What Remains Hidden In The Jamal Khashoggi Story Is An Eye Opener

As Melanie Phillips makes it clear: 

'Whatever Khashoggi’s political views, it remains wrong to kill, muzzle or jail dissidents.'

So true.

He could have been a tailor, a salesman or a dentist, and his profession in this matter doesn't matter at all. No state has any right to cause harm to, let alone kill, its citizens. 

But wherein lies the truth? What happened to Jamal Kashoggi? There has been so much disinformation, and so much bowing of the western media to the excessive reference to anonymous Turkish sources—who had interests to act so—that truth is evasive. 

In this sober analysis, Melanie takes some steps back and provides a deep perspective. 

Western mainstream media have mainly presented Khashoggi as a liberal journalist who opposed the regime of the purported Saudi modernizer, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS), because he wasn’t really a modernizer at all; accordingly, MBS had Khashoggi killed. A rival analysis has been doing the rounds that Khashoggi was actually an Islamist extremist, a former friend of Osama bin Laden and an acolyte of the Muslim Brotherhood, a hater of Israel who called on all Arabs to join the “resistance” against it and who opposed MBS not because he was undemocratic but because he wasn’t Islamic enough.

Griffith writes Khashoggi was 'still very much an Islamist connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Much more significant, he was intimately connected to the Saudi regime, which is bitterly opposed to the Brotherhood. He was, therefore, the ultimate insider who had gone rogue.'

In any event, this affair has once again revealed the deep hypocrisy of the West. Many regimes with which it regularly deals have a dreadful record of jailing, torturing and murdering dissidents. No one gives this a second thought. The only reason the fate of Jamal Khashoggi has caused such a furore is that he wrote for The Washington Post and was part of the liberal media circuit that tolerates Islamists and disdains their opponents.

Interesting read.