At the NY Times, Thomas Friedman tears into the Saudi royal family and their dirty habit of lying to appease murderers: Saudi Royals and Reality.

Three cheers for Mayor Rudy Giuliani for returning the $10 million donation made by a Saudi billionaire, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, after he toured the World Trade Center ruins, handed the mayor a check and then declared that it was time to get at the “roots” of this terrorism — which the Saudi royal defined as the U.S. failure to push Israel to make peace with the Palestinians and to stop Israel from “slaughtering” Palestinians.

No doubt there is deep Arab anger over U.S. support for Israel. I’ve gotten angry myself over the failure of successive U.S. governments to restrain Israel’s voracious settlement-building program. But to suggest that Israel is slaughtering Palestinians for sport, as if a war were not going on there, which Israel did not court, in which civilians on both sides are being killed — or to suggest that President Clinton didn’t spend the whole end of his term forging a real plan for a Palestinian state, which Yasir Arafat ran away from, with the Saudi government only a few steps behind him, because it required some fair compromises on Jerusalem — or to suggest that somehow Arab anger over any of this justified people blowing up buildings in New York — is just a lie.

…stop lying to us and to yourselves. Because we’re sick of it, and we’re not alone. So many Arab citizens, seeking a better future for their kids, are also starved for the truth.