The House of Saud and the Origins of Arab Zionism

By Dalal Zainabi – Apr 8, 2024

Only a few weeks before the glorious October 7th Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, had announced in an interview that normalization between the Kingdom and the Zionist entity was getting “closer every day.” On January 7, 2024, three months into the brutal scorched earth campaign against Palestine by the US and “israel,” MBS hosted a US envoy of senators including Lindsey Graham who has been very outspoken about his desire to “bomb Iran” and has quite clearly stated that he “would not invest 15 cents in a future Palestine.” In early February 2024, it was announced that the KSA would be willing to normalize on the condition of receiving a defense commitment from Washington similar to the NATO pact.

While the Kingdom has made claims that normalization is contingent on respecting the sovereignty of the Palestinians, the facts prove otherwise. Reuters reports that “Saudi officials have told their U.S. counterparts that Riyadh would not insist Israel take concrete steps to create a Palestinian state and would instead accept a political commitment for a two-state solution” (my emphasis). The Saudi regime is willing to accept promises from an entity that, as everyone is aware, does nothing but lie. Beyond this, the so-called “two-state solution” has never been anything except a mirage designed to liquidate the Palestinian national struggle.

In short, the Saudi regime is completely on board with the extermination campaign against the Palestinians, and any so-called “demands” to stop the war are a charade with two goals: firstly, appeasing its populace that overwhelmingly condemns the Zionist entity, and secondly, to extort more concessions from Washington in future normalization agreements.

This fits neatly with the ugly origin of the modern Saudi state.

Saudi-Wahabis’ centuries of war against the Arabs and Muslims
To get a grasp of the treachery that the House of Saud and its Wahhabi ideology have inflicted on Muslims and Arabs, we can look to the massacre of Karbala in 1802. Over 1,100 years after the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, the Saudi-Wahhabi leader Abdulaziz bin Muhammad Al Saud emulated Yazid ibn Muawiya by carrying out a massacre at Karbala. According to historian Alexei Vassiliev: “12,000 Wahhabis attacked the mosque of Imam Hussain and after seizing the spoils…they put everything to fire and the sword, old people women and children.” He continues, “As a result more than 4,000 people perished and the Wahhabis carried off their plunder on the back of more than 4,000 camels (1).” They razed the mosque and the city to the ground.

One year later in 1803, the Wahhabis entered Mecca with the same murderous intent. After performing Hajj, they captured the city and subsequently destroyed all the mausoleums that had been erected in honor of the Prophet Muhammad’s family and companions (2).

This sacrilege was repeated when they re-captured Mecca and Medina a century later. Historian Irfan Ahmed writes:

On April 21, 1925, the domes in the Baqi’ were demolished once more along with the tombs of the holy personalities in Maqbarat’al-Ma’la in Mecca, where the Holy Prophet’s mother, wife Khadija, grandfather and other ancestors are buried. Destruction of the sacred sites in the Hijaz continues till this day. Wahhabis say they are trying to rescue Islam from what they consider innovations, déviances and idolatries… In Medina, of the seven mosques at the site of the Battle of the Trench (Jabal al-Khandaq), where Sura al-Ahzab was revealed, only two remain. The others have been demolished and a Saudi bank’s cashpoint machine has been built in the area (3).”

Jannat ul-Baqi’ Cemetery in Medina: 1915 and Today (Photos: madainproject.com)

During House of Saud’s campaign to conquer the Arabian Peninsula nothing was protected from their destruction. Dr. Abdullah Sindi writes:

Imam Abdulaziz’s Wahhabi soldiers of God savagely bombarded Islam’s second holiest city of Madinah. To the horror of all Muslims around the world, their British-made bombs and shells fell on Prophet Mohammad’s tomb, badly damaging it. The fanatical Saudi-Wahhabi army then laid a yearlong crippling siege on the seaport city of Jeddah causing starvation (4).

Dr. Sindi notes that, from 1902 to 1932, as the House of Saud conquered the Arabian Peninsula to establish the contemporary Kingdom of Saudi Arabia it left over 40,000 dead, 350,000 wounded, and displaced well over one million people.

It is beyond the scope of this article to examine the theological and ideological roots of Wahhabism. However, the legacy of the Saudi-Wahhabis clearly does not align with either Islamic Unity or the interests of the Arab nation. The question remains, how did they get the power to carry out these extremely unpopular acts and form a state? The answer, unsurprisingly, is the British empire.

Saudi Arabia as a little ‘israel’
Just like the British occupation of Palestine, where they used Zionist invaders to displace the indigenous Palestinians, the empire is responsible for the rise of the House of Saud and its function as an outpost for imperialism.

In 1744 the widely disliked Mohammad Ibn Abdul-Wahhab, the founder of Wahabism, joined forces with sheikh Mohammad al-Saud to create a political-religious movement. “By this joint venture each head of the al-Saud family assumed the position of a Wahhabi Imam (religious leader), while each head of the Wahhabi family was guaranteed control over religious interpretation (5).” Together they created an army that began raiding the Arabian Peninsula.

The first Saudi state grew until it encompassed almost the entire Arabian Peninsula in 1810. However, in 1811 the Ottomans sent an Egyptian viceroy to put an end to their reign. The House of Saud suffered major defeats over the remainder of the 19th century and were eventually driven into exile by the House of Rashid, another dynasty on the peninsula, in 1890. The Saudi leadership, now weak and powerless, ended up in Kuwait and befriended the King of Kuwait, Mubarak Al Sabah, who had allied with Britain in 1899 turning Kuwait into a de-facto British colony.

Because the House of Rashid was a close ally of the Ottomans, the British (ever expansionist) hatched a plot: they would arm the Saudi-Wahhabis through King Mubarak to attack Riyadh and weaken Ottoman influence on the region. Armed with British weapons, the Saudi-Wahhabi forces led by Ibn Saud conquered Riyadh in 1902 from the Rashidis. The conquerors then burned the local men alive, 1200 people, and enslaved the women and girls. “Ibn Saud prided himself on never taking prisoners. He murdered all the men of the raided tribe to prevent retaliation (6).”

Immediately following his victory, Ibn Saud began attempts to enlist Britain’s support in the tumultuous conflict that followed. In 1911 this finally paid off and an agreement was made: the British would support Ibn Saud provided that the Saudis allowed them to exploit the petroleum resources in their territory and did not attack British assets in the eastern part of the Peninsula. With the outbreak of the First World War, Britain’s support for the House of Saud increased.

In 1915, a formal agreement was signed. According to Vassiliev, “Britain recognized and guaranteed Ibn Saud’s full independence, while he agreed to refrain from entering relations with other countries without preliminary consultations with Britain. … On the eve of signing the treaty, the British presented the emir with 1,000 rifles and a sum of £20,000 and permitted him to purchase military equipment in Bahrain(7).” Additionally, Ibn Saud “pledged not to intervene in the affairs of Kuwait, Bahrain, and of the Sheikhs of Qatar and the Oman Coast” in exchange for monthly shipments of machine guns, rifles, and British pounds(8).

This British policy of “divide and conquer” is perhaps best summed up by British Military Intelligence Officer T.E. Lawrence (or Lawrence of Arabia) who wrote in 1916 that arming the Arabs was “beneficial to us, because it matches with our immediate aims, the breakup of the Islamic ‘bloc’ and the defeat and disruption of the Ottoman Empire …The Arabs are even less stable than the Turks. If properly handled they would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of small jealous principalities, incapable of cohesion (9).”

Why Is Saudi Arabia Open To Normalize Relations With ‘Israel’?

An important point here is that the Saudi Kingdom never enjoyed popular support on the Arabian Peninsula. Between 1916 and 1928 there were over 26 different rebellions carried out by the Bedouins against the House of Saud. In multiple instances the rebellions ended with the Saudi-Wahhabis massacring entire villages and tribes (10).

The Saudi-Wahhabis always severely repressed the Shia population on the Peninsula, especially in al-Qatif and al-Hasa regions in the east near Bahrain and Qatar. Shia Muslims are deemed as heretics by the Wahhabis. Historians testify that the Saudi-Wahhabis carried out a genocide of the Shia in this region during the 1920’s to secure Saudi control of the territory (11). Shia still comprise over 30% of the population in this region which is also the most oil-rich region where the House of Saud derives most of its wealth. The House of Saud has always feared an uprising from them, and many Shia uprisings did occur in the latter half of the 20th century.

During 1927-1930, the House of Saud also faced a full-on civil war from Ibn Saud’s own Wahhabi Ikhwan raiders. The Ikhwan were convinced that Ibn Saud had betrayed their faith by collaborating with the British and denying their Wahhabi “religious duty” to raid Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslims in territories that were under British protection. On the verge of defeat by 1929, Ibn Saud claimed victory after he frantically imported 200 armored vehicles from Britain and requested air support from the British Royal Air Force (12). Later, when the Saudi-Wahhabi’s invaded Yemen in 1934, they relied on British Rolls-Royce armored cars and French Renault tanks, however they were forced to withdraw from Yemen at the request of his British sponsors.

In summary, in 1915 the British signed an agreement to arm and endorse the legitimacy of a fringe religious/political sect that demanded the elimination of all those who did not support their extremist religious beliefs; who made claims to entire swaths of territory they had no right to and then killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of the indigenous occupants of that territory; and who dutifully carried out the “divide and conquer” strategy of keeping the Arab and Islamic nations fractured. This should sound familiar; only two years later the British would make the Balfour Declaration, formally declaring Great Britain’s alliance with usurping Zionists in establishing a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine.

Washington becomes the new patron of the House of Saud
According to historian Gary Troeller, the House of Saud received payments from Great Britain in hundreds of thousands of British pounds between 1915 and 1927 (13). Accounting for inflation, this amounts to tens of millions of pounds today. In 1927 after the Saudi-Wahhabis conquered the rest of the Hejaz region in the Northwest portion of the peninsula, another treaty was signed with Britain. The payments increased and by 1929, subsidies from Britain accounted for two thirds of the country’s annual income, with revenues from Hajj accounting for the remainder (14). Said writes that “from the time he completed his conquest of Arabia until the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in the late 1930s, Ibn Saud relied on the British subsidy and revenues from the Muslim Hajj to support himself — nothing was done for the country (15).” The discovery of oil in the new Kingdom was a windfall for the Saudi-Wahabi regime and led to a massive inflow of wealth through agreements with British and American extraction companies.

During World War Two, Washington recognized the strategic imperative to maintain continuous access to large amounts of oil. On February 18, 1943, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed Saudi Arabia into its Lend-Lease program, concluding that “the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States (16).” The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was happy to oblige American investments and purchase their weapons. By the end of the war, the KSA was producing 300,000 barrels a day (17). Concurrently the first US base in Saudi Arabia, Dhahran Air Base, was established in 1945.

It is noteworthy that in 1947 and 1948, while the Arab world was outraged about the proposed partition of Palestine, the House of Saud was still pleading with Washington for more military support (18). The Saudi king, whose fortune was built on the blood of Arabs, was far more concerned about US security guarantees against a possible invasion from neighboring Jordan. After analyzing declassified US intelligence documents, historian Maurice Labelle writes that, “In a demonstration of his own support to Arab cause, Abdul Aziz publicly voiced his objections towards US support for Zionism on myriad occasions. In private, however, the Saudi monarch repeatedly reassured US officials that Palestine would not jeopardize relations with Washington (19).”

Rather than alleviating the plight of the Palestinians, the Saudi king was deeply concerned with the possibility of an Arab victory in the 1948 war because he “feared the propagation of [Jordanian] Hashemite influence across the middle east (20).”

Additionally, the Saudi King jockeyed the Palestinian issue to coax more concessions from the Americans. During this time, the rising US and dying British empires were competing for lasting hegemony over West Asia. These imperialists were also antagonized by the popular appeal of Arab nationalist and Communist-led movements. In this geopolitical context, the Saudi ruling class deftly exploited the Palestinian cause for leverage in arms-deals with the imperialists while using its propaganda apparatus to defame the forces fighting on the battlefield to liberate Palestine.

Why do we care?
Since before it was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Saudis have aligned themselves with Western colonizers and shrouded their collaboration in an ideological-religious smokescreen. While paying lip-service to Islamic brotherhood, the Saudi monarchy has instead always been invested in its own brutal self-preservation and profiteering above any moral or humanitarian interest. Thus, when examining a regime such as the Saudis it is essential to examine their true history, class interests and imperialist sponsors rather than high-flown rhetoric. And this is especially the case when it comes to the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle.

It is fitting then that the House of Saud used Palestine for its own political ends when ‘israel’ was created and is doing the same thing while ‘israel’ comes to an end.

Notes
(1) Alexei Vassiliev. The History of Saudi Arabia. Saqi Books, 1 Sept. 2013.
(2) Ibid. page 196
(3) Irfan Ahmed, The Destruction of Holy Sites in Mecca and Medina, Islamica Magazine, Issue 15. page 71. https://web.archive.org/web/20110713063137/http://islamicamagazine.com/?p=424
(4) Sindi, D.A. (2004). Britain and the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Aburish Saïd K. The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud. London Bloomsbury, 2005. Page 14
(7) Vassiliev, 2013, page 484
(8) Ibid.
(9) Lawrence, TE. T.E Lawrence Society https://telsociety.org.uk/c-1-february-1916/
(10) Said, 2005, page 24
(11) Ibid.
(12) Vassiliev, 2013, page 568
(13) Troeller, Gary. The Birth of Saudi Arabia. Routledge, 23 Oct. 2013. Chapter 3
(14) Said, 2005, page 33
(15) Ibid. page 35
(16) https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943v04/d893
(17) Said, 2005, page 36
(18) Gormly, J. L. (1980). Keeping the Door Open in Saudi Arabia: The United States and the Dhahran Airfield, 1945–46. Diplomatic History, 4(2), 189–205. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24911234
(19) Labelle, M. Jr. (2011). “The Only Thorn”: Early Saudi-American Relations and the Question of Palestine, 1945–1949. Diplomatic History, 35(2), 257–281. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24916479
(20) Ibid.