A Saudi-led air strike has killed at least 40 refugees in Yemen and wounded 200 others, but the coalition says Houthi terrorists were using humans as shields to cover their attacks.
Sound familiar?
A war crime is not necessarily a war crime if anyone other than Israel is defending itself against terrorists who violate the Geneva Convention by using human beings, including children, as protective shields.
The Reuters news agency quoted an unidentified humanitarian worker as saying that the airstrike hit a truck carrying Houthi militiamen near the camp’s entrance.
Foreign media have reported that the Saudi-led attack on the Yemeni camp without the usual immediate denunciation by the United Nations when Israel bombs terrorist targets.
But leave it to the Arabs to keep “Israeli war crimes” in the headlines.
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, despite being one of the more intelligent members of the Palestinian Authority, accused Israel of war crimes on Monday because Jerusalem granted permission for the construction of 143 new apartments in Har Homa, located north of Bethlehem.
The project is nothing new, and the permission simply places a check mark next to another bureaucratic step in Israel’s convoluted process of building a house.
For Ashrawi, it was as if Israel had bombed a refugee camp. She said:
This latest development is an additional war crime as stipulated by the Rome Statute, and the occupation authorities will be held accountable by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other venues for its continued aggression on the lands and resources of the state of Palestine.
As of tomorrow, April Fool’s Day, the Palestinian Authority officially becomes a member of the ICC, where it can try to sue Israel for killing civilians whom Hamas used as human shields in last summer’s war in Gaza,.
Even Amnesty, in a report last week, has admitted that Hamas and other terrorist groups violated humanitarian law by “storing rockets and other munitions in civilian buildings – including UN schools – and [that it] launched attacks or stored munitions very near locations where hundreds of displaced civilians were taking shelter.”
If the Palestinian Authority wants to go to the ICC to sue Israel for bomb including terrorists and killing civilians hidden by them, then Saudi Arabia should be next in line for the attack on Yemen’s refugee camps.
The old “double standard” could be raised, arguing that Israel is guilty because it is Israel and Saudi Arabia is innocent because it is Saudi Arabia, but that is becoming harder for foreign media to justify in the wake of continued Palestinian Authority incitement and praise for terror.
The Palestinian Authority has not reacted to the bombing of the Yemeni camp by the Saudi-led force, to which Ramallah has given its blessing, for what it is worth.