Saudis threaten Obama on Israel

Saudi Arabia is working out the kinks of having a new American president that isn’t yet in their pocket. After sixteen years of Clinton and Bush, this has got to be a tough time for them. Did they manage to get enough of his attention with those untraceable donations for his presidential campaign? Or will they have to wait until Team Obama starts talking about the Obama Presidential Library? (I give that a month.)

In the meantime, they’re taking to scolding him in the foreign press.

Saudi patience is running out

Oooh, tough talking there, Turki.

In my decades as a public servant, I have strongly promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Really? And how much blood money has Hamas gotten from the Saudis again? No, how much have they gotten recently?

According to two indectments served Monday, millions of shekels have been transferred from a Saudi organization to Hamas operatives in Jerusalem. The money was received as charity although, in reality, it was earmarked for terrorist activities.

Working for peace while contributing millions to the organization that was firing rockets into Israel—yeah, that’s the Saudis, the same nation that created al Qaeda, and that funds radical Wahabbi schools all over the world. So if by “promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process” you mean “funded the organizations that will destroy Israel so there will be Arab peace in Palestine,” well, then you’re being truthful.

King Abdullah spoke for the entire Arab and Muslim world when he said at the Arab summit in Kuwait that although the Arab peace initiative was on the table, it would not remain there for long. Much of the world shares these sentiments and any Arab government that negotiated with the Israelis today would be rightly condemned by its citizens.

Yeah, funny thing about that fabled Arab unity. They walked away from the table last week without any kind of agreement.

The violence in Gaza split Arab countries into two camps _ one led by Syria and Qatar supporting Hamas hard-liners who rule the territory, and another led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia hoping to lure the Palestinian militant group toward more moderation.

Here comes the first threat:

If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact – especially its “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia – it will have to drastically revise its policies vis a vis Israel and Palestine.

I think the US will continue to play a leadership role in the middle east even without the Saudi oil ticks. (And that “special relationship” is exactly that: Oil, and oil only, gives Saudis a role in this world. Without it, they’re a bunch of nomads in the desert that raise fast horses.) But what we have here is a Saudi prince who does not know Barack Obama, who has never had Obama over to one of his parties at the Saudi embassy or his mansions in the area, and who greatly wants to groom the current president to go along with the Saudi view the way the previous three presidents have done. Remember, we had Bush 41, then Clinton, then Bush 43—all of whom played ball with the Saudis to a great degree. Now, we have an unknown.

I really would love to know how much money the Saudis managed to contribute to the Obama campaign. Alas, we never will.

Blah blah blah, Saudi peace plan, blah blah blah, 1967 borders, East Jerusalem, blah blah blah.

Now we get to the good part.

Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran wrote a letter to King Abdullah, explicitly recognising Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and calling on him to take a more confrontational role over “this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children” in Gaza. The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom’s primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shia and Sunni. Further, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s call for Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed in the region.

The Saudis already are leading a jihad against Israel, through the act of giving Palestinian terrorist groups hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. They held a telethon to raise money to send to Arafat during Operation Defensive Shield. They raised over $100 million dollars. And they constantly send Hamas back to Gaza with suitcases full of cash.

Let’s not pretend that the Saudis truly want an Israeli state on Muslim land. This next part is rather telling, don’t you think?

Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel. Today, every Saudi is a Gazan, and we remember well the words of our late King Faisal: “I hope you will forgive my outpouring of emotions, but when I think that our Holy Mosque in Jerusalem is being invaded and desecrated, I ask God that if I am unable to undertake Holy Jihad, then I should not live a moment more.”

And that’s the crux of the issue. Jihad demands that they recapture “their” land. Turki isn’t threatening jihad. He is already waging it, and has the backing of the Saudi petrodollars.

The question here is how effective those dollars will be on the Obama administration. Personally, I think they will be very effective. They’ve bought just about every president since Carter. (I haven’t researched enough on Ronald Reagan and don’t know what their influence on him was.) And Obama hasn’t given me any reason to think that he’ll be immune. After all, he has a legacy to commemorate.