Jordan Says Israeli ‘War Crimes’ are Cause of ‘Regional Tension’

Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, knows what is at the root of all the tension in the Middle East, including the recent spate of Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. It’s Israel, the aggressive little Sparta, with its commission of “war crimes” against the inoffensive Palestinians, that is to blame. More on Safadi’s grotesque version of the truth can be found here: “Jordan blames Israel for regional tensions, backs S.Africa in ‘genocide’ case,” by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, Reuters, January 12, 2024:

Jordan said on Friday Israeli “war crimes” against Palestinians were to blame for heightened regional tension and violence in the Red Sea, which it said threatened to ignite a wider war in the Middle East….

The Shi’a Houthis began their rebellion against the Sunni-dominated national government in Sanaa in 2014. This Yemeni civil war had nothing whatever to do with Israel: it was a domestic fight over power and money. The Houthis were backed by Iran with money and weapons, because Tehran hopes to establish a “Shia crescent” of proxies and allies, that would extend from a Houthi-dominated Yemen, to the Shi’a militias, such as the Kataib Hezbollah, in Iraq, to the Alawite-led army in Syria (the Alawites are considered to belong to a branch of Shi’ism), and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Sunni government in Yemen was provided with money and weapons by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to fight the Houthis; what’s more, the Saudis have for years been conducting a campaign of directly bombing Houthis, which caused protests in the West because of the large number of civilians that were killed and wounded by Riyadh’s indiscriminate bombing. This Yemeni civil war has been going on for a decade, and Israel neither caused it, nor contributed to its continuance. The war continues because Iran keeps pouring in supplies to enable the Houthis, who constitute only 30% of Yemen’s population, to threaten the much larger population of Sunnis. The civil war is widely understood as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. But Ayman Sahadi wants us to see the fine Italian hand of Israel as stirring the pot of the Yemeni war.

Nor has Israel had anything to do either to cause, or to prolong, the civil war in Syria. That war against the brutal rule of Bashar Assad began in 2011, a few months after the “Arab spring” began in Tunisia. In the more than decade of fighting since, Israel has not played any part. The only Israeli action has been to bomb some weapons shipments being sent by Iran through Syria, and from there intended for ultimate delivery to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s intermittent bombardment of Iranian arms that have arrived in Syria before being sent overland to Hezbollah in Lebanon has had no effect on the civil war. That war is winding down, with Assad the victor, though much of his country lies in ruins. During that war, six million Syrians were internally displaced, five million Syrians left the country as refugees, and 230,000 civilians were killed. Israel played no part in those movements of Syria’s civilian population, or in the deaths caused by both sides in the civil war.

Ayman Safadi characterizes the IDF’s war against the terror group, Hamas, as “war crimes.” Let’s remind him that Israel is only protecting itself against a satanic enemy that showed its genocidal intent on October 7, when 3,000 Hamas operatives streamed across the border from Gaza into Israel, where they proceeded to kill 350 young people at a dance party, and 900 others at 22 kibbutzim. They beheaded babies, burned children alive, gang-raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered young girls, sliced the breasts off women and threw them around, just for fun, gouged out eyes and cut off the genitalia of men, murdered children in front of their parents and murdered parents in front of their children. They videotaped their own crimes, and those of their fellows, so as to be able to show them to family and friends. One of the murderers called home from a kibbutz: “Mom, I killed ten Jews with my own hands.” She must have been very proud. Does Safadi really want us to believe that Israel’s determination to wipe out Hamas, after those satanic attacks, constitute “a war crime”? What would Jordan do if its civilian population had endured an attack similar to that inflicted on Israel on October 7?

But what, some will say, about the civilian casualties in Gaza? Do those deaths constitute a “war crime”— that is, “genocide”? For acts to be considered “genocide” there has to be “intent.” Does anyone think the IDF intends to kill all Palestinians? Or even a great many of them? The very opposite is true: the IDF, fighting in a densely-populated urban environment, where the enemy has hidden itself and its weapons, among civilians, makes enormous efforts to minimize civilian casualties. It dropped 1.5 million leaflets warning people in northern Gaza to move south before the IDF started to hit that area 900,000 Gazans took that warning to heart and did as directed. Hamas, enraged, killed some of those fleeing Gazans as they walked southward on Salah al-Din Street, hoping to discourage other Gazans from leaving the north, where they were so useful as human shields.

Later, just before the IDF started to target Hamas positions in southern Gaza, it dropped more than two million leaflets giving precise information on where, within the south, it was safe to move to, because the IDF would not be targeting that area.

Furthermore, before hitting civilian buildings — such as schools, mosques, and apartment houses — anywhere in Gaza, the IDF always tries to warn those living in or around them to leave, using messaging, telephoning, and the “knock-on-the-roof” technique. In warning civilians to leave buildings about to be targeted, the IDF is well aware that it is also warning Hamas, whose operatives also flee. When in the history of warfare has an army warned its enemy of which buildings it is about to attack? No wonder British Colonel Richard Kemp has called the IDF “the most moral army in the world.” But for Ayman Safadi, it’s an army guilty of “war crimes.”