Last Monday Publius posted an entry on Iraqi protests against Jordan following reports that Jordanians celebrated a terrorist attack which killed 125 Iraqis because the bomber was Jordanian, and then a Jordanian newspaper spun the event positively (see Bad Journalism Causes Iraqi Outrage). From what I saw on Al-Jazeera about an hour ago, a week later the Iraqis’ fury seems not to have tempered much. The footage showed crowds still protesting at the ravaged Jordanian embassy. The Al-Jazeera report noted that Jordan has now pulled all of its embassy personnel from Iraq for security reasons, and Iraq has also recalled its ambassador from Jordan.

Today’s edition of the Iraqi newspaper Al-Bawaba had this to say, reporting comments from Abd al-Aziz Hakim, chairman of the Supreme Islamic Revolutionary Council of Iraq, which is aligned with the Shia party which now forms the dominant faction in the Iraqi parliament:

ÄHakimÅ demanded a frank apology from the Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II… He also called for the formation of an investigative committee regarding what happened with regard to the praise of terrorists and the raising of barriers to the infiltration of terrorists Äfrom across the Iraqi-Jordanian borderÅ because that was something which would affect relations between Jordan and Iraq…

The article suggested that Iraqi anger, which a “senior official” in the Iraqi Foreign Ministry called a “diplomatic crisis,” was not simply be due to Jordanian infiltrators. The article also quoted Hakim as calling for “work on the return of funds to the Iraqi people which are now kept in Jordan,” likely a reference to funds that Saddam Hussein’s regime sent to Jordan during the 1990s in order to pay Jordanians for busting UN sanctions on Iraqi oil.

Al-Bawaba further quoted a Jordanian official as saying that “Jordan is also a victim of terrorism,” pointing to acts perpetrated by the Jordanian national turned Al-Qaeda operative, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. (Incidentally, today a separate report on Al-Jazeera indicated that Jordan tried Zarqawi in absentia and sentenced him to an extended jail term.)

FLASHBACK IN TIME: Back during the 1950s, Arabs waged a war against Israel that Israelis refer to as the “War of Infiltration.” It basically involved Palestinians migrating from Jordan onto Israel following the 1948 war, although it also involved some armed attacks. Israel responded by launching raids against Jordan, the bloodiest of which was a village raid led by now-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Jordan’s young monarch, King Hussein, the father of the current king of Jordan, later wondered aloud in an interview, “We kept wondering, why are the Israelis attacking us? The infiltrators are a threat to us too?” Jordanian officials must find this highly ironic.

Contributed by Kirk H. Sowell at Window on the Arab World, and More!