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Tribune News Network
Doha
The blockading countries keep saying that their crisis with Qatar is very, very small, but strangely enough they draw Qatar into every crisis they create or face.
The ongoing row between Canada and Saudi Arabia over a tweet posted on Twitter accounts of the Canadian Foreign Ministry and the Canadian Embassy in Saudi Arabia raising concern over the continuation of the arrest campaign against Saudi women rights activists presents a striking paradox.
Saudi Arabia on Monday expelled the Canadian ambassador and recalled its envoy while freezing all new trade, in retaliation for Ottawa's calls for the release of jailed activists.
This shows the childish policies the blockading countries follow, where they use all absurd means to condemn their adversaries, no matter how naive these attempts may seem.
Saudi Arabia was angered by the same practices it has always pursued against Qatar, which is to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and criticise the political or social approach adopted by other sovereign states.
But the Saudi message to the world through this diplomatic crisis is that what applies to it does not apply to others ” it holds the right to threaten the security and stability of other countries through thousands of fake accounts on Twitter spreading lies and rumours. Others have no right even to make observations against Saudi's repressive practices against activists who advocate freedom at home.
As soon as the Saudi official statement was issued, many accounts in Twitter started tweeting (many of them verified) to link this crisis with Qatar.
For example, Fahd al Mughaither, a columnist for Al-Hayat newspaper in London, said on his Twitter account that Canada had chosen to stand by Qatar and Iran against Saudi Arabia in its war against terrorism, accusing the Canadian government of lack of experience and showing political naive.
The adviser at the Saudi Royal Court Saud al Qahtani published a statement similar to the statement published by the Canadian Foreign Ministry against Saudi Arabia, but replaced the name of Saudi Arabia with Qatar hinting that it was more appropriate for Canada to target Qatar instead of his country. He then followed it by a series of tweets displaying childishness as he always does.
Most of the people who responded to the tweet expressed their surprise as to how a Saudi government official attacked a third country instead of responding to the state that criticised his country.
It did not stop at this. Mansour al Khamis, a Saudi journalist, claimed to have information that the Canadian criticism of Saudi Arabia was incited by the Canadian Immigration Minister of Somali origin Ahmed Hussen at the behest of Qatar's Ambassador to Canada HE Fahad bin Mohammed Kafoud, who in return responded to this ridiculous joke.
Kafoud said he left Canada permanently a month ago as his term ended there and that if Canada was sympathetic towards Qatar, it would have exempted Qataris from visa requirement not Emiratis.
The same story was repeated in a different conversation between an Israeli journalist called Edie Cohen and former police chief of Dubai Dhahi Khalfan in Twitter.
After Cohen accused Khalfan of being a Zionist more than the Zionists and that his country stands with Israel against all Arabs and allied with them in all fields, Khalfan accused Cohen of being a fictional character who does not exist and that his account is managed by the Qatari security services.
Cohen, in turn, recorded a video of him from inside Israel challenging Khalfan to accept debating with him on any television station, threatening to expose him and reveal his role in the assassination of Hamas leader who was killed in Dubai.
When Khalfan realised that Cohen is a real personality, he found nothing but the claim that Cohen was attacking him on behalf of Qatar, which paid him for the attack, reminding him that the UAE had recorded all Mossad agents who had killed Mabhouh even while they were inside the public toilets.
Cohen quickly picked up this strange statement to warn all visitors that the UAE is actually photographing visitors inside the public toilets to threaten them and blackmail them later if necessary.
He also mocked him as a failed security figure found only to target Qatar to hide his misery and failure.
However, officials in the two countries (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) still insist that the row with Qatar is very, very small whenever the Gulf crisis is addressed.
