Saudi Royals and Reality
New York Times
October 16, 2001
BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
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Three cheers
for Mayor Rudy Giuliani for returning the $10 million donation made
by a Saudi billionaire, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, after he toured the
World Trade Center ruins, handed the mayor a check and then declared
that it was time to get at the "roots" of this terrorism -
which the Saudi royal defined as the U.S. failure to push Israel to
make peace with the Palestinians and to stop Israel from "slaughtering"Palestinians.No
doubt there is deep Arab anger over U.S. support for Israel. I've gotten
angry myself over the failure of successive U.S. governments to restrain
Israel's voracious settlement-building program. But to suggest that
Israel is slaughtering Palestinians for sport, as if a war were not
going on there, which Israel did not court, in which civilians on both
sides are being killed - or to suggest that President Clinton didn't
spend the whole end of his term forging a real plan for a Palestinian
state,which Yasir Arafat ran away from, with the Saudi government only
a few steps behind him, because it required some fair compromises on
Jerusalem -or to suggest that somehow Arab anger over any of this justified
people blowing up buildings in New York - is just a lie.Normally such
casual lying doesn't bother me. It's a staple of Middle East politics,
and in the end only hurts the liars. But this particular version is
dangerous, because it masks a deeper lie that can hurt us. I call it
"the virgin birth problem." To listen to Saudi officials,
or read the Arab press, you would never know that most of the hijackers
were young Saudis, or that the main financing for Osama bin Laden -
a Saudi - has been coming from other wealthy Saudis, or that Saudi Arabia's
government was the main funder of the Taliban. No, to listen to them
you would think that all these young men had virgin births: they came
from nowhere, no society is responsible for them, and no Arab state
need reflect on how perpetrators of such a grotesque act could have
come from its womb. Attention, Prince Alwaleed: These young men came
from your country, and while the Palestinian issue no doubt angers them,
it does not compare to their hatred of what Mr. bin Laden called the
corrupt, "hypocritical," "hereditary" Arab regimes,
starting with Saudi Arabia. So if you want to do something useful with
your $10 million, then endow an anti-corruption campaign in Saudi Arabia,
or endow American Studies departments in all Saudi universities, or
endow a center of Islamic learning in Saudi Arabia that would focus
on the teachings of reformist Islamic scholars. Or give the money to
Seeds of Peace, which brings Arab and Israeli youth together, or invest
in development inside Saudi Arabia or Palestine, so young Saudis and
Palestinians can find fulfilling jobs. Or persuade King Fahd to say
publicly that if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, Saudi Arabia
would lead the Muslim world into diplomatic relations with Israel. But
whatever you do, stop lying to us and to yourselves. Because we're sick
of it, and we're not alone. So many Arab citizens, seeking a better
future for their kids, are also starved for the truth. Consider this
letter, written by a Sudanese, Hashem Hassan. It was published last
week in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and translated
by the invaluable MEMRI research service. "We must stop presenting
[Mr. bin Laden] as a stepson of American and Western hegemony. He is
the lawful son of Arab-Muslim helplessness. He is a completely legal
son, to whom we, with our rigidity, gave birth - we the supporters of
pan-Arabism, you the Marxists, you the Islamists and you, the other
educated individuals. We undermined our homeland and our peoples to
the point where they became easy prey to the interests of America, Israel
and others. . . . Renouncing these prodigal sons and attempting to lay
them at the door of the West is shirking responsibility. It would be |