I received a valuable letter that deserves to be published, about a column of mine last week in which I talked about an upcoming conference in Washington of various elements of the opposition in Bahrain, along with extremist neoconservative Americans, who are enemies of Arabs and Muslims and are warmongers against Iran. The letter was written by Professor Ali al-Khabti, who was previously the assistant deputy minister of education in Saudi Arabia for research, in which he said: "First: I understand your relying on the book by Nurit Peled, the professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and ignoring the book "The Image of Arabs and Muslims in Israeli Schools," even though (all modesty aside) it is the best book in terms of being methodological, moderate and profound on the topic. Ask whoever you want; it is an academic book with documented evidence and testimony. As an Arab and a Muslim I will not be biased against it, since I am an academic and am fully aware of what objectivity means in scientific research, which requires setting feelings, impressions and stereotypes aside, and this is what I have done." "Second, on 23 July 2006, Freedom House at the Hudson Institute conducted a study of 12 Saudi educational books with the help of the Institute for Gulf Affairs (previously the Saudi Institute), under Ali al-Ahmad. The study was supervised by Nani Shea, and the content of the study was published in the Washington Post. She read the “most flagrant” findings of the study to Congress and met with President Bush, along with her team, in an attempt to incite people against Saudi Arabia. I then met with them under the chairmanship of Prince Turki al-Faisal, the ambassador at the time, and we responded to every point, and gave them copies of the curriculum, because they said it did not meet their requests when they asked for the curriculum. We even put the curriculum on the Education Ministry website and it is still there. We expected that we would be able to convince them." "Third: on 2 January 2008, Freedom House, under Nani Shea, re-did the study in what they called an "update," and concluded that Saudi Arabia 'moved the furniture but did not clean the house'." "Fourth: Unfortunately, their work is orderly and they succeed in a losing cause. I believe that Arabs, in general, are not organized or hard-working enough so we lose when it comes to our just causes, while those who are biased against us win. They also find ignorant people to help them against their countrymen." I would like readers to compare between the above letter from Professor al-Khabti and a letter from a "Bahraini citizen"; the pseudonym does not tell us whether the person is Bahraini or not. In it, he alerts me that the Iranian government has categorically denied any relationship between the Revolutionary Guard and the terrorist conspiracy against Bahrain, and that I missed this in my column on "his country." The letter might have been funny, if not for the topic at hand. I wrote about an upcoming meeting of some of the Bahraini opposition with leading neoconservatives, who are enemies of Arabs and Muslims, and who are trying to see an American war against Iran, to benefit Israel. What I wrote was exclusively on this topic. The conspiracy, meanwhile, was announced the same day, and the denial came the following day. Readers might say that the Iranian government denied the plot, but I would like to ask: Where is the news in the denial, for it to deserve publication? The Iranians would certainly have issued a denial, and what deserves to be considered news is if it had surprised us all and acknowledged responsibility, or blamed a rogue group inside the Revolutionary Guard. We should remember that Iran also denied American accusations that an Iranian team was engaged in a conspiracy to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel Jubeir, and blow up Jewish facilities. Once again, a denial "isn't news," while a confession of responsibility would be. The Ministry of Denial in Iran held Saudi Arabia responsible, because the news came from Washington. Then, it blamed Bahrain for an item that began in Qatar, which arrested members of a terrorist gang. If there is a problem between Bahrain and Iran, there is no problem between Qatar and Iran; they have good, if not close ties, which means it is logical to believe the item, based on its origin. I am not defending any Arab country, firstly because our regimes do not deserve it, and secondly, if I did, no one would believe me. However, I find that the opposition groups in the Arab world are as bad as the regimes; they reject any opposing opinion, even if it is by another opponent, and they claim they want to overthrow the regime to build democracy. As they say in Syria, "Give me a break."
