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Trump is beginning to turn against Saudi Arabian leader Mohammed Bin Salman, but liberal Zionists in Israel are suggesting we go easy on him.
Israel is already a big loser in the fallout from the Khashoggi murder, which has set back the effort to work with Saudi Arabia to confront Iran and impose a peace deal on the Palestinians. Trump negotiator Jared Kushner has been hurt by his association with the Saudis, and even rightwingers are supporting sanctions against Israel’s new ally.
Getting Americans to be honest about our war crimes is like pulling teeth. After leaving the Yemen war completely out of his book on foreign policy, Obama aide Ben Rhodes finally admits “We were wrong” to trust the Saudis by supplying them with arms for their onslaught on Yemeni civilians. Of course he blames Trump for being even worse.
The crown prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman, now appears to be parroting Israeli propaganda. The Saudi leader prince Mohammed Bin Salman is reported as saying that Palestinians “missed one opportunity after another” and that they should “shut up and stop complaining.”
In Trump’s world where money talks, poor Yemenis are banned from entering the United States (and are killed back home) and Syrians fleeing violence are portrayed as terrorists, while Saudi princes who cling to power by torturing and beheading dissidents get safe passage to their luxury digs in Manhattan’s Trump Towers.
The covert alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel should be no surprise to any student of British imperialism. The British Empire’s drive to impose Zionism in Palestine is embedded in the geographical DNA of contemporary Saudi Arabia.