Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): The Commander-in-Chief of the Bahrain Defense Force, Field Marshal Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, stressed, in a speech he delivered at a ceremony honoring the units that won the first places in the combat and administrative readiness tests for the year 2023, that the Arab and Islamic nation is targeted in its homelands, peoples, territorial resources and in every field, even in its religion.

The Field Marshal said that after what happened in Gaza, anything could happen; what happened to children and women in Gaza is a tragedy, and it went unpunished. At surface level, an observer would think that there is a clear contradiction between the Field Marshal's statement and the speech of the Prime Minister, the Crown Prince, and the fact that the whole country is walking the path of normalization with the occupation entity.

Some may ask: Is it to be understood that there is some kind of contradiction between the speech of the Crown Prince and the Prime Minister and that of the Field Marshal? Or is there a disharmony between the political establishment and the military? Does the Field Marshal's statement indicate an ideology hostile or critical of Israel?

Or is it a kind of role-playing, the crown prince's speech is directed at Westerners and Israelis, while the marshal's statement is directed at the army itself on the one hand, and loyalists who are against Israel on the other?

Is it reasonable that the Field Marshal wishes to have Israel prosecuted internationally for its crimes against the people of Gaza, while only last February he received Zionist Defense Minister Benny Gantz and his accompanying delegation, followed by a meeting last March at the army headquarters, where Field Marshal Khalifa bin Ahmed received Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi and his accompanying delegation ? All while Bahrain hosts an official office of the Israeli Mossad, according to an official statement by the Bahraini Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs at the Munich Security Conference, and while there is an Israeli liaison officer residing in Bahrain, with the presence of an Israeli embassy and an ambassador for the criminal entity?

The Field Marshal's speech is part of a governance policy that Reuters described as dealing with public opinion demanding the cancellation of the normalization agreement and the expulsion of the Zionist ambassador from the country, while the agency quotes six reliable sources that "Bahrain will not abandon its relations with Israel".

The regime's relationship with the occupying entity is a one-way ticket without return, and therefore one finds the Field Marshal saying in a statement yesterday after talking about the crimes against the people of Gaza, "You must be strong and ready, and whoever is not a part of an integrated system cannot even live." Here, one might ask: To which system does the government of Bahrain and its army belong? Isn't it the same system that is classified today as the system of pro-Israel normalizers? Aren't they the countries that protect the occupation entity from Yemeni missiles and others? Isn't Bahrain the host of the Fifth Fleet base, which the IDF spokesman said was one of the best points to provide intelligence to the occupying entity?

Perhaps it can be said that for all of the above, the Field Marshal's statement does not go far and does not contradict his president, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, it is just an exchange of roles, and an exercise of hypocrisy and political prevarication in a crude and open manner that cannot fool the people of Bahrain, who demand putting an end to normalization with the occupation entity and the expulsion of its ambassador and closure of the Zionist embassy forever.

Arabic Version