Saudis
Furious With Washington Post Coverage, Call For Amazon Boycott
4
November, 2018
President
Trump's long-running vendetta against Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post
and Amazon got an unexpected supporter over the weekend, when Saudis,
furious at The Washington Post’s coverage of the kingdom in the
aftermath of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, have called for a
boycott of Amazon.com because of its shared ownership by U.S.
billionaire Jeff Bezos.
As
Bloomberg reports, "Boycott Amazon" was the top trending
hashtag on Twitter in Saudi Arabia for several hours on Sunday, as
users circulated images showing the deletion of the Amazon smartphone
app.
أعلن عمى هو ات
مقاطعة كل شيء يسيء لبلدي وذلك بضم موقع أمازون للقائمة السوداء حتى ننظر في الأمر مجددا يبلغ امرنا هذا للجهات المختصة #مقاطعه_امازون
When you insult the Saudi Crown Prince, you insult the Saudi people. All the Saudi people are King Salman and we are all Crown Prince Muhammad.
If you do not apologize we will boycott Amazon. @JeffBezos@washingtonpost@CNN@WhiteHouse @POTUS @Google @nytimes منشنتهم
"I
was so excited for Black Friday! But unfortunately since
#Washingtonpost is double standards against my country #saudiArabia
and support propaganda of Erdogan I decide to stop any plans to buy
anything in @amazon," one tweet read. It was repeated eight
times on different accounts with the same spelling errors, suggesting
at least some of the anti-Amazon resistance was being led by bots.
Bloomberg's efforts to contact users behind those accounts weren’t
successful.
Saudi
citizens - feeling that their country is under attack since Saudi
agents killed Khashoggi, a WaPo columnist and dissident, at the
kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul - also called for a boycott of
regional subsidiary Souq.com, acquired by Amazon last year.
We; as saudis; will boycott @amazon and @SouqKSA to let you know that we are not accepting what is written on @washingtonpost. Be fair in your articles. #مقاطعه_امازون
Saudi
anger boiled over after the WaPo
published a scathing op-ed article by Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday in which Erdogan
claimed that "we know that the order to kill Khashoggi came from
the highest levels of the Saudi government", as well as by the
newspaper’s ongoing coverage of gruesome information about the
murder obtained from anonymous Turkish officials.
"It
became clear before our eyes that this is an organized media war,"
said Bandar Otyf, a Saudi journalist with more than 100,000 Twitter
followers who was among those calling for the boycott.
"As
Twitter users and activists and citizens, we don’t have power
abroad, but we have simple things like boycotting",
Otyf said.
In
what will come as music to Trump's ears, Otyf said that many Saudis
are learning for the first time that Bezos, the founder and chairman
of Amazon, separately owns the Washington Post, adding that "if
we affect even a portion of their business, we’re satisfied."
#مقاطعة_امازون @JeffBezos
This is a message from Saudi, from this moment no Saudi will buy from amazon.
I just found out that the majority owner and CEO of Amazon @JeffBezos is the owner of @washingtonpost. I have been a very active customer of Amazon since 2006. From this moment, I will boycott Amazon in protest of the unjustified attacks on Saudi Arabia.
While
Amazon is little used in Saudi Arabia, the Amazon-owned Souq.com is
popular: last year, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested
in a competing e-commerce firm called Noon, which was founded by the
chairman of Emaar Properties.
This is not the first time Saudis
have called for a boycott related to the Khashoggi murder: three
weeks ago, Uber faced similar calls for a boycott of its app in the
Persian Gulf in response to the reaction of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi,
who was among several business leaders to announce they were pulling
out of an investment conference due to take place in the Saudi
capital later this month. In light of Bloomberg's extensive report on
"The
Inside Story of How Uber Got Into Business With the Saudi Arabian
Government",
Saudi threats against Uber appear especially hollow.
For now, there is little reason to
expect that Saudi's grass root anger at Amazon will turn into
anything more than just posturing, especially in light of photos
such as this one...
...
showing Bezos sharing a moment of levity with MbS back in March and
suggesting that for all the angry echo-chamber rhetoric, it is
anything but business as usual.
Erdogan accuses ‘highest level’ Saudi officials of ordering Khashoggi murder
The
killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was sanctioned at the “highest
levels” of the Saudi government, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan said, trying to play kingmaker in Riyadh and bolster his
credentials in the West.
“We
know that the order to kill Khashoggi came from the highest levels of
the Saudi government,” the Turkish leader wrote in a surprise
contribution to Friday’s Washington Post, vowing to “reveal the
identities of the puppet masters” behind the murder.
“No
one should dare to commit such acts on the soil of a NATO ally
again,” Erdogan wrote dramatically. “Had this atrocity taken
place in the United States or elsewhere, authorities in those
countries would have gotten to the bottom of what happened. It would
be out of the question for us to act any other way,” he added,
noting that Ankara has already “moved heaven and earth to shed
light on all aspects of this case.”
The
Turkish leader also used the opportunity to burnish his credentials
in the West, saying that as a responsible NATO member, Turkey will
not just leave this case uninvestigated and will act in exactly the
same way as the US or any of its allies would in its place.
Erdogan
openly accused Riyadh of “trying to cover up the murder” by
stalling the investigation and refusing to cooperate with the Turkish
authorities, singling out the Saudi chief prosecutor Saud Al Mojeb,
who visited Turkey earlier this week.
“The
refusal of the Saudi public prosecutor… to cooperate with the
investigation and answer even simple questions is very frustrating,”
he wrote, adding that Al Mojeb’s “invitation for Turkish
investigators to Saudi Arabia … felt like a desperate and
deliberate stalling tactic.”
The
blistering condemnations were quickly followed by conciliatory
language, however. Erdogan wrote that he “does not believe for a
second that King Salman … ordered the hit” himself. Praising
Turkey’s “friendship with Riyadh,” he also said he has “no
reason to believe” that Khashoggi’s murder reflected official
Saudi policy, and that the incident should not be viewed as a
“problem” in bilateral relations.
What
might seem like a contradiction is probably just subtlety on
Erdogan’s part, however unusual that may sound. Though the Turkish
president did not once mention the name Mohammed bin Salman, the Post
made sure to put the Saudi crown prince as the online cover photo for
his essay.
Relations
between Saudi Arabia on one side and Ankara and its Gulf ally Qatar
on the other have soured over the past several years since “MBS”
became the crown prince and de-facto steward of Saudi Arabia on
behalf of the 82-year-old king.
Khashoggi
was an outspoken critic of the crown prince. The self-exiled
dissident reporter, who lived in Turkey, was last seen entering the
Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. After weeks of denying his
death and any knowledge of his whereabouts, Riyadh admitted that
Khashoggi died as a result of an accidental fight. Later, the Saudi
prosecutors also said that some evidence suggested that the killing
was premeditated.
Ankara
has been pressing the Saudis for information about Khashoggi’s
body, which remains undiscovered, as well as about the person who
might have ordered the hit. Ankara also demanded extradition of all
suspects in this case, arguing that the journalist was killed on
Turkish territory.
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