For Western allies and friends, Prince Mohammed is happy to hype what Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” called his “revolutionary” reforms, and to play along. Meanwhile, there is little to no pushback on the bombing campaign on Yemen that he started more than three years ago. That campaign has killed thousands of civilians. Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles was one of the few Americans who met with the crown prince and in public stressed human rights issues during the Saudi’s three-week cross-country American tour.

During that tour, the crown prince brokered arms deals with President Trump and met with celebrities from Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson to Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Since he returned home, a little more than a month later, Prince Mohammed, who had insisted that women were “absolutely” equal to men, has made it clear that freedom is given by him, rather than seized by the feminist activists who have long sought equality.

Ms. Mana and two other women arrested in mid-May as part of the crackdown on women’s rights activists (all three have since been released), took part in the kingdom’s first driving protest in 1990, in which 47 women were arrested.

The arrests in May of leaders of that older generation of feminists, as well as younger ones such as Aziza Al-Yousif, Ms. Nafjan and Ms. Hathloul, all of whom have taken part in more recent protests against the driving ban, add up to an attempt to erase cross-generational feminist activism.

For years, the royal family and the ultraconservative clerics who gave it legitimacy denigrated feminism and women who challenged what I call gender apartheid as “Western” and “foreign.” But those detained activists, defamed as “traitors” in pro-government media, are nothing of the sort. They are upstanding Saudi citizens. Among them have also been some men. In fact, among those detained in May were at least three men — lawyers and activists for women’s rights.

For decades, the Saudi regime brushed aside any attempt to criticize its abysmal record on women’s rights by claiming a form of exceptionalism. It wrapped itself inside an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam imposed on members of the public, who were described as “unready” for women to have more rights.