WikiLeaks … I Have the Right to Doubt

After expectancy, fear, waiting and worry came the new installment of the leaks from WikiLeaks. They served to reveal more of the hidden corridors of America’s politics and its relations with other states and to say more about the nature of its relations with allies and enemies alike.

In spite of what has been said about the American fear of these new leaks and how Washington has briefed its allies on what might get published, the new documents, despite their rich media content, make the observer throw the content of thousands of these documents into question. Note that these documents, whether the ones related to Iraq or Afghanistan or the recent ones, don’t represent any real condemnation of the US. The documents related to Afghanistan revealed some of the arrogance and sadism of the American soldiers against Afghan civilians. The same goes for the documents related to Iraq. The documents distributed the charges evenly among all sides of the region and omitted, or was extracted of, the actuality of the American role there. The Iraqi documents make the issue merely acts of American soldiers here or there instead of illegitimate occupation, especially after charging Iraqi political leaders with playing a crucial role in the acts of violence there. The same goes for the documents related to Iran, the militias and al-Qaida. The last documents also omitted the U.S.; all the published content was no more than condemnations of one side or another. There was no real condemnation of the U.S., and no document can be proof of the bad management by Americans of the critical files it has around the world. What is it supposed to mean by revealing what American diplomats think of this governor or that? And what does it mean to know that Washington has asked its diplomats to spy even if it was on Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the U.N.? All that, I think, is well known, since the U.S. is the one who taught us to turn the embassy into an espionage den.

The condemnations in the documents omitted not only the U.S. but also, to our surprise, Israel. There was no document talking about the criminal offences of Israel in Gaza. No document referred to how the U.S. was involved in supporting the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, and no document revealed a part of the negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, whether the previous or the suspended ones. So were these documents missed or hidden? Another question is, if they were missed then why? Are they so confidential that WikiLeaks’ staff couldn’t reach them? And if they were hidden, then who did it? WikiLeaks’ staff on other sides?

Everyone definitely caught the fire of the last documents, each according to his role and position, but Washington hardly caught some shrapnel that will lose effect after a while anyway. On the other hand, these documents gave Tel Aviv the perfect chance to prove that they have clean records and to start advising the heads of the Arab world. Here Netanyahu, the Israeli vice president, says that the documents teach the heads of the Arab world to be honest with their people. Yes, we should doubt WikiLeaks and not the documents but the motives, especially since we expected the new documents, which number about quarter million, to be full of scandalous information about the U.S. and Israel. But that didn’t happen.

Absolutely, these documents are real; I think no one questions their credibility. However, there’s someone who decides what to be hidden and what to be published in accordance to desire or orders.