King Saud Interview by Alfred Lilienthal on Arab-American Relations and Zionism

[Fakhri Dweik]

KING SAUD INTERVIEW BY ALFRED LILIENTHAL

ON ARAB-AMERICAN RELATIONS

AND ZIONISM

The Federal Herald
October 1954


From middle column of second page below:


Mr. Lilienthal: …Your Majesty a few months ago… said that the Arabs do not care if they sacrifice a few million persons in order to put an end to the Zionists in Palestine.

His Majesty then said: Frankly what I said is what I urge and preach. It is the only answer to what has been published by the responsible persons of Israel about the necessity that Israel should expand to comprise the beds of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Sinai Peninsula and the northern part of Saudi Arabia, including Medina, which is one of the two Holy Towns and the Burial place of the Moslems’ Prophet, and which is after all my own land and the land of every Arab and Moslem. We have learned of this Zionist ambition from the statements of Israeli leaders and its creators who pleaded the course yesterday, and are still pleading it today. They are making no secret of this scheme, and they have made its study part of the school curriculum in Israel, where they cram the students’ heads with these fanciful schemes. There is no answer to what they are after except this antidote, and the preparation of what we can in field of might and force.

This 1954 quote from King Saud provides an important insight that Americans and other Westerners rarely hear about as to why the Arabs, in the early days of Israel in the late 1940s and early 1950s, made fierce statements about the need for "driving the Jews back into the sea."

Fifty years later, another (very infamous) Arab professes the same view that Israel intends to rule all the territory from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Do Americans realize that many Arab-Muslims believe they are defending their own lands and existence -- and not just that of the Palestinian Arabs?

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Israel Greater Israel What does it really mean
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/greater_israel.shtml

King Saud Interview by Lilienthal on Arab-American Relations and Zi...
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2005/04/22/king-saud-interview-by-lil...

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[Fakhri Dweik]

March 1995, pgs. 31-32

Special Report


The King and I: Eyewitness to History
By Alfred M. Lilienthal


In December a group of leaders from the American Jewish Committee traveled to Riyadh to see King Fahd. Their visit was to express their concern lest new surveillance satellite photos purchased by a Saudi Arabian company be used for military purposes against Israel. The King assured them the information would be used only for commercial purposes.

The leadership boasted of its accomplishment, and were portrayed by the U.S. media as the first Jews ever to be received in the Saudi Kingdom by a reigning monarch.

Like so much of the propaganda emanating from Zionist sources, this was pure myth-information. Thirty-nine years earlier, in 1955, I had visited Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia as the guest of His Majesty King Saud and was subsequently received over the years by his successors and brothers, Kings Faisal, Khalid, and Fahd.

I have no idea of how many hundreds, or thousands, of American Jews have visited Saudi Arabia since then. Each press entourage that accompanied U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on his many visits to the Kingdom contained Jewish journalists, none of whom encountered problems or we would have read about them in their reports.

My own first visit was in 1955, a year after my book What Price Israel? had been published in the United States and had become a solid hit. It was then translated into Arabic in Beirut as Themen Israel?and went into seven printings. By the time I arrived in the Lebanese capital on my second visit to that country, I recall that my arrival was trumpeted on the front pages, and I was received as a conquering hero. Arab officials and media pundits vied in honoring the one U.S. writer who had effectively defied the Zionist movement.

A grand reception was tendered me at the American University of Beirut Alumni Club, where 200 people turned out as guests of the minister of information. It was a beautiful affair, and my first visit to the famed educational institution where I was to lecture later. The Saudi ambassador to Lebanon was present, and in congratulating me he said, "We should bring you to the Kingdom."

Though the Arabic version of the book had been successful, I had received not a penny in royalties. The translation had been pirated. At an embassy reception, I accosted the two young publishers and said to them: "Don't you agree that I deserve a few Lebanese pounds for the 10,000 copies you have sold?" Their quick answer: "We pay you? We made you popular. You ought to pay us."

They were right, at least, about the popularity. I had understood from those who had already arranged visits for me to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq that a visa for Saudi Arabia would be impossible to obtain because I was a Jew. But now my popularity had extended to Saudi Arabia and in the spring of 1955 I was invited to come to the Kingdom. I was met at the airport by the military aide to His Majesty King Saud Ibn Abdul Aziz, and by my sponsor, Minister of Information Abdullah Bulkhair, who had persuaded King Saud of the wisdom of my visit.

From the airport I was taken in an official car, with flags flying, to the Al-Yamama Hotel, where I had a beautiful suite, rested and then was brought to Nassariya Palace. I arrived there shortly before prayer time and was seated in an anteroom through whose open door I could look into the room where the King and his court were at prayer.

When the King's prayers were completed, I was introduced to him. As we shook hands, he said, " Ahlan wa Sahlan [welcome], Dr. Lilienthal." Then we proceeded to the dining room, followed by his ministers and some of his sons. This dinner with the son and first heir to the founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Ibn Abdul Rahman Al Saud, was one I shall always remember. Standing behind each of us was a servant. If you momentarily turned away from your plate for conversation with your neighbor—bingo! It was gone.



A Rapid Repast


Everything had to be done speedily. His Majesty was on a special diet and ate very lightly—mostly yogurt as I remember—and quickly. Everyone else also ate quickly because, as I discovered shortly, when the King finished, dinner was over. Everyone stood up and left the table. Throughout this 22-minute five-course dinner an officer stood to the left of the King and read the news to his sovereign in Arabic.

The cutlery and china were magnificent. Indeed it was a table fit for a king, even the ruler of the land with the largest oil reserves of any nation in the world.

I savored every brief moment of this dinner. It included wonderful chicken and lamb kabobs and an array of desserts, including baklava, to suit my sweet tooth.

It was only after that memorable evening that the information minister, who by that time had become my friend Abdullah, told me that receiving Lilienthal, a Jew, had also become a memorable event in the Kingdom. When it was announced on the radio (before the days of television in Saudi Arabia) that the King was hosting a Jewish writer, there was a first-class brouhaha. The ulama, the kingdom's religious leaders, were vocal in their outrage. How dare the King receive a Jew, these zealots asked, so long as much of Palestine and the Holy City of Jerusalem were in the hands of Jewish Israeli usurpers?

In fact, according to Information Minister Bulkhair (who may have indulged in some poetic exaggeration), I was the first Jew formally received by a ruler in Saudi Arabia in the more than 13 centuries since two Jewish tribes had sided with pagan opponents of the Prophet Muhammad and subsequently had been banished from Arabia.

I met again with King Saud the next day and we talked together for half an hour, with Abdullah Bulkhair capably translating. The King was particularly curious to know about the U.S. attitude on the Palestine question and inquired whether I thought Palestine would ever be freed of the foreign occupation. The friendly conversation took place in a small, ornate reception room. Little did I dream that Abdullah had placed a microphone under the table in front of us, taping our entire, historic conversation.

Some 18 months later, when King Saud made his first state visit abroad to India as a guest of Prime Minister Nehru, the Saudi government published a special book in English explaining the history, policies, religion, and traditions of the country for distribution to Indian media and officials.

This 40-page book contained a section covering King Saud's "views on Palestine, as told in an interview with the famed American writer, Dr. Alfred Lilienthal, author of What Price Israel?"There was our entire conversation, exactly as it had taken place in Riyadh during my 1955 meeting with His Majesty.

At a second dinner, King Saud presented me with an ornate box. Opening it, I found an unusually beautiful Mido watch with a heavy gold strap, in the center of which was a striking picture in green and red of His Majesty wearing his Saudi keffiyeh (headdress) and robes. Thirty-nine years later this watch still keeps time accurately.

In the course of the meal, the King handed me the eye of a sheep, a favor accorded guests of honor. I had been warned beforehand that this might happen and was prepared to gulp it down like an oyster, hoping that as I did, I could maintain eye contact with my host while avoiding eye-to-eye contact with the object he was extending to me. All went well.

I remained five days in Riyadh on that first visit. There was not much to do or see then except to promenade on the main street, King Abdul Aziz Street, with one large building after another in varied stages of construction.

At the request of the King, founder of the Arab League Abdulrahman Azzam Pasha entertained me at his home with a dinner in typical Arab fashion. We sat on the ground, and the food was laid out in front of us. We kneeled and picked it up with our fingers, eating without Western implements. Great fun!

On my wall at home is a memorable picture of this al fresco dinner. Among those in attendance was Sheikh Yussif Yassin, who took me out to his small boat for coffee. He was one of those distinguished Arabs who had fought alongside Lawrence of Arabia against the Turks.

I had barely returned to my home in New York from this first trip to Saudi Arabia when King Saud arrived aboard the Queen Maryon his initial visit as a reigning monarch to the United States. He was so angered by a personal attack, made even before he arrived, by New York Mayor Robert Wagner Jr. that the Saudi monarch expressed his desire not to land in New York harbor, but to fly directly to Washington, where he was due to meet President Eisenhower at the White House. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and the King and his entourage boarded a tender which brought them from the ship to Battery Park, where a majlis had been set up to receive guests. Here His Majesty received the official welcome from Henry Cabot Lodge, then the U.S. representative to the United Nations, and greeted 200 U.N. diplomats and other dignitaries.

I was present as a welcomer, and afterward Aramco Vice President Terry Duce offered me a ride back uptown. We had just settled into our accelerating car as part of a long cavalcade bound for the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, when everything abruptly came to a halt—one could hear the screeching of tires. From the King's lead car his military aide (the same one who had earlier welcomed me to Saudi Arabia) jumped out and headed toward the tender tied to the dock. There a Saudi servant handed over to him little Prince Mashur (whom the King had brought with him for medical treatment of lameness resulting from an attack of polio, then a scourge in the U.S. as well as in Saudi Arabia). Every one of the multitude of cameramen present took a picture of the little boy being warmly hugged by the military attaché. Every newspaper in the world prominently printed this shot.

The quite accidental photo of the little lame son of Saud captured the American public's fancy. Until then, following Mayor Wagner's politically inspired attack, the press had been calling the King an "anti-Semite," "a slave owner," and an "oil merchant of death," with all the venom the Zionist-controlled media could generate. But the appearance of the King's lame son changed everything.

For the rest of his visit, King Saud was referred to as the loving father of the appealing child with big brown eyes who had come to visit American doctors to "improve his walking."

Some newspapers credited the Aramco people hosting the King in the U.S. with a public relations coup in bringing about this new Saudi image. Nonsense! The media's sudden "discovery" of the little prince in the glare of auto headlights was the purest of accidents. No Hill and Knowlton trick had brought about this happy ending to the first visit of a Saudi monarch to America, the most unpredictable country in what must have seemed to Saudis of the time as the mysterious, inscrutable West.


Alfred M. Lilienthal is the author of What Price Israel?, The Other Side of the Coin and The Zionist Connection.


http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0395/9503031.htm

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[Lili]

My question is, why is this not common knowledge?
This needs to be raised and debated in countries around the world iin Parliamentary debates.
Foreign policy needs to be re arranged to stop this empire building, at least to not help it with ill advised policy as is at present in the west.
This is a dagerous precedent to accept meekly Israeli posturing for an empire.

[Fakhri Dweik]

Do you know why Israel flag looks like that ?
Savez-vous pourquoi Israël drapeau ressemble à ça?


Find more videos like this on Palestinian Mothers
The two blue lines represent Nile river (Egypt) and Furat river (Iraq) believed by "Israeli" jews to be borders of their Greater Israel Land !!

Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are all for Israelis as they believe and teach their kids in this movie !!!

Les deux lignes bleues représentent Nil (Égypte) et Furat rivière (Iraq) a estimé par "Israël" les juifs d'être des frontières du Grand Israël de leur terre!

Palestine, la Jordanie, l'Égypte, l'Iraq, la Syrie et le Liban sont tous les Israéliens comme ils croient et enseignent à leurs enfants dans ce film!


http://www.palestinianmothers.com/video/do-you-know-why-israel-flag


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[Sami Joseph]

I am afraid the Zionists already achieved their aim to rule from the Nile to the Euphrates apart from a few pockets of resistance, albeit not directly but through compliant tyrants!!!

[jerry gates]

Thanks to Fahkri Dweik for this insight into the early days of Israeli zionism and it's thoughts of establishing an empire on Arab lands.

This Lilienthal is a very interesting man as is his visit with His Majesty King Faud, so long ago, in fact before my birth.

Albert Einstein is known to have felt the same animosity towards Zionism and also was very much against the State of Israel, as are True Torah Jews Rabbis living in Iran and so many Jewish writers today. These voices of dissent of Zionism are ironically defamed by Zionists as antisemitic or self hating Jews. Zionism has attempted to speak for all Jews and continues to try to silence those who dissent their ideology of Eretz Israel.

Most Jewish Americans feel forced to capitulate to Zionist ideals and their support for an expanded Israel empire, but have doubts that they often hide for fear of such defamation of the character and impugning of their reputations and careers.

When I first began writing of my distaste of Israel's occupation of Palestine and my respect for the Palestinians struggle against this forced occupation of their lands, I too was encircled by Jewish agents and threatened. WE must however realize that Allah watches over those who live by and tell the truth. Truth is sacred to Prophets, Allah's good messengers and always wins out over deceit and falsehood, so we should never fear reprisal from Mossad agents or Shin Bet parachuting in foreign service sections. They can threaten all they want, the truth is powerful in defending the innocent and the law is always on the side of those who abide by it.

So much of the history of the Holy land is fraught with such conflicts and animosity . If this land is to be the place where good people share their ideals and thoughts freely, no need of blasphemous accusations or hurtful name calling need occur. All people in Israel and Zionists world wide should accept that what they are suggesting is not legal, nor in good judgment, especially in the Eyes of our benevolent creator, who is father of all and respecter of no person save those who are humble and revere the laws written for humankind to preserve the goodness and trust between members of his kingdom, both earthly and spiritual.

This good information and shareing of history is why I like Palestinian Mothers so much. I never fail to be enlightened and encouraged by by visits to Iqbal Tamimis wonderful site. Thanks to all for sharing.

[Fakhri Dweik]

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Video on Internet of settler saying
"Nile to Euphrates" belongs to the Jews

Some folks say that our Greater Israel web page is ridiculous and that Israelis today do not believe that most of the Middle East belongs to the Jews because of an ancient promise to Abraham (which if even interpreted fairly would mean Arabs and Jews, not just Jews alone). Of course, their quick denial is because they do not actually read all the material and visit the more extensive evidence through the many links we provide. The reality is that there are many Israelis who do not lay claim to all of the Middle East stretching out to the Euphrates river. But there are many who do, and many of these many happen to be the most aggressive and fanatical settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. Please do not forget that Ariel Sharon used to be the Housing Minister who greatly encouraged the establishment of these settlements (illegal colonies to put it more bluntly). You can count on it that he does know what these people stand for and that any so-called plans for any kind of unilateral withdrawal or peace plans are just Sharon's latest trickery. Here below we have some new evidence.

Our alfredlilienthal.com webstats tell us where a visitor has come from -- for instance Google search, or some Mideast related website, or from a specific message board. Sometimes I go and visit the place of origin. At one message board that resulted several days ago, I found discussion about the idea of whether Israel has designs on expanding into the rest of the Middle East. Someone there had posted this information below. I checked it out and found it valid. Although I do not know Dutch, you can tell from the written words on the screen at the point where Tigris and Euphrates are being said by the settler named Yossi Neumann that the words match. Someone who knew Dutch had translated what was actually said into English at the message board.


When you click on the video link at the website, pick Real Player as your viewer. Once the video appears, click on the (r) on the right of the play bar and choose "Play in Real Player".

That will put it into a mode where you can see the minutes and seconds going by. Then click and hold on the knob toward the left on the play bar (it is shaped like this: >| with a circle around it. This will fast forward the video with the minutes showing. Go to about 11:00. Soon after (about 11:20) will be the statement by the settler and a map that shows the area of Greater Israel. The rest of the video from start to finish is very good (even without understanding most of what is said) and shows many scenes of the horrors done to the Palestinians and the contrasting comfortable lifestyle of the settlers. Of course we do not see such scenes on American TV reports.

Here is what was actually posted at the message board. I have corrected the spelling from Eufrates to Euphrates. Suzanne Nicole, webmaster for Alfred M. Lilienthal

A mainstreampolitical program on Dutch public television called 2-Today not only showed the relationship between Sharon's Likud Fraction, his IDF and the Gush Emunim Settlers but also interviews in which Zionist Settlers propagate that the Zionist State is from the Nile (in Egypt) to the Euphrates (in Iraq) and that this is government policy.

The program continues by showing footage of an animated picture of the 'Greater Israel' and how it occupies the Arab peninsula.

Following transcript corresponds to the minutes 11.40 - 12.20 on the video.

Watch 2-Today-Click Video

or

http://www.tweevandaag.nl/index.php?module=PX_
Story&func=view&...

Main page of site: http://www.tweevandaag.nl

Yossi Neumann, the settler (colonist is the term in the video), says:

We Jews read the bible and believe that our forefathers were told what the borders are of the Promised Land.

From the Euphrates & the Tigris in the north till the Nile in the south.

The narrator says:

That is the religious dream of the colonists, the Jewish state from the Nile in the south till the Euphrates in the north. .

The animated picture map shows not only an occupied Palestine, but an expanding Israel that reaches throughout most of the Middle East.

Note that King Saud claimed this was being taught in Israeli schools back in 1954.


http://www.usaweeklynews.com/Press_Room.html

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[Mera Alsroogy]

Salamo Alycom Mr.Fakhri ,

First of all thank you so much for posting this important article , it is very wonderful .

Then all the people specially Americans should know very well that we as Arab nations refuse any kind of occubation on our Arab lands it is not just the matter of "the Dream of Israel to have a state from ANeil to Alfourat" ,but it our Arab nationality which push us to defend our Arab Palestine or any other Arab land against any criminal , then the tide of Islam we as Mouslims donot agree on seeing our sisters and brothers in our neighbor Palstine killed and starved and be Rfugee then just stand without doing any thing .

Althoug we are not so united as one Arab power we have many obstacles which prevent our union , All Arab still hope that we can be one nation one day.

[Mera Alsroogy]

Salamo Alycom Mr.Fakhri ,

First of all thank you so much for posting this important article , it is very wonderful .

Then all the people specially Americans should know very well that we as Arab nations refuse any kind of occubation on our Arab lands it is not just the matter of "the Dream of Israel to have a state from AlNeil to Alfourat" ,but it is our Arab nationality which push us to defend our Arab Palestine or any other Arab land against any criminal , then the tide of Islam we as Mouslims donot agree on seeing our sisters and brothers in our neighbor Palstine killed and starved and be Rfugee then just stand without doing any thing .

Althoug we are not so united as one Arab power we have many obstacles which prevent our union , All Arab still hope that we can be one nation one day.