Here’s what our friends the Saudis are feeding their English-reading audience tonight at the government-controlled ArabNews, by op-ed writer Lubna Hussain, currently wearing a burqa in Riyadh: Arab-Muslim Blood Is Cheap.

The atrocities being committed in Lebanon once again provide us in the Arab world a superfluous, all too frequent and unnecessary reminder of the fact that our blood is cheap. As if Iraq wasn’t enough to prove to us our irrelevance in the global picture, further insults are being heaped onto our mounting sense of humiliation.

The duplicity and flagrant disregard for the destruction of an entire country by the Israeli government, the American president, his neocon cronies and “Yo Blair” have demonstrated beyond doubt that the return of two Israeli soldiers (even though thousands of their Arab counterparts rot in Israeli prisons) equate to the deaths of hundreds of innocent Lebanese civilians.

While the rest of the world desperately waited for the announcement of a cease-fire that only America had the clout to negotiate, Auntie Condi arrived to play the fiddle to Israel’s tune as Lebanon burned in the background.

I watch in sheer awe-filled horror the pictures that flood our television screens of children, Lebanese, Palestinian and Iraqi, screaming in agony covered in blood thinking “My God! That could have been my child.”

I constantly reassess what our intrinsic value is in the international marketplace of humanity. What is even more pathetic is that every time I think we have sunk to a new low in terms of our worth Uncle George reminds me that we haven’t quite got to the bottom of his global cesspit yet. Our lives, the lives of our children, our dreams, our aspirations, tantamount to a little less than nothing in his disgust-filled estimation.

You know, I detect real talent here. I think Ms Hussain might have a future at the New York Times, maybe when Maureen Dowd retires.

UPDATE at 7/27/06 9:09:53 pm:

Lubna Hussain apparently works part time for NBC: NBC: Saudis not racing to join democracy party. (Hat tip: Solomonpanting.)