{"id":381076,"date":"2018-10-15T14:54:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T13:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-strange-disappearance-of-jamal-khashoggi-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-10-15T14:54:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T13:54:31","slug":"the-strange-disappearance-of-jamal-khashoggi-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-strange-disappearance-of-jamal-khashoggi-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strange Disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, who disappeared in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week is not quite the critic of the Saudi regime that the Western media says he is, writes As\u2019ad AbuKhalil.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By As`ad AbuKhalil<\/span>
Special to Consortium News<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

It\u2019s been odd to read about Khashoggi in Western media. David Hirst in The Guardian <\/i>claimed Khashoggi merely cared about absolutes such as \u201ctruth, democracy, and freedom<\/a>\u201d. Human Rights Watch\u2019s director described him as representing \u201coutspoken and critical journalism<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But did he pursue those absolutes while working for Saudi princes?<\/span><\/p>\n

Khashoggi was a loyal member of the Saudi propaganda apparatus. There is no journalism allowed in the kingdom: there have been courageous Saudi women and men who attempted to crack the wall of rigid political conformity and were persecuted and punished for their views. Khashoggi was not among them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some writers suffered while Khashoggi was their boss at Al-Watan<\/i> newspaper. Khashoggi\u2014contrary to what is being written\u2014was never punished by the regime, except lightly two years ago, when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) banned him from tweeting and writing for Al-Hayat, <\/i>the London-based, pan-Arab newspaper owned by Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

By historical contrast, Nasir As-Sa`id was a courageous secular Arab Nationalist writer who fled the kingdom in 1956 and settled in Cairo, and then Beirut. He authored a massive (though tabloid-like) volume about the history of the House of Saud. He was unrelenting in his attacks against the Saudi royal family.<\/span><\/p>\n

For this, the Saudi regime paid a corrupt PLO leader in Beirut (Abu Az-Za`im, tied to Jordanian intelligence) to get rid of As-Sa`id. He kidnapped As-Sa`id from a crowded Beirut street in 1979 and delivered him to the Saudi embassy…<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, who disappeared in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week is not quite the critic of the Saudi regime that the Western media says he is, writes As\u2019ad AbuKhalil. By As`ad AbuKhalilSpecial to Consortium News The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-381076","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}