Ex-senior Saudi official: Hamas gave moral high ground to universally shunned Israeli gov’t

Saudi Arabis’s former intel chief and ambassador to the US gave a recent speech blasting both Hamas for its onslaught on October 7 as well as the longheld policies of successive Israeli governments that he says helped lead to the current bloody situation.

While Prince Turki al-Faisal may no longer be in government, he still is seen as close to the royal palace and he appears to be the most prominent Saudi figure yet to specifically condemn Hamas.

“I categorically condemn Hamas’s targeting of civilians of any age or gender, as it is accused of. Such targeting belies Hamas’s claimed to Islamic identity,” Prince Turki says in an address at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston on Tuesday.

“I also condemn Hamas for giving the higher moral ground to an Israeli government that is universally shunned, even by half of the Israeli public as fascist, miscreant and abhorrent.

This speech by Prince Turki al-Faisal is, in my view the best to come so far from an #Arab leading figure on the current atrocities in #Gaza & #Israel. Clear condemnation of Hamas's violations against civilians that he anchored in local and Islamic values rather than… pic.twitter.com/BzpkDfRaBb

— Rim Turkmani (@Rim_Turkmani) October 19, 2023

“I condemn Hamas for giving this awful government the excuse to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its citizens and bombing them to oblivion.”

“I condemn Hamas for further undermining the Palestinian Authority as Israel has been doing.”

“I condemn Hamas for sabotaging the attempt of Saudi Arabia to reach a peaceful resolution to the plight of the Palestinian people.”

“But equally, I condemned Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian innocent civilians in Gaza, and the attempt to forcibly drive them into Sinai. I condemn Israel’s targeted killing and the indiscriminate arrest of Palestinian children, women and men in the West Bank. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“I’ve been hearing a repeated phrase in American media unprovoked attack. What more provocation is required to make it provoked than what Israel has done to the Palestinian people for three quarters of a century.”

“I condemn Israel for funneling Qatari money to Hamas, a terrorist group as defined by Israel.”

“I condemn Western politicians for shedding tears when Israelis are killed by Palestinians, but refused to even express sorrow when Israelis killed Palestinians. There are no heroes in this complex, only victims,” he says.