{"id":166790,"date":"2015-07-18T18:31:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T18:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/making-excuses-for-saudi-misbehavior\/"},"modified":"2015-07-18T18:31:07","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T18:31:07","slug":"making-excuses-for-saudi-misbehavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/making-excuses-for-saudi-misbehavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Excuses for Saudi Misbehavior"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Exclusive:<\/strong> Saudi-Israeli apologists are doing\u00a0back flips to justify why the U.S. interest in having peaceful relations with Iran should take a back seat to\u00a0sectarian\u00a0and regional desires of Riyadh and Tel Aviv, including\u00a0that peace with Iran will cause the Saudis to misbehave even more, notes Daniel Lazare.<\/p>\n

By Daniel Lazare<\/p>\n

As the former publisher of the The Wall Street Journal,<\/em> Karen Elliott House is as close to journalist royalty as they come.\u00a0But that doesn\u2019t make her all bad. Her 2012 book, On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines \u2014 and Future<\/u><\/em><\/a>, is actually well worth reading.\u00a0The product of years of behind-the-scenes reporting, it provided readers with a fascinating tour of a kingdom drowning in sleaze, decadence and hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIslam as preached is not practiced,\u201d House wrote.\u00a0\u201cJobs are promised but not delivered.\u00a0Corruption is rampant, entrapping almost every Saudi in a web of favors and bribes large and small, leaving even the recipients feeling soiled and resentful.\u00a0Powerful and powerless alike are seeking to grab whatever they can get, turning a society governed by supposedly strict Sharia law into an increasingly lawless one, where law is whatever the king or one of his judges says it is \u2014 or people feel they can get away with.\u201d<\/p>\n

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