Post editors were upset because Khashoggi wrote an occasional column for the paper, but that wasn’t his primary function in life.
Rather, he was a long-time dissident who abhorred the Saudi monarchy and worked with the Muslim Brotherhood, which the monarchy reviles, and the late Osama bin Laden, a fellow Saudi, to undermine the regime. And agree or disagree, the Saudis do not value “freedom of the press” in their country; sometimes, when public criticism gets too extreme, journalists pay the price with their freedom.
Or their lives.
But there’s more to this story than the Post’s indignant outrage over Khashoggi’s death: The paper’s affinity for hiring and promoting people who oppose the U.S. and its allies.
Take Mohammed al-Houthi, for instance. He’s the founder of the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen, which is backed by U.S. and Israeli archenemy Iran. And the Saudis, with U.S. support, are currently engaged in an Afghanistan-like conflict against the Houthis in Yemen.
Al-Houthi is also a contributor to the Post. And just recently he was caught on video launching a shoulder-fired rocket at a target, followed by chants of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”
https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1080118226040877056
Hudson Institute scholar and senior fellow Michael Doran tweeted the video, adding, “Meet Mohammed al-Houthi, a leader of the Houthi movement. The Washington Post recently gave him space to write an op-ed about ‘peace.’”
Why hire America’s enemies and the enemies of our friends?
Conservative Review confirmed that the shooter in the video is indeed al-Houthi:
Less than two months after he was given prominent op-ed space in the Washington Post, a video has surfaced of Houthi rebel leader Mohammad Ali al-Houthi launching a shoulder-fired missile and then reciting the Houthi slogan, which calls for “Death to America.”
Ali Shihabi, the founder of the Arabia Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based Middle East think tank, confirmed to Conservative Review that it is indeed al-Houthi in the video. Shihabi tells CR that it is “documentary evidence of the type of leader” that the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is up against, whom “many critics have ignored.”
Additional video tweeted by Al Arabiya depicts al-Houthi behind a vehicle-mounted heavy machine gun surrounded by “young recruits.”
https://twitter.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/1063324603177738241
The Post’s position regarding controversial figures it gives space to is that it’s about ‘freedom of the press’ and ‘freedom of expression.’ But there’s a line, and it’s not really that fine a line, between ‘press freedom’ and giving aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States. It’s absurd for the Post to pretend that al-Houthi, for instance, is a man of peace; he’s nothing more than a revolutionary in his own country, opposed by the ruling faction and supported by Iran, the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.
Providing him with a forum not only legitimizes him and his cause, but it also hurts our allies which, in turns, hurts the United States. (Related: Trump, on first international visit, greeted like royalty in Saudi Arabia.)
As for Khashoggi, Doran — a member of President George W. Bush’s national security council — noted that while he wasn’t condoning the Saudi’s murder, the dissident wasn’t who the Post said he was.
“He’s depicted as a ‘reformer,’ a ‘democracy advocate’ and a ‘journalist.’ Yet these are half-truths that obscure the political role Khashoggi played,” Doran and co-author Tony Badran, a Hudson research fellow and terrorism expert, wrote.
“Before anything else, he was a regime insider. He was a close associate of senior members of the royal family who were eclipsed by the new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman,” they noted.
In Saudi Arabia, the crown prince is the king in waiting, and the king in waiting saw Khashoggi as a threat, so he eliminated it.
Read more about how the Washington Post dumps on America at WaPoop.news.
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