On August 9, the pro-monarchy Al-Watan newspaper carried the following opinion piece by Ali Sa’d Musa: “I will consider the article of Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations His Excellency Engineer Abdullah bin Yahya al-Mouallimi in the dear Al-Madina newspaper yesterday about the “rowdy normalizers” as the first official Saudi statement, disowning those who carried out the anomalous Saudi trip to Israel... To those who missed the news, a former Saudi “general” and a number of his collaborators, under the cover of his studies center whose name is as long as Libya’s name under Gaddafi, carried out a visit to the Zionist entity, met with some members of Knesset and conducted interviews with its press. FYI: There is no general, major general or field marshal position in our heroic army.

“And had Saudi Arabia, with its size and weight, sent a shepherd to Tel Aviv, he would have been celebrated just the same. This is due to the fact that it is seeking the spearhead that resisted normalization and meetings with anything that carries a Saudi flavor. So, dear fictive general, Israel is not looking for your empty mind or the symbolism of your grease and flesh. It is rather looking for your presence in form, while wearing the Saudi cloak on your shoulders and a head cover falling on your temples. Yes, O general, you went to Israel, but your cunning host only showed us pictures of this visit, to exploit your presence among them. Hence, he told us nothing about the meetings and dialogues that took place, just showed us your distribution of smiles to the cameras, like a prop in an animation movie.

“Dear general, you and your accomplices can go to Jaffa and Tehran, as no one is detaining you or dictating your actions. But you can do so based on a clear and honest condition, i.e. that you do not represent us as people, or represent our country’s rules and deep political traditions when it comes to rowdy normalization. We do not expect you, dear general, to ever come out to justify to us or promote the historical gains you have brought back from this visit. This is because, O dear director of the studies center of such and such, we know, have read and understood that those who went to Tel Aviv before you came back directly to the trash bin of history. I do not know, dear general, whether or not your studies center has read about the fate of the famous “Copenhagen group,” for which the Mossad set up a shameful trip from a Danish airport to Ben Gurion.

“Then the members of the group returned to us as guests on television channels, before they were rejected by the free Arab populations, like the sea throws its dead fish on a stinking shore. Had you heard about this group before deciding to conduct your trip? With what passport did you enter this racist occupation entity? Were its issuance conditions, of which you are well aware, different than the conditions of issuance of the passports of the entire population? Dear general, describe to us how you felt as a “general,” while presenting your passport to be stamped by a barefoot and discourteous Israeli soldier, as this is the only bit which we cannot wait to hear about from you.”