Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
7 October
SHAM SAUDI ROLE IN 1973 ARAB-iSRAELI WAR
On this day in 1973, Saudi Prince (later King) Fahd bin Abdal Aziz called Ray Close of the CIA to a meeting “very late one evening in the early days of the 1973 war and asked me to send an urgent personal message from him to Richard Nixon informing the president that he had felt obliged to contribute a brigade of Saudi troops to the Golan front to support the Syrian offensive there [against Israel], but that he had personally instructed the commander of the unit not to fire a single shot”.
الدور السعودي الزائف في الحرب العربية الإسرائيلية عام 1973
7 أكتوبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1973، دعا الأمير السعودي (الملك لاحقًا) فهد بن عبد العزيز راي كلوز عضو وكالة المخابرات المركزية إلى اجتماع "في وقت متأخر من إحدى الليالي في الأيام الأولى من حرب 1973، وطلب مني أن أرسل رسالة شخصية عاجلة منه إلى الرئيس ريتشارد نيكسون يبلغه فيها أنه شعر بأنه مضطر للمساهمة بلواء من القوات السعودية في جبهة الجولان لدعم هجوم السوريين[ضد إسرائيل]هناك ، لكنه أمر شخصياً قائد الوحدة بعدم إطلاق طلقة واحدة ".
Ray Close was CIA Station Chief in Riyadh from 1970 until he retired in 1977:
"I recall when Prince Fahd bin Abdal Aziz [later King Fahd]called me to a meeting very late one evening in the early days of the 1973 war and asked me to send an urgent personal message from him to Richard Nixon informing the president that he had felt obliged to contribute a brigade of Saudi troops to the Golan front to support the Syrian offensive there, but that he had personally instructed the commander of the unit not to fire a single shot. That, Fahd told me with considerable emotion and obvious sincerity, was his solemn promise to his American friend. Again, prudence, wisdom, and desire to maintain a traditional and mutually valuable relationship — motives that were not, I regret to say, received in Washington with the respect and appreciation that they deserved. “
"I recall in the period right after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when I was in liaison with the Saudis, that the Israeli Air Force used to make frequent very low level runs over the Saudi airbase at Tobuk, in the northern part of the country. As they skimmed the “deck”, they would drop empty fuel tanks on the runways, near where the Saudi fighter planes were lined up, just to remind those on the ground that the empty tanks could very easily have been 500-pound bombs. It was nothing more than an arrogant demonstration of contempt for Saudi impotence. It worked. The RSAF never fired a shot, and never scrambled a single interceptor. They would complain to me, and I would duly forward their protests to CIA HQS. We never got even a polite acknowledgement back from the Israelis, who, in their arrogance, were no doubt cynically amused."
In March 2015, Saudi Arabian forces intervened in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world
A classified report produced by the French Directorate of Military Intelligence was obtained by the French investigative news organization Disclose and other French media. It harshly criticizes Saudi military capabilities in Yemen, describing the Saudis as operating “ineffectively” and characterizing their efforts to secure their border with Yemen as “a failure.”
"For the past half-century, the United States has trained and supplied the Saudi military, selling the wealthy kingdom more than $150 billion in dazzling high-technology weapons, including fighter jets and air defense systems.
And yet, the kingdom could not protect a prized national asset — its oil installations — from a recent attack by low-flying cruise missiles and drones that caused the largest rise in crude oil prices in a single day...Nor has the country’s military managed to defeat Iranian-backed Houthi insurgents in Yemen, despite a four-year, Saudi-led bombing campaign that has left more than 8,500 civilians dead and more than 9,600 injured, according to international monitors.
Even with American intelligence providing the latest in surveillance, the Saudi military has often been unable to act effectively, reinforcing a view among national security officials and humanitarian activists that — despite all the sparkling, expensive hardware — Saudi Arabia remains uninterested or incapable of defending its entire territory or competently and humanely prosecuting a war abroad."