Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi’s grotesque version of the truth is on display here: “Jordan blames Israel for regional tensions, backs S.Africa in ‘genocide’ case,” by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, Reuters, January 12, 2024:
In comments after the United States and Britain launched strikes against Houthi military targets in Yemen in response to the movement’s attacks on ships in the Red Sea, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the international community has failed to act to stop Israeli “aggression” against Palestinians which was endangering the region’s security.
What Safadi describes as “Israeli aggression” is the attempt by the Jewish state to fight back against a terror group whose operatives raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered more than 1,200 Israelis, and kidnapped 240, on October 7. Israel has repeatedly said it is not fighting the Palestinians, but only the terror group Hamas. It has airdropped a total of 6 million leaflets, warning civilians to leave specified areas and indicated places of greater safety to which they can move. In addition, the IDF has made 14 million pre-recorded phone calls and 72,000 personal calls warning civilians to leave targeted areas. The IDF monitors target areas from the air and ground to confirm the departure of civilians where possible before striking. Israeli pilots routinely call off airstrikes if they detect the presence of too many civilians near sites about to be hit. Are these the acts of a military intent on committing “war crimes”? The only “war crimes” in this conflict are those committed by Hamas, both during its genocidal attack on October 7, and subsequently, in its savage mistreatment, including rapes, of the Israeli hostages, and its use of the civilian population in Gaza as human shields.
“The Israeli aggression on Gaza and its continued committing of war crimes against the Palestinian people and violating international law with impunity is responsible for the rising tensions witnessed in the region,” Safadi said in remarks carried by state media….
One more time: Israel is not the “aggressor.” Had Hamas not murdered 1200 Israeli men, women, and children on October 7, nor kidnapped 240 Israelis, there would not be a single member of the IDF in Gaza. Israel has committed no “war crimes” in Gaza.
“The international community is at a humanitarian, moral, legal and security crossroads. Either it shoulders its responsibilities and ends Israel’s arrogant aggression and protect civilians, or allows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist ministers to drag us to a regional war that threatens world peace,” Safadi said.
Safadi calls for the “international community” to protect civilians. But Israel is already protecting civilians, both its own — by fighting Hamas — and those in Gaza, by doing everything it can to warn them to move out of harm’s way before the IDF attacks. It is Hamas that tries to maximize civilian casualties, both among Israelis and among Gazans.
He said Israel was pushing the region towards more conflict “by continuing its aggression and its attempt to open new fronts,” and that Israeli military actions against civilians in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide.
It is not Israel that has been “opening new fronts” in the conflict, but those who wish to destroy it. It is Hezbollah that has started firing rockets unceasingly into the northern Galilee, hoping to create a new front that will take some of the pressure off Hamas in Gaza. So far, Israel has retaliated, in a series of tit-for-tat exchanges with Hezbollah, but has been careful not to escalate the conflict. It is, of course, prepared to fight on a second front if need be, and has warned that it could turn Beirut “into another Gaza,” but right now, given that the IDF estimates it will still be fighting Hamas until the end of 2024, it would prefer not to have to deal with Hezbollah, and its storehouse of 150,000 rockets and missiles, at the same time.
As for the Houthis, under prodding by Iran, they — and not Israel — opened a “new front” by launching attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, in the hope of cutting off Israel’s trade lifeline to Asia. In so doing, they have caused great disruption in international trade, with the 20% of the world’s shipping that went through the Red Sea to he Suez Canal now rerouted to going around the Cape of Good Hope and along the coast of western Africa all the way up to the Mediterranean.
If Ayman Safadi performed a tour d’horizon of all the conflicts in the Arab world, from Morocco to the Gulf, he would soon see how small a part Israel has played in any of them. Morocco and Algeria have for years been at daggers drawn in a territorial conflict over the Western Sahara; Libya is still in a state of civil war between rival governments in the east and west of the country, a conflict that has nothing to do with Israel but is one more struggle for power in a country that has been convulsed by civil conflict ever since the death of Qaddafi; in Egypt, the regime of General El-Sisi continues to fight against ISIS and Muslim Brotherhood operatives, linked to Hamas, in the Sinai; in Yemen, the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia continues and the Houthis have now been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea, on the pretext of wanting to force Israel to stop fighting in Gaza, but mainly to prove that it, and not the Sunni government it has been fighting since 2014, is the force to be reckoned with in Yemen. Nor is Israel involved in the internal strife, both ethnic, between Arabs and Kurds, and sectarian, between Sunnis and Shi’a, in Iraq. It is not Israel that caused any of the bloodshed in the civil war in Syria, or did anything to cause six million Syrians to flee their country as refugees, and another five million to be internally displaced. But facts don’t matter to Ayman Safadi. Israel is the fons et origo of all the violence in the Arab world from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Blame away, Foreign Minister Safadi, to your heart’s content. Crazy as it is, nonetheless some of your anti-Israel animus is bound to stick to the thickest of skulls.
SC says
South Africa has no standing to make any human rights accusations against any nation. They condone the spree killing of white farmers by thug blacks. In fact their so called military take part in the attacks. Without the whites having run the country they would have no cities. And they are rapidly heading back that way. Once China owns them the Chinese military will correct the thug attitude and they will be begging for Apartheid to return.
Jordan is just a puppet of the larger nations so they do what they are told.
Wellington says
Might as well accuse America and Britain of war crimes for bombing Germany (Japan too by America) relentlessly in WWII—and which ignoramuses like Leftists would and have.
Once barbarians such as Nazis and Hamas unleash their barbarism then all bets are off and the civilized portion of the world must have as its first priority the absolute extinction of the barbarians even though, quite unfortunately, this will inevitably entail the loss of many innocents, especially children. Put another way, if the civilized portion of the world holds back from whatever it takes to crush the detritus of mankind, then the detritus of mankind will have a much greater chance of eventually prevailing. Fools aplenty never get this.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
To your point:
If the Allies had to operate under today’s Western “rules of engagement” during World War II, they would have lost to the Axis powers.
Wellington says
Agreed, James.
Christopher Watson says
They still would have beaten the Italians!
Tony Rice says
One aspect that baffles me is when the State of Israel was legitimately re-made by the then decent United Nations, no less than 5 Arab countries joined forces and invaded Israel with the avowed intent of destroying it BUT as far as I am aware those 5 Arab countries have never been taken to task nor made to pay reparations. That 2 million of Israel’s population is Arab tells us they were not driven out ( many did leave in 1948 as ordered to do so by Arab leaders who said they could come back when the Jewish country had been destroyed. No Arab country has even been taken to tsk for forcing out, almost 1 million Jews from the Arab countries and not allowed to take any possessions with them, ie penniless.
And did not Jordan capture and retain what is known as the WEST BANK until recovered back by Israel in a later war initiated by Jordan, so there is no question of Israel occupying Arab land there?