We read a good deal about an increasingly warm Saudi-Israel relationship, even an informal alliance, based on both countries’ shared opposition to a relentlessly aggressive Iran. While the Saudis have for years been fighting a proxy war against Iran in Yemen, giving, and taking, blows from the Shi’a Houthi, Israel fought a war in 2006 against Iran’s other proxy, Hizballah. Recently the Israelis uncovered and destroyed a half-dozen massive tunnels that Hizballah had dug from Lebanon into northern Galilee. And Israel has been bombing, without effective resistance, Iranian weapons depots and outposts in Syria.
We hear stories of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s warm relations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, about the sharing of intelligence on Iran, even about the Saudis allowing overflights of Israeli planes. And, as a corollary to this, we learn that the Saudi government is becoming tired of the whole “Palestinian” business, that the Crown Prince finds the Palestinians, and Mahmoud Abbas in particular, insufferable and wildly unrealistic in their demands. The “Palestinian” cause is no longer central to the Saudis or other Arabs; Abbas has been threatened with a loss of Arab diplomatic support unless he accepts — as best as he can — whatever the Trump Administration’s “Deal of the Century” has on offer.
MEMRI (The Middle East Research Institute) has published a series of articles over the past few years that appeared in the Saudi media, by writers, journalists, intellectuals who urge still closer ties with Israel, stress the continuing danger from Iran while claiming that Israel is no threat to Saudi Arabia. These articles argue that diplomatic ties should be established with Israel, and the Jewish state be openly recognized as a valuable Saudi ally. A few have even reported favorably on their trips to Israel, and urged that the Saudis emulate “the Jews’ success.” Among such reports at MEMRI are these: “Saudi Writers, Intellectuals: Iran Is More Dangerous Than Israel; Peace With It Is Vital In Order To Repel Iranian Threat, May 29, 2018; Shift In Saudi Media’s Attitude To Israel – Part II: Saudi Writer Who Visited Israel: We Want An Israeli Embassy In Riyadh; We Should Make Peace With Israel, Uproot Culture Of Hatred For Jews, May 29, 2018; Saudi Columnist: Iran Is The Real Enemy, Not Israel, June 6, 2017; End The Antisemitic Discourse, Learn From The Jews’ Success, August 13, 2016.
At the same time, other Saudi journalists have continued to take a hard line on Israel, reminding readers of the Jewish state’s bottomless perfidy. One such article, claiming that Israel is not the enemy of, but rather has been collaborating all along with, Iran, is here:
“Also scathingly hostile to Israel was an article by Muhammad Al-Sa’idi, a lecturer on Islam at Umm Al-Qura University and a columnist for the daily Al-Watan. Following the February 2019 Warsaw summit, which was attended by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as well as by Arab foreign ministers, and which condemned Iran’s policy in the Middle East, he asserted firmly that Saudi Arabia has no contacts with Israel, overt or covert. He added that Israel actually cooperates with Iran, although the two countries are careful to present themselves as enemies because they derive benefit from this.”
“Al-Sa’idi wrote: ‘To date, Saudi Arabia has no ties, overt or covert, with the Zionist entity. Those who claim that contacts take place under the table were asked years ago to present even a single leak as proof [of their claim], but were unable to do so. All they do is talk about meetings between Israeli officials and [Saudis] who have no [official] authority and represent nobody but themselves. The [Saudi] authorities have denied any responsibility for their behavior, and some were even summoned for interrogation and were barred from [leaving the country] for what they did. Ultimately, meetings do not reflect the positions of countries.
No charge is too ludicrous, no conspiracy theory too absurd, for many Arab writers hostile to Israel. Muhammad Al-Sa’idi insists, despite the many stories that have appeared about Saudi-Israel contacts, that there is no truth to any of them. He dismissively claims “that Saudi Arabia has no ties, overt or covert, with the Zionist entity.” Shall we believe Al-Sa’idi or, instead, the many reports of those contacts? What of the visit of Muhammad bin Salman to Tel Aviv on September 7, 2018, to discuss regional peace efforts, a visit confirmed by Israeli officials and reported in the Israeli media? What of the remarks by Bin Salman, in an interview he gave to The Atlantic, in which he spoke, astonishingly, about the need to recognize the Jews’ right to their homeland and mentioned the possibility of establishing close economic ties with Israel in the future? Doesn’t all this suggest a warming of Saudi-Israel relations and “ties” in the making?
“On February 8, [2019], the Zionist Channel 13… aired reports confirming that all the efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to normalize its relations with the Zionist entity had failed, and that Saudi Arabia adheres to the Arab Initiative, which mentions Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and the right of return of all Palestinians…
The Israelis understand perfectly that the Saudis have to go slowly with publicly acknowledging ties to Israel, and Al-Sa’idi’s claim that Israel as making tremendous “efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to normalize its relations” sounds implausible. The Israelis understand perfectly why the Saudi rulers have to proceed with caution in persuading the Saudi people, who have been brought up in an atmosphere of unrelieved hostility to Zionists, to accept Israel’s existence.
“[As for] the Zionists’ purported hostility towards [Iran’s] Ayatollah regime and their desire to eliminate it, history and the facts prove that these are false claims… After [the exposure of] the Iran-Contra scandal, the fact that the Zionists were among the supporters of Iran during its war with Iraq became so universally known that there is no need to present it… [Furthermore,] everything Iran is doing in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen serves the interests of the Zionist entity more than anyone else’s, in many ways, especially by pushing the Palestinian issue off the agenda of statesmen, peoples, intellectuals and the media… As for Iran’s and the Zionists’ insistence on presenting themselves as enemies, [they do it because] it benefits them both…”
Here Mohammad Al-Sai’idi reaches the zenith — or is it the nadir? –of conspiracy theories. According to him Israel and Iran are now close allies; their “insistence on presenting themselves as enemies, [they do it because] it benefits them both.”
He is right about one thing: Israel did sell some weapons to Iran in 1981, in order to prevent a swift Iraqi victory. It did this with the approval of the Reagan Administration. The aim was not to help Iran win, but to prevent Iran from losing quickly; the best outcome for Israel and for the United States was a long war, using up men, money, material, and morale in both Iran and Iraq, and ending, after many years, in a stalemate. And that’s exactly what happened.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, despite buying weapons from Israel in 1981, had from its beginning declared its enmity to the Jewish state. Ayatollah Khomeini had always been not just anti-Israel but also deeply antisemitic. Among the first victims of the Islamic revolution was the head of Iran’s Jewish community, the businessmen Habib Elghanian, who was executed for the crimes of “corruption, contacts with Israel and Zionism, and ‘friendship with the enemies of God.'” Iran’s Jews fled en masse from Khomeini’s antisemitic regime, many of them to Israel. Yet we are being assured by Al-Sa’idi, on the basis of Israel’s weapons sale to Iran in 1981, that Israel and Iran have always been secret allies. How likely is it that Israel would be an ally of a country that persecuted and murdered Jews, and forced the entire Jewish community into exile?
For the past 40 years, no Iranian rally has been complete without a denunciation of Israel, the “Little Satan” to America’s “Great Satan”. Israeli flags are provided to be stepped on or burned; a great time is had by all. Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the head of the army Mohammed Bagheri, the head of the Al-Quds force within the Revolutionary Guard, Major General Qassem Soleimani, and many lesser political leaders, military officers, and clerics, have never let up in their constant threats to destroy Israel.
If Iran has secretly been Israel’s ally all these years, almost everyone in the Iranian ruling class has apparently missed the memorandum.
If Israel were a secret ally of Iran, would Israeli agents have assassinated four of the most important Iranian nuclear scientists and wounded several others? Those were real deaths, in Teheran traffic, with many witnesses, not faked murders designed to fool the Arabs into believing that Israel and the Islamic Republic are at daggers drawn. The diabolically clever Israeli Stuxnet computer worm caused many centrifuges essential to Iran’s nuclear program to speed up and tear themselves apart. Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. Targeting industrial control systems, the worm infected over 200,000 computers and caused 1,000 machines to physically degrade. Does Muhammad Al-Sa’idi think that Iran would have deliberately allowed such colossal destruction in order to convince the world that Israel and Iran were enemies?
Has Mohammad Al-Sa’idi noticed that Israel has been dropping real bombs on real Iranian targets in Syria, killing real Iranians? And what does he think of Israel’s attack on Hezbollah targets in both Syria and Lebanon? Has he forgotten the network of Hezbollah tunnels that Israelis have uncovered and destroyed? Finally, does Mohammad Al-Sa’idi remember the Israel-Hezbollah War of 2006? Would Israel have endured 165 dead, and the displacement of 300,000-500,000 Israelis, only to further the notion that Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah were enemies?
Al-Sa’idi might have written something else. He might have acknowledged that Israel and Iran are enemies, admitted that Israel assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and destroyed 1,000 centrifuges, recognized that Israel has been busy bombing Iranian outposts in Syria, but then pointed out that Israel had helped Iran before — in 1981 — at a time when Iran was just as anti-Israel and anti-Jewish as it is now, and that it might, in Machiavellian fashion, help Iran again. The Zionists were not to be trusted. Just as it supplied Iran with weapons then, so as to ensure that there would be no swift end to the Iran-Iraq War, Israel might now be willing to help Iran not with weapons (Iran has plenty) but with intelligence, in order to help prolong any war the Islamic Republic might engage in with the Saudis. This version does have one virtue, implausible as it is: it is not nearly as absurd as what Muhammad Al-Sa’idi wants the world to believe about that long-running top-secret non-existent “Israel-Iran alliance.”
RichardL says
He is a journalist. He would fit right into the line-up at CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WP, LA Times etc. As a Zionist myself, I really enjoyed the “Zionist entity”.
Dylan says
You can’t use slandering words like “anti semitic” and expect to be taken seriously as an objective journalist. Who cares what someone is thinking? I care what people do, not what they think. Poor journalism is ruining the west. You gonna stay the problem or be the solution? Cheers.
Frank Anderson says
As much sense as close cooperation, even alliance, would make between Israel and all who oppose tyranny, I think such an agreement between Israel and any country that continues to live under islam is as meaningless and sham as the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939.
J D.S says
In old testament times God warned Israel about “”ALLIANCES”” Saudi???
Frank Anderson says
JDS, many years, in fact decades, ago during some incredibly hard and almost unbearable personal times, I amazed a friend with my observation, “Earn friends at every opportunity. Make enemies with the greatest of care.” An additional lesson I have learned from experience is to continue to earn those friends and watch for “bought friends” who see no reason to earn my friendship. I have many true friends, and have walked away from many other “bought friends” as I see their abuse. “Trust but verify” continues to be sound guidance both personally and nationally. For what an outcast’s opinion is worth, I trust Netanyahu. I also trust Trump.
Dennis says
These writes referred to in is article, who make both false and fraudulent claims that Israel is in a relationship with the Iranians are and should be treated as preposterous. They are the “fake news” of Saudi Arabia, and they represent what I have referred to in comments as “The Arab/Islamic Mentality,” that cannot avoid spewing the built in hate, that leads to violence against Jews in general, and Israel in particular. That mentality never accepts the reality that the Muslim world should try to emulate the productive and industrious nation of Israel, come to terms and accept it as part of the Middle Eastern nations, understand that Israel must develop defensible borders, accept the fact that Hama’s and the PLO will never have a separate state as they have promised the destruction of Israel and its people and will never abandon the claim that they are “occupiers,” which should lead reasonable and right thinking people to recognize the decided advantage of living peacefully alongside the nation of Israel.
jewdog says
Guys like Muhammad Al-Sa’idi are the rule, not the exception, in third world Islamic hellholes. Just look at some of our reps, like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar – they’d fit right in in Somalia or Syria. That’s why we need to keep a tight rein on our borders, and why the 1965 Immigration Act should be repealed. We should go back to favoring western countries because western civilization, for all its faults, is still the best system when it comes to protecting the average person from the malign ignorance in so much of the world.
Naram-Sin says
Israel and Iran are conspiring together to have Israel bomb all of Iran’s nuclear and missile sights.
gravenimage says
Saudi journalist claims ‘secret alliance’ between Israel and Iran
…………………
This is the usual, where Muslims accuse their enemies of either being Jews or being friends with Jews. It doesn’t have to make any sense…
bill53 says
Israel is a tiny democratic Jewish state in a sea of islamic arabs. I don’t begrudge anything Israel has to do to guarantee its existence. Having said that I don’t believe there is anything between Iran and Israel at least right now, one hundred year from now maybe. I trust the Israeli PM and the Knesset to make the right choices, thats what they were elected for. One word of caution, don’t count on America. Have a backup plan in case the socialists (formally Dimms) win the Presidency again.
Frank Anderson says
Bill, not sure what my agreement is worth: Terrifically sound advice. Especially considering that approximately 75 percent of US Jews vote Democrat and exclude anyone who dares to speak differently. Sad.
Lavéritétriomphera says
@Frank Anderson,
Bonjour Ami,
Many Jews do not trust us – we “Christians” – and some rabbis are pro-Islamic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CBcA2IaZyNg.
It seems Muslims do not perceive they can be possibly manipulated by these so-called rabbis.
Peace on you and on USA.
À bientôt
Frank Anderson says
Hello Kevin. It took me between 6 months and a year to figure out my now former local community has little regard for converts and guests. It is now 4 years later and I still have no explanation other than disbelief at the insane denial of the present that to me at least copies the denial of Hitler AND Stalin’s readiness to exterminate. Stalin died planning the extermination of Jews in the Soviet Union.
Explaining my response is no easier. It starts with sadness and disappointment at the betrayal of the teachings which overwhelm me with their profound sense and wisdom. I have had to move on several times in my life because it was better; so was this.
The conclusion I discussed when I wrote and conducted my adopted mother’s funeral, about 30 years ago, still seems true: “There are some things in this life we are not given to understand.”
Peace be with us.
mortimer says
The commandment for Jews to ‘dwell in the land’ (of Israel) is a commandment from ‘Allah’ in the Koran.
Sura 5:21, Sura 17:104
Lavéritétriomphera says
Hello Frank,
For some people solicitude = disregard, and Jews do not trust easily a goy.
Misunderstanding produce suspicion and as I have noticed a few days ago, the fear of the Jews has not disappeared in France. The pro-Islamic attitude of some Jews does not reassure us, particularly given that the Muslims are probably manipulated by so-called rabbis who maybe want to make trouble. I know a well-known Jew, and he must not be the only one, that is aware of this problem and he is looking for solutions, let us hope he succeed.
Amitiés
Frank Anderson says
Kevin, in spite of my disappointment I have many Jewish people I consider friends, including a mother-by-choice who is no longer living. My life goes on.
Peace. There is enough conflict without making more.
R Russell says
I expect that very soon now they will be telling us ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Sion’ is fact.
The gullible will believe it.