The continuing double standards of Gaza and Yemen continue

...In both Yemen and Gaza, these NGOs do not have access to information from the army commanders have, and that information is essential to knowing whether there were violations of the laws of armed conflict. When Amnesty and HRW flatly declare Israel violated those laws, they are lying. But when Saudi Arabia acts with less precision, less care and more lethality, suddenly these organizations are sticklers for accuracy.

Elder of Ziyon..
07 July '15..

The NYT reports that more civilians have now been killed in Yemen this year than were killed last year in Gaza, even according to the UN's inflated Gaza figures:

Yet Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, which flatly and repeatedly declared Israel's actions in Gaza last year to be violations of the laws of war, are still reluctant to say the same about Saudi Arabia.

I've previously shown comparisons of how HRW described Israel in much harsher and categorical terms when reporting on airstrikes then they did for Saudi Arabia. But even this past week, HRW and Amnesty continued to put caveats around calling Saudi actions illegal.

HRW:

While many coalition airstrikes were directed at legitimate military targets in the city, Human Rights Watch identified several attacks that appeared to violate international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, and resulted in numerous civilian deaths and injuries.

Coalition attacks struck at least six residential houses not being used for military purposes. One attack killed 27 members of a single family, including 17 children. The airstrikes also hit at least five markets for which there was no evidence of military activity. Aerial attacks on an empty school and a crowded petrol station appear also to have violated the laws of war.

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Boring Press Conference? No, Gold Mine for Understanding U.S. Middle East Policy

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
05 January '10

What could be more boring, you might ask, then a press conference following the meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr al-Thani? Well, a little document like this is a gold mine of interesting stuff that either won’t be covered or won’t be understood in the mass media.

Qatar, though tiny, is a very interesting country. On one hand, it hosts al-Udayd air base which is vital for the U.S. presence in the Gulf. On the other hand, it hosts and owns al-Jazira television which incites anti-Americanism. To make matters worse, Qatar has been the Gulf Arab state closest to Iran, which hosted the anti-American and radical summit led by the Iran-Syria bloc.

So Qatar is hedging its bets rather well. In public, Hillary isn’t going to complain about this stuff. Did she do so in the private meeting? Perhaps, though the jollity of al-Thani, a member of the ruling family, seems to belie any tough words from the secretary of state. But this is going too far:

“Qatar is a friend and an ally of the United States, and the partnership between our two countries is a model of the new beginning based on mutual respect and mutual interest that President Obama called for in Cairo.”

A model? Well, is that signaling countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia that they can be praised as a model partner if they were to bash the United States more and cozy up to Tehran?

One matter the two leaders discussed was Yemen, which has become a headquarters for anti-American jihad, notably the recent plane bombing attempt. Hillary said the United States is working with Qatar, also thanking Qatar or its “efforts to facilitate an end to the crisis in Darfur and to promote security and stability in the broader Middle East as well as Africa.” As Egyptian and other Arab leaders will tell you, they consider Qatar a major contributor to regional instability.

Hillary also praised Qatar for its help in Israel-Palestinian peace (more on this in a moment), Iraq, and Iran. And finally—it’s impressive Clinton could say this with a straight face:

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Regional Outreach

J.E. Dyer
Contentions/Commentary
27 October 09

Iranian ships loaded with weapons keep turning up in the darnedest places. The latest report is that Yemeni authorities on Monday seized an Iranian ship in their waters trying to deliver anti-armor rounds to Yemen’s Shia Zaidi rebels. Especially noteworthy is that the ship was seized on Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Yemenis say the ship is not the first to pull into the Eritrean port of Asmara and then cross the Red Sea to deliver weapons to the Zaidi insurgents. The Yemeni press, in fact, reports that Iran is training Zaidi rebels in Eritrea. Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh insisted earlier this year that the Zaidi (or al-Houthi) rebels are being trained by Hezbollah.

Iran’s 2008 basing agreement with Eritrea has received minimal attention in the West, in part because there is little new information on any developments related to it. Radio France International reported in May that Iranian warships and a submarine had been observed in Asmara along with a unit of Iran’s Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guard’s paramilitary force. If a submarine were actually present, it would have been one of Iran’s mini-submarines, small one- or two-man submersibles with a very restricted range of operations. Iran has long cultivated a mini-submarine threat to shipping in restricted waters. As for the warships, Iran is using Asmara for the replenishment of its antipiracy patrol ships.

Israel, of course, has expressed concern over this Iranian Red Sea presence, and analysts have connected it with the overland arms route for Hamas, interdicted in a dramatic air raid over Sudan in February. Somalia watchers continue to warn that Iranian arms are flowing to al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgency in southern Somalia, through Eritrea. Riyadh is now increasingly concerned about Iran’s support to the Yemeni rebels, whose stronghold in western Yemen is on the poorly guarded border with Saudi Arabia. The rebels claimed last week that they came under attack from Saudi forces when operating near the border, a credible claim given the level of Saudi disquiet.

The evidence is relentless: arming regional insurgents and terrorists is what Iran commits its limited resources to. Arranging forward logistics for the effort in a strategically positioned port is a measure of that commitment. The same commitment is to be expected to threats like holding global shipping at risk and deploying ballistic missiles to the Red Sea coast. We are already seeing the regional initiatives Iran will feel even freerto mount once it has nuclear weapons. It is a fatal error to suppose that we will feel just as free, under those conditions, to oppose them.

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