Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

A Saudi Slap to the Neo-Cons | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
Select Page

Personally, I do not favor the conspiracy theory interpretation of the issue of the explosives that were found on board of two UAE airliners on flights to the United States, and whose discovery was announced last Friday by US President Obama. Some analysts say that this was a planned US play. This is because of the fact that the activities of Al-Qaeda and those moving in its intellectual orbit are increasing, so are Al-Qaeda’s recent skirmishes with the United States and its threats to a number of European countries. Al-Qaeda, as everybody knows, is of the type that carries out what it says.

In addition to the United States, there are four principal participants in the exposure of this thorny terrorist act: Britain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the UAE. Saudi Arabia in particular has addressed a resounding slap in the face to the extremist US right wing that has been casting doubts upon the Saudis’ fight against terrorism.

However, also I do not favor accepting the US version that says that the targets are Jewish synagogues. This is not out of the belief that Al-Qaeda is too “pious” to commit such sins, because its greatest crime, 9/11, and the other crimes it committed in a number of Muslim countries have proved that it does not know what is allowed or prohibited by Shariaa in shedding blood, and that it does not care when it targets a group of US nationals if hundreds of innocent people are killed in order to reach this goal.

Such thuggery has become blatantly evident; however, at the same time we have not noticed either in the literature of Al-Qaeda or in its practices any targeting of temples, whether Jewish or Christian. Therefore, it does not seem convincing that Al-Qaeda wants to blow up Jewish temples, especially in the United States whose airspace is packed with strong guards and bolides in military fighter aircraft that are waiting in ambush for anything that comes from the east. Had the Jewish temples been targeted because of their own nature, the attack would have been against such temples, for instance, in Eastern Europe where it would be easier and less costly.

Thus, I find some link between this targeting, the crimes committed by the extremist Jews in occupied Palestine under their leader Netanyahu, and the embarrassment caused by accelerating the settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories for the US Government in front of the US and world public opinion. In a nutshell, by taking the opportunity of the latest incident of discovering the explosives the extremist Jews want to transform themselves from executioners into victims, which is a skill they master.

As for Obama’s address in which he points out that he will strike at Al-Qaeda in Yemen, it arouses pity, because it comes in the midst of the US and international forces suffering major failures in their war on Al-Qaeda and its ally Taliban in Afghanistan. This suffering has reached the stage that a number of the coalition countries have issued statements announcing their determination to withdraw from the Afghan territories, because the war there has become a nihilistic war in which the forces of Taliban are prevailing as their strength increases day-by-day.

What the US leadership ought to understand, while it is engaged in its fierce war against Al-Qaeda, is that the United States itself is the one who provided the climate in which terrorism bacteria and Al-Qaeda parasites grow by its blind dumb support for all the brutal practices undertaken by the Zionist entity, and its severe weakness in the face of the Zionist obstinacy, especially with regard to the recent continuation of the settlement activities.

This bitter sense of US injustice toward the Palestinian rights, and double-standard dealing with the international resolutions are what Al-Qaeda exploited in all its literature and justification to recruit new members. This is in addition to the fatal mistakes committed by the United States during its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our eternal problems with the United States is that whenever we raise this issue, “they have (only) thrust their fingers into their ears, covered themselves up with their garments, grown obstinate, and given themselves up to arrogance [Sura Nuh, from Verse 7].”