Queen Rania of Jordan | Source: CNN
Dubai: Queen Rania of Jordan on Tuesday denounced the "glaring double standard" and "deafening silence" of the international community regarding Israel's continuous attack on the Gaza Strip.
"This conflict did not begin on October 7th," Queen Rania stressed in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, in contrast to the narrative that is widely established in the Western media.
“Most networks are covering the story under the title of ‘Israel at War.’ But for many Palestinians on the other side of the separation wall and the barbed wire, war has never left. This is a 75-year-old story; a story of overwhelming death and displacement to the Palestinian people,” the Queen was quoted by Jordan’s official Petra news agency.
“The context of a nuclear-armed regional superpower that occupies, oppresses, and commits daily documented crimes against Palestinians is missing from the narrative.”
Jordanians, according to Queen Rania, are united in their "grief, pain, and shock" over the horrifying number of civilian casualties that have occurred over the last 18 days of the war, Arab News reported.
“We’ve seen Palestinian mothers who have had to write the names of their children on their hands, because the chances of them being shelled to death – of their bodies turning into corpses – are so high,” Queen Rania told CNN’s Amanpour.
“I just want to remind the world that Palestinian mothers love their children just as much as any other mother in the world. And for them to have to go through this, it’s just unbelievable.”
The Queen emphasised that all parties should be bound by these rules of engagement, claiming that Israel is carrying out crimes while claiming to be acting in self-defence.
“6,000 civilians killed so far, 2,400 children – how is that self-defence? We are seeing butchery at a mass scale using precision weapons,” she said, “For the past two weeks, we have seen the indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza: entire families wiped out, residential neighborhoods flattened to the ground, the targeting of hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, medical workers, journalists, UN aid workers – how is that self-defence?”
The Queen continued by saying that a lot of people in the area believe that because of the backing and cover that the West gives Israel in this conflict, it is complicit in the war.