An organization representing the families of those who lost loved ones in the 9/11 terror attacks condemned the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf League over their newly-announced partnership.
The PGA and LIV Golf reached a stunning deal on Tuesday to drop their lawsuits and set up a new commercial venture between them. The agreement states that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who oversees the Saudi Public Investment Fund, will be chairman of the new entity, which doubles the agreement’s shock value after months of public accusations about LIV’s complicity in Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses. Al-Rumayyan is not only the governor of the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund but also chairman of the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco.
In response to the news, 9/11 Families United released a public statement to slam the deal by saying that “Saudi operatives played a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now it is bankrolling all of professional golf.”
The statement, which was attributed to the coalition’s chairman Terry Strada, condemned the partnership with very strong language:
PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sportswashing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation. But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones. Make no mistake — we will never forget.
The statement also included a reference to a TV hit Monahan did last year about the rivalry between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, where he wondered if LIV golfers ever had to apologize over the Saudis’ involvement with 9/11 while they were still with the PGA Tour. Today, the commissioner struck a different tone by defending the partnership by saying that “together, we can have a far greater impact on this game than we can working apart…The game of golf is better for what we’ve done here today.”
(Excerpt) Read more in: Mediaite