Posted on 04/21/2002 9:37:01 AM PDT by Kerensky
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A group of Saudi intellectuals and writers has condemned the United States and Israel and described them as the axis of evil in the world — borrowing a phrase U.S. President George Bush has used for Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
The 113 Saudis, some of them prominent writers for respected Saudi papers, said the American role in the Israeli military operation against the Palestinians was "shameful" and said the "Israeli massacres do not differ in shape or form from what the Nazis did."
The writers called in a statement released Saturday on all Arab governments to severe diplomatic, political and economic ties with Israel and urged Arabs to boycott all American products.
"We consider the United States and the current American administration the nurturer of international terrorism with distinction and it, along with Israel, form the axis of terrorism and evil in the world," said the statement.
The statement said Arab governments should take "serious and responsible steps ... and apply all means of pressure on the American administration to make it feel that its huge interests in the Arab region are threatened."
It said failure to do so will lead to "national disasters that will include everyone."
Among the signatories were a writer for the widely respected Al-Hayat and a former undersecretary of the Saudi Interior Ministry.
The statement comes at a time when anti-American sentiment is at a high level over what Arabs see as U.S. support for Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians.
On Friday, the chief cleric of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, called on the Arabs to abandon peace efforts with Israel because they were "impossible."
Al-Sudais said Arabs should bid farewell to peace with the Jews, whom he described as "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the killers of prophets and the grandsons of monkeys and pigs."
He called on Muslims to stand with the Palestinians financially and in kind, saying that peace with Israel was futile because it only "accepts liquidating its opponent, taking over his land, making his people homeless and canceling his dignity. They want the state of Greater Israel. They want to eliminate the nation of one God and the Quran."
Seriously, it's too bad that many people in this country think that it's something we've done to make them dislike us so. The truth is that their own society has tremendous problems and they're unwilling to face them. Just a whole lot easier to hate us Americans and Israelis.
Standard operating procedure of the Democrat Party is to accuse their opponents of the crimes they commit themselves. They learned much from Clinton.
Have we not noticed that they always do that. The Jews suffered from the Nazis, Arabs call them Nazis. The Arabs commit terrorist acts and Israel retaliates --- they call thay retaliation terrorism and declare Israel to be a "terrorist state" --- whatever that means. Now we call them axis of evil, they say, "No, you are exis of evil."
This is very much like children:
"You are a coward."
"No, you are a coward."
"You are a chicken"
"No, you are a chicken."
I know and you know that this is stupid. That the Arab population thinks otherwise is that population's problem.
The question is, why do we play along with this stupidity and maintain credibility of people like Arafat and Mubarak, who play this game? The more we play, the more weak we look to them, and the more casualties we will suffer.
The fact that some Saudi intellectuals made these statements isn't particularly disturbing. We have our own academics and intellectuals who spout the same kind of garbage here.
The problem is that almost nobody in those countries is speaking out against this kind of rhetoric. If I were an arab living the Middle East, I'd probably be against Israel and US, too, having never heard anything to the contrary in my life. There is nothing but this endless stream of propaganda.
I'm not sure how we fight it.
Then after the house of Faud was in ruins we could go in and whip Sadam, take over the oil fields and lower the price of gas to 50 cents a gallon or so.
This gets him rated as a Saudi intellectual? Shows how barbaric these people are.
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