"Investing
in terror"
"Our attention has been focused only on the finished product. We see the Mohamed Attas, the Palestinian suicide bombers and the others who are the products of the pipeline. But the other end, where the young are fed into the system and where millions of dollars are spent in indoctrination and support, is where we should be concentrating our long-term attention." (Jed Babbin)
News and commentary on Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism.
Part 1: 2001/09/22 - 2001/12/31
Part 2: 2002/01/04 - 2002/06/18
Part 3: 2002/07/08 - 2002/11/30
Part 4: 2002/12/01 - 2003/04/29
Part 5: 2003/05/01 -
June 2002
"Saudi Arabia arrests terror suspects" (John R. Bradley, AP/Salon, 2002/06/18)
"Saudi Ambassador to London: 'I Want Peace with Israel; I Long to Die as a Martyr; Stoning and Amputating Hands Are at the Core of Every Muslim's Belief'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 389, 2002/06/13)
"Top Saudi imam sees conspiracy" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2002/06/03)
"Our enemies the Saudis" (Michael Barone, usnews.com, from the 2002/06/03 issue)
May 2002
"A radio broadcast on 'the world's most dangerous terrorist'" (David Duke, Arab News, 2002/05/14)
"Five Arab Israelis indicted for building bomb from TV instructions" (The Jordan Times/AP, 2002/05/24)
"Large Sums of Money Transferred by Saudi Arabia to the Palestinians are Used for Financing Terror Organizations (particulary the Hamas) and Terrorist Activities (including Suicide Attacks inside Israel)" (IDF, 2002/05/10 [?])
"In Saudi Arabia, an Extreme Problem" (Sulaiman Al-Hattlan, The Washington Post, 2002/05/08)
April 2002
"Saudi Government TV broadcasts sermon calling to annihilate the Jews - 'annihilate them soon'" (IMRA, 2002/04/28)
"Saudi Telethon Host Calls for Enslaving Jewish Women" (National Review, 2002/04/26)
"Saudi prince has stern words for Bush on Mideast" (CNN.com, 2002/04/25)
"Saudi to Warn Bush of Rupture Over Israel Policy" (Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2002/04/25)
"Diplomat censured over bomb poem" (BBC News, 2002/04/18)
"Saudi: Suicide Bombings Not Terrorism" (AP/ABC News, 2002/04/16)
"Saudi telethon raises SR210m for Palestinians" (Abdul Wahab Bashir, Arab News, 2002/04/13)
"Saudi Government - Controlled Daily Praises Passover and Jerusalem Supermarket Suicide Bombers" (Special Dispatch No. 367, MEMRI, 2002/04/11)
"Wahhabis in the Old Dominion - What the federal raids in Northern Virginia uncovered" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/04/08 issue)
March 2002
"Investing in terror" (Jed Babbin, The Washington Times, 2002/03/28)
"Saudi police face deaths criticism" (Reuters/CNN.com, 2002/03/15)
"Saudi Government Daily: Jews Use Teenagers' Blood for 'Purim' Pastries" (Special Dispatch No. 354, MEMRI, 2002/03/13)
"Down with Saudi Arabia" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/03/09 issue)
"Saudi Peace Sham" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/03/06)
"Saudi schools fuel anti-US anger" (Charles M. Sennott, Boston Globe Online, 2002/03/04)
February 2002
"The Saudi Challenge" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/02/20)
"An Intriguing Signal From the Saudi Crown Prince" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/02/17)
"Saudi Government Official: American Jews are 'Brothers of Apes and Pigs'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 343, 2002/02/08)
"Saudi Breakpoint - A time for choosing" (David Pryce-Jones, National Review, 2002/02/01)
January 2002
"Saudi bomb victim's torture ordeal - and Britain's silence" (Paul Kelso, The Guardian, 2002/01/31)
"Saudis tortured me for seven weeks, says bomb suspect" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/01/31)
"The Prince Protests" (Jackson Diehl, The Washington Post, 2002/01/29)
"Saudis May Seek U.S. Exit" (David B. Ottaway and Robert G. Kaiser, The Washington Post, 2002/01/18)
"Princely payments" (Linda Robinson and Peter Cary, usnews.com, 2001/01/14)
"Arab Antisemitism - Saudi Government Daily on the 'Culture of Hatred'" (Special Dispatch No. 328, MEMRI, 2002/01/08)
"The Saudi Threat" (Ralph Peters, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/01/04)
"Saudi Arabia arrests terror suspects" (John R. Bradley, AP/Salon, 2002/06/18)
"Saudi Arabia announced its first al-Qaida-related arrests since Sept. 11 and said Tuesday that it was holding 11 Saudis, an Iraqi and a Sudanese man who told authorities he had fired a surface-to-air missile at a U.S. military plane taking off from a Saudi air base. The arrests were announced by the official Saudi Press Agency, which linked the suspects to Osama bin Laden's network and said they were planning to use explosives and missiles in other terrorist attacks in the kingdom. The agency provided only sketchy details, and it was not clear when or where the suspects were arrested. But it was the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States - carried out by 15 Saudis and four other Arabs - that the Gulf state has announced arrests linked to bin Laden, the Saudi dissident whose first cause was the overthrow of this Muslim kingdom.""Saudi Ambassador to London: 'I Want Peace with Israel; I Long to Die as a Martyr; Stoning and Amputating Hands Are at the Core of Every Muslim's Belief'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 389, 2002/06/13)
Excerpts from an interview for the Saudi owned London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat with Saudi Ambassador to London Ghazi Al-Qusaibi: "I have not changed my position regarding the Palestinian problem since I was 16... ... My position is not new. What is new is the state of horror and tension that caused the Fidaai [martyrdom] attacks in Israel. In the past, the Israelis didn't care if we said 'martyr.' Now they have begun to really fear what they call 'the culture of death' which I call the 'culture of martyrdom.' When the culture of martyrdom spreads among the Palestinians and the Arabs, the myth of Israel will come to an end... ... According to the Western view, flogging is illogical. Execution is unacceptable, and the same goes for amputating hands and stoning. These are things that in Muslim eyes are at the core of the Islamic faith. For this reason, there is a genuine cultural gap that cannot be bridged by hiring the services of a PR company - but only by West and East respecting each others' culture.""Top Saudi imam sees conspiracy" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2002/06/03)
"Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric has called on the Islamic world to unite against a worldwide conspiracy of Hindus, Christians, Jews and secularists threatening Islamic moral values. Muslims, he said, should cleanse themselves from creeping Western values and American-controlled "globalization." ... "The idol-worshipping Hindus indulge in their open hatred against our brothers and sanctities in Muslim Kashmir, threatening an imminent danger and a fierce war in the whole Indian subcontinent," [Sheik Abd-al-Rahman al-Sudays, the imam of the Mosque of Mecca] said in a live sermon heard throughout the Arab world via the official Saudi national television and satellite channel. ... Though he was particularly scornful of Jews, whom he said had been cursed and turned into "pigs and monkeys" by Allah, he turned his ire on Christians and capitalists as well. "Their course is supported by the advocates of credit and worshippers of the Cross," the imam asserted, 'as well as by those who are infatuated with them and influenced by their rotten ideas and poisonous culture among the advocates of secularism and Westernization.'""Our enemies the Saudis" (Michael Barone, usnews.com, from the 2002/06/03 issue)
"Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantánamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family. ... The Saudis are waging war against us, financing the spread of the idea that our free society must be overthrown and totalitarian Wahhabi Islam must be imposed by force. ... It may not be prudent yet to speak the truth out loud, that the Saudis are our enemies. But they should know that it is increasingly apparent to the American people that they are effectively waging war against us. And they should know that we have the capacity to destroy their military, presumably in a matter of hours. The Saudis' eastern provinces, with their oil, could be given to their Shiite Muslim majority, now oppressed by the Sunni Muslim Saudi rulers. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina could be returned to the custody of the Hashemites (Jordan's King Abdullah's family), who unlike the Saudis are direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed. Let the Saudis have the sands of central Arabia and their bank accounts in Switzerland, hotel suites in London, and villas on the Riviera.""Five Arab Israelis indicted for building bomb from TV instructions" (The Jordan Times/AP, 2002/05/24)
"Five Arab Israelis were indicted Thursday on charges they assembled bombs based on instructions taken from a Saudi TV programme. The indictment said the five planned to use bombs to fight Israeli police should protests erupt again as it did in October 2000 at the start of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. Thirteen Arab Israeli protesters were killed by the police at the time. Nader Ben Issam Salima, 26, told his wife to write down the instructions given by masked men on the television programme, who explained in detail how to build a bomb from readily available materials, the indictment said. Salima and a friend then purchased sulfur and built the explosive, the indictment said.""A radio broadcast on 'the world's most dangerous terrorist'" (David Duke, Arab News, 2002/05/14)
It's interesting to note the similarities between some left-wing intellectuals and the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan regarding their opinions about the Middle East conflict (Duke quotes "the world-renowned British journalist" Robert Fisk four times). It's also very telling that the Saudi government controlled Arab News publishes this anti-Semitic tirade by an infamous white supremacist, in which everything from the hoax that Mossad was behind the September 11 attacks to lies about the "massacres" in Jenin is put to use: "As a loyal and patriotic American, my heart grieves at the support given by American traitors to the world's worst mass murderer and war criminal Ariel Sharon. Sharon has killed, maimed and tortured more people than Osama Bin Laden could only fantasize about. In fact, I will present to you compelling evidence that Sharon and the Mossad aided and abetted the horrible terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. By supporting Sharon and his criminal government in Israel, American traitors have not only supported Sharon's crimes against the Palestinian people, and have become accomplices in mass murder and torture, but they directly aided terrorists who have inflicted terrorism on America." (UPDATE 2002/05/16: It seems Arab News have had second thoughts about the transcript as it is down. Best of the Web Today has received an e-mail from Arab News: "Just a short note to let you know that Arab News immediately removed the David Duke article on Wednesday, May 15, lambasting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, after it was brought to our attention. Somehow the article made it onto our website. Rest assured that we DO NOT in any way support Duke's racist and Nazi views." Anyone interested in Duke's ramblings on this issue can read "How Israeli terrorism and American treason caused the September 11 Attacks" (David Duke, DavidDuke.com, 2001/11/21) instead. It's basically the same, minus the "Jenin massacre" lies.)"Large Sums of Money Transferred by Saudi Arabia to the Palestinians are Used for Financing Terror Organizations (particulary the Hamas) and Terrorist Activities (including Suicide Attacks inside Israel)" (IDF, 2002/05/10 [?])
"The captured documents demonstrate that the Saudi support was not only of a humanitarian religious nature, as Saudi spokesmen in the U.S. claim. The documents clearly reveal that Saudi Arabia transferred, inter alia, large sums of money in a systematic and ongoing manner to families of suicide terrorists, to the Hamas Organization (on the U.S. list of terror organizations) and to persons and entities identified with the Hamas.""In Saudi Arabia, an Extreme Problem" (Sulaiman Al-Hattlan, The Washington Post, 2002/05/08)
Al-Hattlan on the Saudi reaction to the Islamist occupation of the Grand Mosque of Mecca in 1979: "But the end of the story had a twist: Though the government killed the extremists, it then essentially adopted their ideology. ... The result has been all sorts of restrictions that have created notions of fanaticism in the kingdom, and a society with a constant undercurrent of a "witch hunt." ... None of us dared to say it loudly then, and some still cannot say it. But our reaction to the 1979 Mecca tragedy has created a generation of angry, confused young people, many of whom have become fanatics, including those 15 Saudis among the 19 suspects in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the 100 - or more - Saudi prisoners in Guantanamo. How many other confused young Saudis are still out there? ... This extremist mentality becomes so entrenched and pervasive that its endurance is not dependent upon the life or death of one persuasive leader. Therefore, whether bin Laden eventually is killed or survives the current war is a temporary concern; in the long term, the real issue is the endurance or destruction of his rabid philosophy.""Saudi Government TV broadcasts sermon calling to annihilate the Jews - 'annihilate them soon'" (IMRA, 2002/04/28)
"Shaykh Salah Bin-Muhammad al-Budayr, preacher and imam of the holy mosque in Medina, delivers the sermon... "O God, O revealer of the Book, mover of clouds, and vanquisher of infidels, defeat the usurper Jews. ... O God, destroy them. O God, scatter them. O God, annihilate them soon." ... Dr. Abd-al-Rahman al-Sudays, preacher and imam of the mosque [in Mecca], delivers the sermon... "Read history," he adds, 'to know that yesterday's Jews were bad predecessors and today's Jews are worse successors. They are killers of prophets and the scum of the earth. God hurled his curses and indignation on them and made them monkeys and pigs and worshippers of tyrants. These are the Jews, a continuous lineage of meanness, cunning, obstinacy, tyranny, evil, and corruption. ... The land is drenched with the pure blood of our brothers and sisters in struggler Palestine. They were killed like sheep. Scores of mosques were destroyed, hundreds of houses were demolished, and thousands of souls were killed. How many women have been widowed, children orphaned, and mass graves dug?'""Saudi Telethon Host Calls for Enslaving Jewish Women" (National Review, 2002/04/26)
"The Saudi Information Agency has obtained a tape by prominent government official cleric Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik calling for enslaving Jewish women. The tape is called "A Monkey Desecrates Mosque," and was delivered in a Riyadh government mosque. The monkey refers to Jews. Al-Buraik, a Wahhabi cleric, is closely tied to Prince AbdulAziz Ben Fahd, the king’s youngest son, and member of the Saudi delegation accompanying Crown Prince Abdullah on his current visit. ... The following are excerpts of the tape: ... 'I am against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment; I am against America even if the stone liquefies. My hatred of America, if part of it was contained in the universe, it would collapse. She is the root of all evils, and wickedness on earth. ... Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don’t you enslave their women? Why don’t you wage jihad? Why don’t you pillage them?'""Saudi prince has stern words for Bush on Mideast" (CNN.com, 2002/04/25)
"Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah delivered a stern warning to President Bush on Thursday about the risks the United States faces if it continues with a Middle East policy widely perceived in the Arab world as favoring Israel. ... Adel Al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to the Saudi government, told reporters Abdullah had warned Bush about the direction of U.S. policy in the Middle East. ... "The message is, if the violence does not diminish, there will be grave consequences for the U.S. and its interests in the region." ... He said the fundamental difference between the two nations is that 'the U.S. thinks Arafat is the problem, and we think Sharon is the problem.'""Saudi to Warn Bush of Rupture Over Israel Policy" (Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2002/04/25)
"But the Saudi delegation also brought a strong sense of the alarm and crisis that have been heard in Arab capitals. "It is a mistake to think that our people will not do what is necessary to survive," the person close to the crown prince said, 'and if that means we move to the right of bin Laden, so be it; to the left of Qaddafi, so be it; or fly to Baghdad and embrace Saddam like a brother, so be it. It's damned lonely in our part of the world, and we can no longer defend our relationship [with America] to our people.'""Diplomat censured over bomb poem" (BBC News, 2002/04/18)
"The Saudi Arabian ambassador to the UK faces censure from the British government after writing a poem in praise of Palestinian suicide bombers. Ambassador Dr Ghazi Algosaibi, a well-known poet in the Arab world, wrote that suicide bombers "died to honour God's word" in a short verse published in the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat last week. The poem, entitled The Martyrs, praised Ayat Akhras, an 18-year-old Palestinian who blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket on 29 March, killing two Israelis and wounding 25. "Doors of heaven are opened for her," wrote Dr Algosaibi, who has been Saudi Arabia's ambassador in London for more than a decade. ... Dr Algosaibi's poem also criticised the United States, referring to 'a White House whose heart is filled with darkness.'""Saudi: Suicide Bombings Not Terrorism" (AP/ABC News, 2002/04/16)
"A Saudi official said Tuesday he told President Bush and Congress in a letter that Palestinian suicide bombers are not terrorists and are instead sacrificing "their souls for freedom." ... Ahmed al-Tuwaijri said in his letter that U.S. policy has "destroyed our dreams and the dreams of peace-lovers around the world." ... Tuwaijri's comments came after the Saudi ambassador to Britain, Ghazi Algosaibi, wrote a poem in the Arab daily Al-Hayat over the weekend praising a female suicide bomber. ... Iraqi President Saddam Hussein also said suicide bombings are a "legitimate means used by a people whose land is being occupied," state-run media reported Tuesday. Saddam has been making payments of up to $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers since the Israeli-Palestinian clashes began in September 2000.""Saudi telethon raises SR210m for Palestinians" (Abdul Wahab Bashir, Arab News, 2002/04/13)
"Viewers from inside Saudi Arabia and abroad strongly responded to last night’s national telethon for the Palestinian people giving millions of dollars in donations. The donations include gold, cars and even slingshots sent by Saudi children to help their Palestinian brethren fight Israeli occupation. By the time this paper went to press, an hour before the early morning deadline for the end of the telethon, the amount had reached SR210 million ($56 million). ... Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd, who donated SR10 million, ordered the11-hour telethon. Generous donations also came from Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, and Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, and other members of the royal family. A unified bank account was set for the event by the Saudi Committee for the Support of the Intifada headed by Interior Minister Prince Naif. The committee coordinates assistance to the Palestinians.""Saudi Government - Controlled Daily Praises Passover and Jerusalem Supermarket Suicide Bombers" (Special Dispatch No. 367, MEMRI, 2002/04/11)
"In a recent article for the Saudi government-controlled daily Al-Jazirah, columnist Dr. Khalil Ibrahim Al-Sa'adat applauded the actions of 'Abd Al-Baset 'Oudeh, the Palestinian who detonated himself at a Passover 'Seder' in a Netanya hotel, and Ayat Al-Akhras, who carried out a suicide attack in a Jerusalem supermarket.": "'May Allah have mercy upon you, oh 'Abd Al-Baset 'Oudeh, mujaheed and martyr, the quiet hero who infiltrated so elegantly and spoke so gaily. ... Despite all the obstacles, fortifications, and security measures, you reached [the appointed place], sat down at one of the tables, talked, told a few jokes, and laughed with them, and then Allah decreed for you a martyr's death. What heroism, courage, and strength -almost unmatched on the face of the earth!'""Wahhabis in the Old Dominion - What the federal raids in Northern Virginia uncovered" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/04/08 issue)
"Federal law enforcement has kicked over quite an anthill in Northern Virginia. A U.S. Treasury task force, Operation Green Quest, has been investigating the funding of Islamic terror. Raids on March 20 struck an extraordinary array of financial, charitable, and ostensibly religious entities identified with Muslim and Arab concerns in this country, most of them headquartered in Northern Virginia. ... Operation Green Quest has drawn attention to a previously overlooked aspect of support for extremism in this country: The principal threat comes not from the thousands of working-class Arab immigrants in places like New Jersey and Michigan who contribute modest sums to the so-called Islamic charities, but from the Arab elite. The Saudis stand behind all of it. The kingdom pledged $400 million last year for the support of "martyrs' families," according to the Saudi Embassy website. At $5,300 per "martyr," that works out to about 75,000 martyrs, suggesting the Saudi princes anticipate a lot more suicide bombings than Israel has yet suffered.""Investing in terror" (Jed Babbin, The Washington Times, 2002/03/28)
"Our attention has been focused only on the finished product. We see the Mohamed Attas, the Palestinian suicide bombers and the others who are the products of the pipeline. But the other end, where the young are fed into the system and where millions of dollars are spent in indoctrination and support, is where we should be concentrating our long-term attention. ... The "zakat," an annual charitable donation, is a normal duty for members of the Saudi royal family and for many of the wealthiest people in nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and others. Much of the donated money is spent on spreading the roots of terror around the world. In Africa today, Saudi-run charities are spending millions of dollars on food, supplies and medicine for the poor. But the price demanded of the poor to receive these benefits can only be described as indoctrination to terror." (See also: "Saudi Government Paper: 'Billions Spent by Saudi Royal Family to Spread Islam to Every Corner of the Earth'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 360, 2002/03/27): "The cost of King Fahd's efforts in this field has been astronomical, amounting to many billions of Saudi Riyals. In terms of Islamic institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia…")"Saudi police face deaths criticism" (Reuters/CNN.com, 2002/03/15)
"Saudi media, in a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful religious police, have accused the force of hampering efforts to rescue 15 girls who died inside a blazing school. ... The al-Eqtisadiah daily said firemen scuffled with members of the religious police, also known as "mutaween," after they tried to keep the girls inside the burning building because they did not wear head scarves and abayas (black robes) as required by the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islam. The English-language Saudi Gazette, in a front-page report on Thursday, quoted witnesses as saying that members of the police, known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, had stopped men who tried to help the girls warning "it is a sinful to approach them." One civil defence officer told al-Eqtisadiah he saw three members of the religious police "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya.""Saudi Government Daily: Jews Use Teenagers' Blood for 'Purim' Pastries" (Special Dispatch No. 354, MEMRI, 2002/03/13)
The ancient anti-Semitic "blood libel" in a contemporary version:
"In an article published by the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh, columnist Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University in Al-Dammam, wrote on "The Jewish Holiday of Purim." Following are excerpts of the article":
"Before I go into the details, I would like to clarify that the Jews' spilling human blood to prepare pastry for their holidays is a well-established fact, historically and legally, all throughout history. This was one of the main reasons for the persecution and exile that were their lot in Europe and Asia at various times. ...
For this holiday, the victim must be a mature adolescent who is, of course, a non-Jew – that is, a Christian or a Muslim. His blood is taken and dried into granules. The cleric blends these granules into the pastry dough; they can also be saved for the next holiday." (See also: "'Blood libel' alive and well" (Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily, 2000/11/30))"Down with Saudi Arabia" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/03/09 issue)
"The royal family derives such legitimacy as it has from its role as the guardian and promoter of Wahhabism. It is, therefore, the ideological font of militant Islamism in the way that Saddam and Boy Assad and Mubarak and the other Arab thugs aren't. Saddam is as Islamic as the wind is blowing: say what you like about the old mass murderer, but his malign activities are not, in that sense, defined by his religion. One cannot say the same for the House of Saud. If the issue is 'religious tensions', who's fomenting them, from Pakistan to the Balkans to America itself? Saudi Arabia should be a "root cause" we can all agree on.""Saudi Peace Sham" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/03/06)
"In 35 years of studying the Middle East, I have rarely seen anything to rival the Saudi "peace plan" for cynicism (of those pushing the plan) and gullibility (of those buying it). If it were not so tragic it would be comic. Israeli civilians are being blown up almost daily in restaurants, at bus stops, at prayer. Retaliatory attacks are launched by the hour. A new "peace plan" is then floated whose essence is this: When peace is achieved between the two parties killing each other on the ground, the Saudis will give it their blessing and make peace too.""Saudi schools fuel anti-US anger" (Charles M. Sennott, Boston Globe Online, 2002/03/04)
"At the Islamic Law department here at King Khalid University, students line up to buy cassette tapes and printed pamphlets from militant Islamic clerics whose sermons burn with anti-American sentiment and ''fatwas,'' or religious decrees, declaring holy war against infidels. At a public high school in this provincial town in the southwest part of the country, 10th-grade classes are forced to memorize from a Ministry of Education textbook entitled ''Monotheism'' that is replete with anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry and violent interpretations of Islamic scripture. A passage on page 64 under the title ''Judgment Day'' says: 'The Hour will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, and Muslims will kill all the Jews.'''"The Saudi Challenge" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/02/20)
"Without those changes, this country is going to get poorer and poorer, because 40 percent of the population is under 14 — meaning the biggest population bulge hasn't even hit the labor market yet. This could be dynamite. In December an end-of-Ramadan youth brawl erupted on the Jidda coastal road, during which the crowd turned against the police and shouted anti-government and anti-U.S. slogans, leading to some 300 arrests. ... As one middle-class Saudi put it to me: 'The problem here is not Islam. The problem is too many young men with no job and no university and nowhere to go except to the mosque, where some [radical preachers] fill their heads with anger for America. Every home now has two or three not working. This is the real problem.'""An Intriguing Signal From the Saudi Crown Prince" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/02/17)
"After I laid out this idea, the crown prince [Abdullah] looked at me with mock astonishment and said, "Have you broken into my desk?" "No," I said, wondering what he was talking about. "The reason I ask is that this is exactly the idea I had in mind — full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with U.N. resolutions, including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations," he said. 'I have drafted a speech along those lines. My thinking was to deliver it before the Arab summit and try to mobilize the entire Arab world behind it. The speech is written, and it is in my desk. But I changed my mind about delivering it when Sharon took the violence, and the oppression, to an unprecedented level.'""Saudi Government Official: American Jews are 'Brothers of Apes and Pigs'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 343, 2002/02/08)
"The popular Al-Jazeera talk show, "The Opposite Direction," recently addressed the issue of whether Osama bin Laden has served the cause of Islam, or damaged it. ... However, [the Saudi preacher from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Saudi
Arabia] Al-Haddal stood firmly in defense of bin Laden. In his comments he also fiercely attacked American Jewry. Following are excerpts of Al-Haddal's statements: 'I don't believe that the attack on America [on September 11th] was perpetrated by bin Laden or the Muslims. I think differently. I believe it was a scheme. What is happening now is a continuation of an ancient attack. It is a continuation of the Jewish deception and the Jewish-Zionist wickedness which infiltrates the U.S. ... I am surprised that the Christian U.S. allows the 'brothers of apes and pigs' [meaning the Jews] to corrupt it. ... [The Jews] are the most despicable people who walked the land and are the worms of the entire world. They are all evil. And why? Because they are deceiving and plotting aggressors...'""Saudi Breakpoint - A time for choosing" (David Pryce-Jones, National Review, 2002/02/01)
"Elections and opinion polls are unthinkable in this society, but if there were such things they would reveal that Osama bin Laden is a national hero, far more popular than the monarchy. Bin Laden's escape so far from capture or death gives him legendary status. His career rests on primitive anti-Americanism. To him, the presence of American bases has been sacrilege in a holy Islamic land, and the Americans have to go. ... In the aftermath of the Afghan campaign it is no longer possible for the Saudis to continue double-dealing, offering the Americans a disdainful lip-service loyalty while also tolerating, or worse encouraging, anti-American extremism. A choice has to be made, and it will determine the future of the region.""Saudi bomb victim's torture ordeal - and Britain's silence" (Paul Kelso, The Guardian, 2002/01/31)
It's interesting to note the difference between how Mr. Straw treated this case and his concern over the treatment of the prisoners at Camp X-Ray: "British victim of a terrorist explosion in Riyadh was tortured by Saudi secret police and forced to confess to the bombing in which he was injured, the Guardian can reveal. Ron Jones, 48, a tax adviser from Scotland, was seized from the hospital bed where he was recovering from the explosion by agents from the feared interior ministry, and taken to an interrogation centre where he was systematically tortured for 67 days. ... Mr Jones met the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, last August and told him his story. He was left in no doubt that the best policy was to keep quiet." (See also: "Not your business, Mr Straw" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/01/21): "Yesterday's Mail on Sunday, on the basis of a few photographs, told its readers that the suspects had been "tortured". ... Responding to the tabloid outrage, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has raised the issue with the authorities.")"Saudis tortured me for seven weeks, says bomb suspect" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/01/31)
"For seven insufferable weeks, Paul Moss was subjected to merciless interrogation, deprived of sleep for days at a time, thrashed with sticks and threatened with death unless he co-operated with his Saudi secret police captors.
Caged in a tiny concrete isolation cell where a strip-light blazed relentlessly day and night, Mr Moss was allowed outside only three times, shuffling in leg irons for 15 minutes around a dismal exercise yard.
His only other venture outdoors was when his interrogators hauled him to the roof and threatened to throw him off.
"I was shackled and blindfolded," he said. "But I could tell I had been taken outside. I could hear the traffic in the distance, feel a bit of breeze, sense the heat.
"They said they would push me off the roof if I didn't answer their questions. They said they had done it before and they would just say that I had fallen while trying to escape." ...
"I could live with a little bit of slapping around, but once they started stopping the sleep it really began to play tricks with my mind."
Every 15 minutes, a guard would enter his cell and order him alternately to stand or sit. He was warned that if he nodded off he would be handcuffed to a bar above the door.
"After seven days of it I collapsed, hallucinating. They gave me 10 minutes, then carried on as before.
"They never addressed me by name, I just had a number - 42. The interrogators all spoke perfect English. You could tell they were well educated. One of them said he had been trained in America.""The Prince Protests" (Jackson Diehl, The Washington Post, 2002/01/29)
"Ask a Saudi official here to talk about the lessons Saudi Arabia must draw from Sept. 11 and the response almost invariably veers thousands of miles to the West Bank and Gaza. Look for a Saudi effort to combat bin Laden's propaganda and you'll find instead a state-directed media onslaught echoing his rhetoric about Israeli crimes and American culpability. The intention is not to attack America or undermine the alliance -- that's what Abdullah wants to make clear. The Saudi ruler is merely taking cover behind the Middle East's most proven political shield. Still, the effect is the same -- at a time when the United States desperately needs its Muslim allies to defend it against bin Laden's lies and denounce his extremist ideology, it finds a Saudi ruler who would insist on making Israel, rather than bin Laden, the center of Arab attention, and subject U.S. rather than Saudi policy to critical dissection.""Saudis May Seek U.S. Exit" (David B. Ottaway and Robert G. Kaiser, The Washington Post, 2002/01/18)
"Saudi Arabia's rulers are increasingly uncomfortable with the U.S. military presence in their country and may soon ask that it end, according to several Saudi sources. Such a decision would deprive the United States of regular use of the Prince Sultan Air Base, from which American power has been projected into the gulf region and beyond for more than a decade. Senior Saudi rulers believe the United States has "overstayed its welcome" and that other forms of less conspicuous military cooperation should be devised once the United States has completed its war in Afghanistan, according to a senior Saudi official.""Princely payments" (Linda Robinson and Peter Cary, usnews.com, 2001/01/14)
An article on Saudi "protection money" and corruption: "Strained relations between Washington and Riyadh are nothing new. But since September 11, tensions have increased markedly. One reason, high-level intelligence sources tell U.S. News, is that at least two Saudi princes had been paying, on behalf of the kingdom, what amounts to protection money to Osama bin Laden since 1995. In November of that year, a bomb at the Saudi National Guard headquarters in Riyadh killed several American military advisers who worked closely with the force. One source, a former senior Clinton administration official, said that the two princes, whose names have not been disclosed, began making payments to bin Laden soon after the bombing. The official added that Washington did not learn of the payments until at least two years later. "There's no question they did buy protection from bin Laden," he says. "The deal was, they would turn a blind eye to what he was doing elsewhere. 'You don't conduct operations here, and we won't disrupt them elsewhere.' ... Even Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the ebullient Saudi ambassador in Washington, has freely acknowledged that there is corruption in the kingdom. In an interview with the PBS program Frontline, Bandar spoke of his country's $400 billion development program. "You could not have done all of that for less than, let's say, $350 billion. If you tell me that building this whole country, and spending $350 billion out of $400 billion, that we misused or got corrupted with $50 billion, I'll tell you, yes," he said. 'So what? We did not invent corruption.'""Arab Antisemitism - Saudi Government Daily on the 'Culture of Hatred'" (Special Dispatch No. 328, MEMRI, 2002/01/08)
"Following are excerpts from an article in the Saudi daily 'Al-Riyadh' by Abdallah Al-Ka'id, titled 'The Culture of Hatred'": "For example, one cannot be amazed by the hatred of most of the nations of the world for the 'Zionist entity,' because of its history, replete not with human achievements but with barbaric massacres, deceit, and evil conscience. Hatred towards them is on the rise among the Arabs in particular, because of what they suffer from the occupation of the Arab state of Palestine, the catastrophes, the cruelty, and the injustice that are known to all. ... However warm the kisses, and however firm the handshakes, their hearts are full of hatred, their souls are full of rage, and their eyes glance away with loathing at the sight of the flag of the Zionist entity flying in the heart of [some] Arab capitals. ... These are our enemies, and our hatred towards them is rooted in our souls, and the only thing that can remove it is their departure from our lands and the purification of their defilement of our holy places!!!""The Saudi Threat" (Ralph Peters, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/01/04)
"Instead of an instability that opens the door to freedom, the Saudis foment instability that leads to still-greater oppression, backwardness and bigotry. By funding religious extremists from Michigan to Mindanao, the Saudis have done their best to destroy democracies, turn back the clock on human rights and deny religious freedom to Islamic and other populations - while the United States guarantees Saudi security. It is the most preposterous and wrongheaded policy in American history since the defense of slavery."
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Articles
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"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)
"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)
"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)
"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)
"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)
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Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.
"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)
"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)
"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)
"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)
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