Israel lobbyists smear Khashoggi as terrorist so as to maintain Saudi alliance

Israel lobbyists smear Khashoggi as terrorist so as to maintain Saudi alliance — and plans for Iran war

Even as headlines around the world say that it murdered a critical journalist, Saudi Arabia has some friends in the U.S. The Israel lobby is going to bat for the theocratic dictatorship over the alleged killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

Last night on i24 news, EJ Kimball, an Israel advocate at the Middle East Forum, suggested that Khashoggi deserved to die. The journalist’s “ties to al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood” raise “a whole lot of other issues” about the Saudi tradition of exporting terror, Kimball said. The much bigger picture, he said, is the new Saudi Arabia taking on Iran.

Josh Block of the Israel Project made a similar allegation about Khashoggi two nights back. Pro-Al-Qaeda media are pushing the Khashoggi story, Block said, “because Khashoggi was a radical Islamist terrorist ally who was close to Osama Bin Ladin, ISIS, Hamas & wanted to overthrow the Saudi ruling royals, who oppose both the Sunni terrorists, sponsored by Turkey & Qatar, as well as Irans’s Shia terrorist armies & allies.”

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have been staying quiet about the Khashoggi murder, as James North has repeatedly pointed out on our site. That’s because Israel and Saudi Arabia are now allied against Iran, evidently seeking an American-led war against the country, and all the attention to the rubout of a journalist is throwing a wrench in the works.

A former US ambassador to Israel who now lives in the country and serves as an Israel advocate explains the silence:

The Israelis are “in a very difficult position,” Dan Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, told BuzzFeed News. “They count very much on Saudi Arabia,” which is “central to their strategic concept of the region.” Saudi Arabia, after all, is their partner in arms in countering and isolating Iran and Israel’s “strategic anchor” in the region.

Max Blumenthal explains the importance of Saudi Arabia:

For the Beltway’s Israel lobbyists, it’s all hands on deck this week for Saudi Arabia and MBS [Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman]. Their war on Iran party has been unexpectedly disrupted and a natural ally is on the brink.

Israel and the Saudis have been quietly cooperating in the last couple of years as they face a mutual enemy/regional rival in Iran; and Jared Kushner’s much-anticipated peace plan surely involves an Outside-In approach, in which Saudi Arabia and its friends would seek to force Palestinians to accept Bantustans on the West Bank as supposed sovereignty, and put quibbles over Jerusalem and refugees behind them forever. It’s reminiscent of what American elites were able to overlook in the Egyptian dictatorship for decades, just because Egypt recognized Israel. Saudi Arabia surely wants the same treatment.

A lot of the press heralding Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman as a great reformer–the man now accused of ordering Khashoggi’s elimination– must be revisited now and seen as an effort by Israel’s friends to prepare Americans for the new alignment. For instance, the crown prince of Israel lobbyists, former peace processor Dennis Ross (who says American Jews “need to be advocates for Israel”), went to Saudi Arabia twice to watch bin Salman in action and wrote a piece in the Washington Post last February, calling the prince the “driving force for change” and a “revolutionary” the U.S. should support.

His efforts to transform Saudi society amount to a revolution from above…

if it was not for the turmoil and conflict that are consuming the region, the big story in the Middle East would be the transformation taking place in Saudi Arabia.

Ali Gharib noted: “This line from Dennis Ross should live in infamy, as a testament to his incredible wrong-headedness on so many subjects: ‘Ironically, the skeptics are primarily outside Saudi Arabia and not in it.'”

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The US mainstream media is ignoring the Israel-Saudi Arabia de facto alliance

Over the past week or so, Saudi Arabia has gotten more U.S. mainstream media coverage than at any time in decades. But conspicuously missing has been any reporting on the kingdom’s growing friendship with Israel — a de facto alliance that may help explain why Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman thought he could get away with ordering the murder of the dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

Madawi Al-Rasheed is a Saudi Arabian woman professor, presently at King’s College London, who has written or edited more than 13 books on her home nation. Particularly valuable is her recently edited (2018) collection about the kingdom’s new leadership, entitled Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia. 

In that book, she is clear about the growing Saudi rapprochement with Israel. She writes that the Crown Prince “has continued to clandestinely cooperate with Israel on security and economic matters,” adding

In July 2016 a delegation of Saudi academics and businessmen visited Israel with a view to establishing discreet relations, aimed at strengthening Saudi Arabia’s military capabilities and enlisting Israel in any armed confrontation with Iran.

Further evidence of this Saudi-Israel connection is the absence of any official criticism from Tel Aviv about the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Once upon a time, the Israeli government promptly denounced any crimes anywhere in the Arab or Muslim world. But the recent Twitter feeds of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren include not a word about the murder of Khashoggi.

The mainstream U.S. press is also ignoring this Saudi-Israel connection. Here’s just one example: in the Atlantic, Aaron David Miller analyzed the U.S.-Saudi relationship at some length but he only mentioned Israel in passing — an odd omission for a Professional Peace Processor like himself who knows Israel inside out. 

By contrast, the British media had started to report on the budding Israel-Saudi Arabia relationship. In November 2017, the BBC said that “to all intents and purposes, Saudi Arabia and Israel are de facto allies against Iran’s rising influence in the region.” The BBC report cited an interview with the UK-based Saudi newspaper Elaph, in which Israel’s Chief of Staff, General Gadi Eisenkot, revealed that “Israel was ready to exchange intelligence with the Saudis in order to confront Iran.”

Nearly a year ago, this site had suggested that “an alliance of Saudi Arabia and Benjamin Netanyahu, urged on privately by the Trump administration, is deliberately moving toward starting a much wider ‘New War in the Mideast.’” Our source was the distinguished veteran journalist Béchir Ben Yahmed, the founder and still editor of the respected French-language Jeune Afrique (Young Africa), who warned that the Saudi-Netanyahu partnership might aim at Iran’s ally, the Hezbollah political/military movement in Lebanon.

The de facto Israel-Saudi Arabia alliance is another nail in the coffin of the ludicrous Clash of Civilizations theory. Samuel Huntington, one of the theory’s two main advocates, famously wrote that “Islam has bloody borders.” As Islamic Saudi Arabia and Jewish/Western Israel collaborate against Islamic Hezbollah, where is this “fault line”?

Of course, even if Israel had never existed, the United States (and Europe) would support Saudi Arabia. Fracking in the U.S. may have reduced dependence on Saudi oil exports, but the kingdom could still trigger a world recession if it wanted to. And the shameful spectacle of all the U.S. businesses that had planned to participate in the upcoming “Future Investment Initiative” in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, (the New York Times was a co-sponsor) proves that not just weapons manufacturers planned to keep making money in the repressive medieval desert kingdom. 

Still, the Israel-Saudi connection surely strengthens the U.S. zeal to protect and excuse Saudi crimes. When will the U.S. mainstream media start reporting on it?