The Jew is Clever: Saudi Edition

Well that was quick:

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said in a published interview that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land, another public sign of an apparent thawing in ties between the two countries.

We knew this day would come, though we thought it'd be a decade from now.

Prince Salman is quite the reformer, eh? First he arrests half the Royal family. Then he makes moves to allow women to do things like drive cars.* Now this massive charm offensive in America. Hell, The Prince is even allowing Black Panther to show in Saudi theatres, the first movie there in 35 years. You know you're winning when your pop-culture shows up in enemy territory.**

Systems collapse gradually and then all at once, eh?

Of course, in Israeli Strikes the Israelis work very closely with a reform minded Saudi Crown Prince.*** We had the Israelis seize an Iranian air base for their three day aerial assault on the country. When the time comes, maybe they'll just fly out of Saudi bases.

*We have no problem with the gals driving, but we say never let them parallel park.
**See for example the KFC that popped up in Fallujah in 2008.
***Whom we modeled after Justin Trudeau. WTF?

In which Life Continues to Imitate Israel Strikes War of the Red Sea

This Saudi Crown Price Salman continues to make waves.

[in the previous post you called him king-Ed]

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway this Saudi Crown prince ain't messing around. Via St. Breitbart of LA:

The sweeping arrests of dozens of Saudi businessmen, officials, and even royalty on Saturday – culminating in the arrest of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is all three, and one of the richest men in the world – is one of the most dramatic events in the Kingdom’s modern history.

It is a clear sign of power consolidating around Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, upon whom a great deal of President Donald Trump’s Middle East policy is based. The chips are down, the wheel is spinning, and Trump is all-in on the 32-year-old future king.

Yikes.

This Salman fellow claims to be some sort of modernizer and reformer.

Personally our preference has always been for the destruction of the kingdom and the ceding of their oilfields to Kuwait.

We wish him well and luck.

Also, we predicted it. Israel Strikes: War of the Red Sea features a young Saudi King whose a modernizer and reformer:

In Which Life Imitates Will Stroock

Or we should say Israel Strikes and Israel Strikes: War of the Red Sea.

Via the BBC:

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said the return of "moderate Islam" is key to his plans to modernise the Gulf kingdom.
He told reporters that 70% of the Saudi population was under 30 and that they wanted a "life in which our religion translates to tolerance".
The prince vowed to "eradicate the remnants of extremism very soon".

We've long loathed Saudi Arabia and agreed with former Bush adviser Richard Perle who wanted to seize the bastard's oil fields:

In mid-2002 word leaked to the press that the semi-official Defense Policy Board, chaired by the notorious cold warrior Richard Perle, had sponsored a report declaring Saudi Arabia to be part of the problem of international terrorism rather than part of the solution. Saudi Arabia, the report stated, was "central to the self-destruction of the Arab world and the chief vector of the Arab crisis and its outwardly-directed aggression." It went on to say, "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader."

Anyway in Israel Strikes  the Israelis have to work with the Saudis to attack Iran. The prince is a reformer, based on Justin Trudeau (don't ask), and uses Israel's overflight of Saudi Arabia to indict the king and foment a revolution.

In Israel Strikes War of the Red Sea he's doing press interviews about reforming Saudi Arabia.

Do we nail these things or what?

50 Years of '67 Victory

So this week Israel is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 6 Day War. Those curious can read about it in my own brief military history of Israel, Israel at War.

Basically, with Egypt and Syria threatening to annihilate Israel, and assembling forces in the Sinai and Golan respectively, Israel launched a sneak attack which destroyed the air forces of both nations. From there Israel forces advanced onto the Sinai and destroyed the Egyptian Army. After a few days Israel soldiers were swimming in Suez Canal. They followed up this victory by taking the Golan from Syria and the West Bank from Jordan, all in 6 Days.

The 6 Day War removed the existential threat to Israel and in its own way set the stage for peace with Egypt.

Of course the Yom Kippur War was far more interesting and hotly contested. Readers may also learn about the Yom Kippur war in Israel at War.

Today Israel faces no conventional military threat. Egypt has no interest in war. Saudi Arabia has a decent sized and well armed military but their anti-Israeli machinations are strictly pro-forma. Everything the Saudis do military is directed against the Iranian threat. Iran is Israel's real worry, Iran and her Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon.

50 years later the existential threat has returned.

From Israel at War:

This study is a collection of essays about the Arab sand Israelis at war since 1947 to the present day. The first half of the study details the conventional Arab-Israeli Wars, the reasons for Israeli victory and more importantly, the underlying causes of Arab defeat. The second half of this study describes Israel's struggles with non-state actors; that is, the well- armed and trained terrorist groups bent on Israel's destruction. The Arab-Israeli Wars were essentially a nationalistic conflict, while the terror wars of the 2000s and beyond have taken on the character of a religious crusade for Israel's enemies. As of this writing, (winter 2015) there is no reason to believe that the conflict will not continue.

In Which Trump Imitates Stroock

So in both Israel Strikes and Israel Strikes: War of the Red Sea the Saudis are an integral part of Israel's war with Iran. Much of this is the work of a reform minded prince. Well:

The United States sealed a multi-billion arms deal to Saudi Arabia, the White House announced on Saturday, a move that solidifies its decades-long alliance with the world's largest energy producer just as President Donald Trump begins his maiden trip abroad as leader of the free world.
The agreement, which is worth $350 billion over 10 years and $110 billion that will take effect immediately, was hailed by the White House as "a significant expansion of…[the] security relationship" between the two countries.

For our own part, and we must have noted this sentiment here before, we'd be happy if ISIS decapitated the entire Royal Family and blew the country to bits. Be that as it may this strikes us as a wonderful deal for out economy and defense establishment, not to mention an important step on forming an anti-Iranian alliance.

We suppose some pro-Israeli folks that worry about the Saudis getting all this high tech weaponry. Don't Saudi Arabia's diplomatic opposition to Israel has always been pro-forma. They don't care, not really. Besides they both hate and fear Iran. In fact, if Israel were to attack Iran tomorrow the entire Sunni world would rejoice.

So this is a good deal for us, them, and Israel.

Oh, and we love that Ivanka and Melania went without veils.