THE JERUSALEM POST: Saudi journalist says that the ‘real enemies of Arab world’ are corruption and dictators, not the Jewish state.
An article by a Saudi journalist challenging the conventional wisdom in the Arab world – in particular the view of Israel as the root of the region’s problems – is enjoying skyrocketing popularity online and sparking debate about the Arab Spring.
Under the headline “Arab Spring and the Israeli enemy,” the writer used the occasion of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 to wonder aloud about the resources spent on war, in particular the War of Independence in 1948 and the Six Day War in 1967.
“What was the real cost for not recognizing Israel in 1948 and why didn’t the Arab states spend their assets on education, health care and the infrastructures instead of wars?” asked Abdulateef al-Mulhim in the Arab News, a Saudi Arabian newspaper in English whose website “gets hundreds of thousands of hits every day” from around the world, according to the paper’s site.
“But, the hardest question that no Arab national wants to hear is whether Israel is the real enemy of the Arab world and the Arab people,” wrote al-Mulhim.
“I decided to write this article after I saw photos and reports about a starving child in Yemen, a burned ancient Aleppo souk in Syria, the underdeveloped Sinai in Egypt, car bombs in Iraq and the destroyed buildings in Libya. The photos and the reports were shown on the Al-Arabiya network, which is the most watched and respected news outlet in the Middle East,” he wrote.
“The common thing among all what I saw is that the destruction and the atrocities are not done by an outside enemy. The starvation, the killings and the destruction in these Arab countries are done by the same hands that are supposed to protect and build the unity of these countries and safeguard the people of these countries. So, the question now is that who is the real enemy of the Arab world?” he asked.
Al-Mulhim continued later in the column: “The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people.” » | Ilene Prusher | Wednesday, October 10, 2012
