People like to accuse each other of weak knees. Are you inclined to compromise with an enemy to avoid worse? Slack knees. Would you rather not argue with your boss? Slack knees.
The football players at the World Cup are now also accused of weak knees. Captain Virgil van Dijk should have defied FIFA when they banned him from wearing the OneLove band: “Would you like to give me a yellow card? Do whatever you want.”
As if you could expect a football player, on his way to what must be the pinnacle of his short career, to go to war alone with all those corrupt football bosses responsible for playing a tournament in an equally corrupt country. Not Van Dijk, but the KNVB could have contacted other unions to challenge FIFA’s measure. If those unions had taken a stand together and threatened to leave, FIFA would have quickly withdrawn its intimidating coffin.
So weak knees at the KNVB? Yes, but it wasn’t the weak knees that had most disgusted me in recent weeks. Those were the knees of none other than Joe Biden, the man I always regarded so much more than his enemy Donald Trump.
The Biden administration took a step that could easily have come from Trump, had he still been president. Biden asked a US court to grant Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman immunity. A civil case has been brought against Bin Salman in the US by Hatice Cengiz, the fiancé of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was murdered four years ago in the Saudi embassy in Turkey.
Khashoggi presented himself there for documents related to his proposed marriage and was murdered, after which his dismembered body was smuggled out of the embassy. Khashoggi was a fierce critic of the Saudi regime. There is little doubt that Bin Salman ordered the assassination. Biden himself said so during his election campaign, adding that he “would in fact make the Saudis the pariah they are”.
The war in Ukraine changed everything. The US wanted more oil from Saudi Arabia and Biden went, albeit without much success, to visit Bin Salman amicably. Now it seems as if the Biden administration is once again going to accommodate the Saudis by granting bin Salman immunity. “Jamal died again today,” his fiancée responded. There is a legal argument for giving that immunity: all heads of government are eligible, including Bin Salman, who was appointed prime minister this year, presumably because he then became immune.
But it has also surprised the Democrats that the Biden government is so openly protecting Bin Salman. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia expressed disappointment: “The government had no duty to be proactive.”
Little attention has been paid in the Netherlands to this sad development in the Khashoggi affair, in any case much less than to the weak knees in football country. Maybe the Netherlands will become world champion with those knees, but I would have preferred that Khashoggi’s fiancé did not have to mourn again.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 25, 2022