On July 19, 2017, in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, senior columnist Dr. Jasser Al-Harbash praised the Israeli justice system that can put senior officials on trial and even sentence them to prison, claiming that this is one of advantages of Israel compared to the Arab countries, which are characterized by injustice that damages their credibility in the eyes of the world and serves the interests of the Israeli "oppressor."
Dr. Jasser Al-Harbash (Image: almnatiq.net)
The following are excerpts from his column:[1]
"When a citizen is sure that he is receiving what he deserves in terms of education, health, employment, and living conditions, he can concentrate at leisure and offer his homeland his best [services] in accordance with his skills and abilities. This is why [some] societies are superior to others, the secret of the Zionist entity's advantage over its neighbors. An anxious citizen who is preoccupied with [fulfilling] his basic needs cannot add anything of value [to his society] because his thinking is paralyzed with worry about his essential daily needs.
"Ehud Olmert was prime minister of Israel and before that mayor of Jerusalem, but his history of service to his people did not help him when he was convicted of forgery and fraud, and he was sentenced to three years in prison. Before Olmert, [the Israelis] jailed the president of their country, [Moshe] Katsav, for sexual harassment of a clerk in his office, when he was convicted of rape.
"When a citizen sees one of the most senior figures [in his country] brought to jail, he can wave his finger at the world and say: 'We have justice here!' But examine and compare our society to that of our neighbors. When I saw the former Jewish prime minister in his small cell (from which he was released after serving two-thirds of his sentence), I looked away, not because I pitied him but because it reminded me of the difference between the justice in the society of the oppressor [the State of Israel] [and] the injustice in the societies of the victims [the Arabs] that surround it. The oppressor [Israel] has an entity [characterized by] solidarity and founded on strict application of the law with respect to the Jewish citizens within [the country] and outside it, and [this allows it to] disregard the international claims that it behaves in an unjust and discriminatory manner with respect to other [peoples]. [Israel] is always perceived by the world as honorable because of the bad situation of its neighbors, from their backwardness in the sciences to their class discrimination and destructive internal wars.
"No Arab jurist can convince an international forum of the validity of the Palestinian Arab problem [since] a Jew of the lowest [status] who is present will ask: how dare you accuse Israel of injustice in light of the prevailing situation in your Arab societies?
"The sight of Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister, bowing his head in solitary confinement only because he [was convicted of] embezzlement, encapsulates the difference between [a society characterized by] solidarity, and [one characterized by] terror and the chaos, and between victory and defeat.
[1]Al-Jazirah, Saudi Arabia, July 19, 2017.
