Jordanian establishment daily: Netanyahu wishes death to all Arabs
King’s mouthpiece A-Dustour misattributes Facebook comments to Netanyahu himself
Elhanan Miller is the former Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
Jordan’s leading daily A-Dustour, which serves as the government mouthpiece, accused the Israeli Prime Minister on Saturday of “wishing death to all Arabs” following comments posted on his official Facebook page.
The Jordanian newspaper ran the headline “Netanyahu: I wish death to all the Arabs,” misquoting an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz which reported on comments expressing joy at the death of six Palestinian children in a bus accident north of Jerusalem last Thursday.
“Netanyahu expressed satisfaction at the fact that all victims were Palestinian and wished death to all the Arabs,” the daily wrote. “He wondered why assistance was extended to them.”
The offensive comments were actually responses to Netanyahu’s expression of condolence, and removed from his page within an hour of being posted, Israeli economic daily The Marker, part of Haaretz group, reported.
But the A-Dustour article was quickly picked up by other major Arab publications such as Kuwaiti daily Al-Anba and Hezbollah’s news station Al-Manar as well as many smaller news agencies in Jordan.
Relations between Israel and Jordan have steadily deteriorated since the breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2010. In January King Abdullah hosted Hamas’ political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal in Amman for the first time since his expulsion from Jordan in 1999.