Saudi Arabia Cracking Down on Critics of Israel?

Okay. So, Bloomberg, published an article claiming that Saudi Arabia is increasingly arresting pro Palestinian activists who criticize Israel, and they said that this is connected supposedly, to the kingdom's interest in normalization, that they're very keen to normalize. Now this story was predictably spread across social media, and it got picked up immediately, by the Israeli press. Muslims were spreading it, when it was still only published by Bloomberg, and that article is behind a paywall, meaning, they were spreading it without even having read the article because ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of them definitely are not paid subscribers of the Bloomberg wire service. So they were just spreading it because they read the headline.

So when you actually read the article, it provides no figures to substantiate the claim in the headline that there's been this drastic increase in arrests. It only mentions three cases. I'll quote from the article, recent detentions have included an executive for a company involved in, bin Salman's, vision 2030 economic plan, who, allegedly expressed views on the war that were deemed incendiary by local authorities according to Bloomberg. Obviously, if you read that very carefully, there's no connection between the statements that he supposedly made and his arrest, just that they these two things happened. These are two events that occurred.

It does not say that he was in fact charged with making incendiary social media posts, nor does it say what those posts were, what he said exactly, there's no screenshots or anything like that, and whether or not the incendiary remarks were directed at the Saudi government or at Israel or at the Houthis or at Iran or at anyone else. It's not clear. In fact, his name isn't even mentioned. In other words, this is not information. The second case refers to a media figure who said that Israel should never be forgiven, and then to another individual, calling for a a boycott of American fast food restaurants in Saudi Arabia.

Again, the media figure is not named, nor is it stated that he was actually charged on the basis of his statements, just that he was arrested and that he has made such statements, not necessarily that these two things are connected. And the same thing goes for the unnamed person who called for boycotts, and who also got arrested. These are two things that happened, he called for boycotts and he got arrested, but there's no evidence to substantiate that his call for boycotts is why he was arrested, whoever he is. And all of these arrests of unnamed people are being reported to Bloomberg by unnamed sources. In other words, none of this is information.

The story further states, that the number of inmates has increased in Saudi in in a particular Saudi, maximum security prison since October 7, which if you know anything about prisons, that's what happens. The number of inmates does increase over a six month period. Bloomberg said, that the number of arrests for social media posts, has spiked since October 7, which is just a different factoid not necessarily related in any way to the first factoid about the maximum security prison. In other words, this is also not information. These are bits of data, that are being willfully, stringed together and connected to each other without there being any actual obvious or substantiated connection.

These are bits of data, that are being willfully interpreted, and that willful interpretation goes further by saying that all of this unsubstantiated crackdown, these three arrests in six months of unnamed individuals according to unnamed sources with no charges that we know of, This is supposedly because Saudi Arabia is sick signaling their keenness to reach a normalization deal with Israel. Okay. Now let's look at what's actually happening. Saudi Arabia has said all along, and they re have reiterated it many times that normalization is contingent upon the establishment of a Palestinian state. They've never budged on that stipulation.

The Biden administration has never been able to get them to budge on that stipulation. They offered Saudi Arabia a security and defense deal and approval of a nuclear energy deal if Saudi Arabia agreed to normalization. Now they're agreeing to give Saudi Arabia these things without normalization. That's not called Saudi Arabia signaling their keenness to normalize with Israel. That's called The United States completely caving to Saudi Arabia's refusal to normalize until there's a Palestinian state.

And they are caving precisely because they have no bargaining chips as I've said. They are desperate. The United States is desperate, to try to salvage any iota of influence that they once had, that they have now lost to China and to Russia and to, Saudi Arabia's own sovereignty, and, Mohammed bin Salman is leveraging, Saudi Arabia's relationship with American weapons companies and with BlackRock to get what he wanted from the Americans without giving the Americans what they wanted. That's what's actually happening. The reality is that The United States is conceding.

This isn't a deal, this is a capitulation. They've been reduced to the position of trying to themselves buy influence in Saudi Arabia. Now if those arrests that are mentioned in that article, if those arrests even took place at all, if those unnamed people even exist, my guess would be that the executive who was mentioned was probably arrested for completely unrelated reason reasons, probably related to financial corruption or something like this. The media personality who was arrested was probably arrested for saying something, that the government deemed to be seditious, and the person who called for, boycotts was probably arrested for expressing himself in an inflammatory inflammatory way. That's what usually happens with these sorts of arrests in Saudi Arabia and in The Gulf generally, and I'm speaking as someone who has roughly a decade of experience in dealing with cybercrime arrests in the region.

You can quote me on that. And unlike, with the Bloomberg source, you can actually use my name. There is no sign whatsoever that Saudi Arabia is or will distance themselves from China or from Russia. And simply accepting an American offer of security and defense, and access to higher tech weaponry from The United States does not imply that in any way whatsoever, no matter how hard, The US wants to try to spin their capitulation to Saudi intransigence. Weapons companies want to sell to Saudi Arabia.

BlackRock wants to sell to Saudi Arabia, and they'll present this to Congress for approval by the Congress by arguing that, agreeing to allow them to sell to Saudi Arabia will just bring them that much closer to normalization. That's what's actually happening here. The US lost the negotiations with Saudi Arabia. Pure and simple. But they need to try to portray that loss as a win because that's what they always do.

America is losing all influence in The Middle East, and their only hope of, trying to remain relevant at all, is by trying to prove themselves to be useful, to Saudi Arabia and to The Gulf, which is very different from proving themselves to be powerful.