iran is their enemy nor Saudi Arabia
their friend. But the problem today in both East and West is that our
governments are not our friends
When Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel has both the Saudis and the
Israelis demanding its closure, it must be doing something right. To bring
Saudi head-choppers and Israeli occupiers into alliance is, after all,
something of an achievement.
But don't get too romantic about this. When the wealthiest Saudis fall ill,
they have been known to fly into Tel Aviv on their private jets for
treatment in Israel's finest hospitals. And when Saudi and Israeli
fighter-bombers take to the air, you can be sure they're going to bomb
Shiites - in Yemen or Syria respectively - rather than Sunnis.
And when King Salman - or rather Saudi Arabia's whizz-kid Crown Prince
Mohammad - points the finger at Iran as the greatest threat to Gulf
security, you can be sure that Bibi Netanyahu will be doing exactly and
precisely the same thing, replacing "Gulf security", of course, with
"Israeli security". But it's an odd business when the Saudis set the pace of
media suppression only to be supported by that beacon of freedom, democracy,
human rights and liberty known in song and legend as Israel, or the State of
Israel or, as Bibi and his cabinet chums would have it, the Jewish State of
Israel.
So let's run briefly through the latest demonstration of Israeli tolerance
towards the freedom of expression that all of us support, nurture, love,
adore, regard as a cornerstone of our democracy, and so on, and so on, and
so on. For this week, Ayoob Kara, the Israeli communications minister,
revealed plans to take away the credentials of Al Jazeera's Israeli-based
journalists, close its Jerusalem bureau and take the station's broadcasts
from local cable and satellite providers.
This, announced Ayoob Kara - an Israeli Druze (and thus an Arab Likud
minister) who is a lifelong supporter of the colonisation by Jews of
Israeli-occupied Arab land in the West Bank - would "bring a situation that
channels based in Israel will report objectively". In other words, threaten
them. Bring them into line.
Bibi Netanyahu long ago accused Al Jazeera of inciting violence in
Jerusalem, especially in its reporting of the recent Jerusalem killings -
but since just about every foreign journalist in and outside Israel who has
dared to be critical of the state has at one time or another been accused of
incitement as well as anti-Semitism and other lies, this is just par for the
course.
Personally, I have found Al Jazeera's reporting from Israel pretty pathetic,
its fawning reverence for the state all too painfully illustrated when its
Qatar anchorwoman expressed to an Israeli government spokesman live on air
her channel's condolences on the death of Ariel Sharon, the monstrous
Israeli ex-defence minister who was held responsible for the massacre of up
to 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres of
1982.
Ayoob Kara, however, has actually taken his cue from his fellow Arabs. And
he admits it. Israel had to take steps, he said, against "media, which has
been determined by almost all Arab countries to actually be a supporter of
terror, and we know this for certain". So the Israelis, it appears, now
receive lessons on media freedoms from "Arab countries". Not just the
Saudis, of course, but from "almost all Arab countries" whose unfettered
media - one thinks at once of the untrammelled liberal press of Egypt,
Syria, Jordan, Algeria and yes, "almost" the entire media of the Gulf - are
bastions of truth-telling, hard-hitting opponents of authoritarian regimes,
constitutionally protected from dictatorial abuse. Forgive the hollow
laughter. But is this really how Israel wants to define itself?
Well, yes it is, I suppose. For if an unwritten alliance really exists
between Saudi Arabia and Israel, then all options - as US presidents and
secretary Hillary Clinton used to say - are "on the table".
Imprisonment without trial, extrajudicial executions, human rights abuses,
corruption, military rule - let's say this at once: all these
characteristics belong to "almost all" Sunni Muslim Arab nations - and to
Israel in the lands it occupies. And as for being a "supporter of terror" (I
quote Israeli minister Kara again), one must first ask why Sunni Gulf Arabs
have exported their fighters - and their money - to the most vicious Sunni
Islamists in the Middle East. And then ask why Israel has never bombed these
same vile creatures - indeed, ask why Israel has given hospital treatment to
wounded fighters from the Sunni al-Nusra - in other words, al-Qaeda, the
perpetrators of 9/11 - while attacking Shiite Hezbollah and Alawite (Shiite)
led-Syria, and threatened to bombard Shiite Iran itself which is a project,
I should add, of which Kara himself is all in favour.
Nor must we forget that America's insane President and his weird regime is
also part of the Saudi-Israeli anti-Shiite confederation. Trump's obscene
$350bn arms sales to the Saudis, his fingering of Iran and his hatred of the
world's press and television channels makes him an intimate part of the same
alliance. Indeed, when you look at one of Trump's saner predecessors -
George W Bush, who also hated Iran, kowtowed to the Saudis and actually
talked to Tony Blair of bombing Al Jazeera's own headquarters in Qatar, he
who made sure the wealthy bin Laden family were flown out of the States
after 9/11 - this American-Saudi-Israeli covenant has a comparatively long
history.
Being an irrational optimist, there's an innocent side of my scratched
journalistic hide that still believes in education and wisdom and
compassion. There are still honourable Israelis who demand a state for the
Palestinians; there are well-educated Saudis who object to the crazed
Wahhabism upon which their kingdom is founded; there are millions of
Americans, from sea to shining sea, who do not believe that Iran is their
enemy nor Saudi Arabia their friend. But the problem today in both East and
West is that our governments are not our friends. They are our oppressors or
masters, suppressors of the truth and allies of the unjust.
Netanyahu wants to close down Al Jazeera's office in Jerusalem. Crown Prince
Mohammad wants to close down Al Jazeera's office in Qatar. Bush actually did
bomb Al Jazeera's offices in Kabul and Baghdad. Theresa May decided to hide
a government report on funding "terrorism", lest it upset the Saudis - which
is precisely the same reason Blair closed down a UK police enquiry into
alleged BAE-Saudi bribery 10 years earlier.
And we wonder why we go to war in the Middle East. And we wonder why Sunni
Isis exists, un-bombed by Israel, funded by Sunni Gulf Arabs, its fellow
Sunni Salafists cosseted by our wretched presidents and prime ministers. I
guess we better keep an eye on Al Jazeera - while it's still around.
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