The Independent: Israeli Jets Bombed Yemen, Wealthy Saudis Treated in Israel

Local Editor

The Independent has confirmed that Israeli fighter jets have participated in bombing Yemen and Syria alongside the Saudi-led coalition.

In his article titled “If you're wondering why Saudi Arabia and Israel have united against Al-Jazeera, here's the answer” published in the Independent, Robert Fisk also says that rich Saudi citizens head to Israel for medical treatment.

“When the wealthiest Saudis fall ill, they have been known to fly into Tel Aviv on their private jets for treatment in Israel’s finest hospitals. And when Saudi and Israeli fighter-bombers take to the air, you can be sure they’re going to bomb ... Yemen or Syria respectively,” wrote the multi-award winning Middle East correspondent of The Independent.

He carries on to say, “when King Salman – or rather Saudi Arabia’s whizz-kid Crown Prince Mohammad – points the finger at Iran as the greatest threat to Gulf security, you can be sure that Bibi Netanyahu will be doing exactly and precisely the same thing, replacing ‘Gulf security’, of course, with ‘Israeli security’.”

Fisk pointed out to the relation between the Saudi suppression of media and support from Israel which pretends to be the “beacon of freedom, democracy, human rights and liberty.”

He said that for a country who claims to respect freedom of expression, the latest announcement by Ayoob Kara, the Israeli communications minister, “to take away the credentials of Al Jazeera’s journalists, close its Al-Quds bureau and take the station’s broadcasts from local cable and satellite providers” shows otherwise.

The best-selling author states that the aforementioned measures taken against al- Jazeera comes even though the channel’s reporting from Israel is “pretty pathetic”, adding that “its fawning reverence for the state all too painfully illustrated when its Qatar anchorwoman expressed to an Israeli government spokesman live on air her channel’s condolences on the death of Ariel Sharon, the monstrous Israeli ex-[war] minister who was held responsible for the massacre of up to 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres of 1982.”

Fisk continues “Ayoob Kara, however, has actually taken his cue from his fellow Arabs. And he admits it. Israel had to take steps, he said, against ‘media, which has been determined by almost all Arab countries to actually be a supporter of terror, and we know this for certain’.

“For if an unwritten alliance really exists between Saudi Arabia and Israel, then all options – as US presidents and secretary Hillary Clinton used to say – are “on the table”. Imprisonment without trial, extrajudicial executions, human rights abuses, corruption, military rule – let’s say this at once: all these characteristics belong to “almost all” Sunni Muslim Arab nations – and to Israel in the lands it occupies.”

He also adds “as for being a “supporter of terror” (I quote Israeli minister Kara again), one must first ask why Gulf Arabs have exported their fighters – and their money – to the most vicious Sunni Islamists in the Middle East. And then ask why Israel has never bombed these same vile creatures – indeed, ask why Israel has given hospital treatment to wounded fighters from the al-Nusra – in other words, al-Qaeda.”

Fisks warns that we must not “forget that America’s insane President and his weird regime is also part of the Saudi-Israeli anti-Shiite confederation. Trump’s obscene $350bn arms sales to the Saudis, his fingering of Iran and his hatred of the world’s press and television channels makes him an intimate part of the same alliance.”

Source: The Independent, Edited by Website Team