JPost Editorial: Saudi shame
It seems the Saudis are interested in keeping up the false impression – particularly before the greater Sunni world – that it has never stopped ostracizing Israel. They do this in a feeble attempt to cover up the cooperation between the two countries. This time it was the Post’s Wilner who was the fall guy for the Saudis’ cowardly foreign policy.White House Expresses “Deep Disappointment” That It Has No Balls (satire)
Indeed, there seems to be an inverse correlation between clandestine and formal relations: The more the Saudis secretly cooperate with Israel to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons capability, the more the kingdom takes pains to show the world – especially the Sunni world – how it snubbed a reporter who works with an Israeli daily. Ultimately, this entire sorrowful episode is yet another depressing example of how much of decision-making in this region is guided by irrational fears and prejudices, not real shared interests, and of how hatred of Israel continues to be a rallying call for Muslims.
In a statement, the White House said it had “deep disappointment” over Saudi Arabia’s decision and its own apparent lack of testicles. Having such anatomical features might have enabled the administration to call the kingdom on its unacceptable behavior, but as the White House has no balls, it was rendered incapable of summoning of the courage to defend the principles it claims to have.White House Thinks Anti-Semitism Is “Disappointing”
The same lack of cojones has plagued the Obama administration in its dealings with other Middle East figures, notably Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has continually refused to commit to a formula that would leave Israel secure as a Jewish state. Instead of taking a courageous stand and displaying integrity by drawing an actual line, the White House has highlighted its own emasculated position by letting a corrupt, incitement-fueling autocrat pretending to democratic authority scuttle prospects for a meaningful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, allowing Abbas not to concede a thing and laying the onus on Israel to compromise on points crucial to its survival. (h/t Mightier than the Pen)
Wilner is not Israeli, but in such cases one is often told that this is not really about Jews or Jew hatred, but simply about Israelis. Just such thinking is promoted by the boycott movement. Yet, even if we were to buy into the notion that this is simply about Israelis–Wilner, after all, works for an Israeli newspaper–what are Israelis other than Jews who live in the Jewish state? Such moves never target Arabs living in Israel. This notion that it is not as bad to target an Israeli Jew not only promotes the belief that it is perhaps not quite right that Jews should have a state, but also that there are certain places that it is permissible to forbid Jews from living. This is the logic that imprisons Jews in ghettos, that says that certain places are off-limits for Jews.US Hiding Report on Radical Saudi School Textbooks
President Obama may have bowed before the king of Saudi Arabia, but this is a country where the most vicious hatred of Jews is deeply entrenched in the national culture. As Eli Lake highlights in today’s Daily Beast, there are still serious concerns about the kind of incitement to hatred being promoted in Saudi school textbooks. As Lake notes, the State Department is refusing to release its most recent report on these books, yet it assures us that the Saudis are making promising progress on this matter.
US President Barack Obama stands poised to visit Saudi Arabia later in the month, to discuss "countering violent extremism" among other things. However, a report has revealed the US has kept secret an extensive study of Saudi textbooks, traditionally rife with Islamic extremism, since the end of 2012 - casting doubts over the seriousness of the administration to tackle the root causes of Islamic extremism.
The study, commissioned in a reported $500,000 State Department contract in 2011, was the most comprehensive ever commissioned. Completed in late 2012, the findings with their implications on radical indoctrination and anti-Semitism have been kept hidden from the public.
However, a new report published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think-tank, quoting sources familiar with the hidden study, notes Saudi textbooks still “create a climate that fosters exclusivity, intolerance, and calls to violence that put religious and ethnic minorities at risk.”