Rare terror attack in Jordan targeting Israeli Embassy kills one and injured two.

Jordanian police stand guard near the Israeli embassy. Reuters.

A terror attack in Jordan targeting the Israeli embassy has killed one Jordanian worker and wounded another Jordanian and an Israeli. Reuters. The Jordanians were furniture workers and were shot along with the Israeli. Violence in Jordan is rare and doubly so for Israelis in Jordan. It is unclear what the motive for the attack was but tensions have increased due to Israel installing metal detectors at al-Asqa mosque in response to a separate terror attack. Many Muslims see the metal detectors as humiliating and the instillation has caused tensions between Israel, Palestine and many other countries in the region. As for the incident in Jordan, Israel has banned journalists from talking about the story and has not commented publicly. Details about how was responsible for the attack and how it occurred are unavailable. 

EDIT: Reuters is now reporting that the 2nd Jordanian has now died. 

My Comment:

Very strange story out of Jordan. It's pretty rare for Jordan to have terrorist attacks, at least in comparison to its neighbors. They also get along quite a bit better with Israel then their neighbors as well, so this attack leaves quite a few questions. 

The most pressing is how this attack even happened. Right now it's unclear if the two Jordanians injured and killed were innocent bystanders or the perpetrators of the attack. That's a fairly basic question and right now I haven't been able to find any answers at all. There were no mentions of the suspects being in custody or still at large so it could be either case. 

Part of that is the Israeli boycott on the story. That seems almost unbelievable to me. When our embassy in Benghazi, Libya was attacked and our ambassador murdered it was the top story for quite some time. Banning the story strikes me as extremely censorious and counterproductive. I don't really understand it either. The only justification I can think of is that Israel doesn't want people to know how easy it is to attack one of their embassies. 

It's unclear if this was a "lone wolf" attack or something connected to a larger terrorist group. As far as I can tell nobody has taken credit for it. The traditional terrorist groups in the region do not have much of a presence in Jordan. ISIS and al-Qaeda never really got a foothold there and the various Palestinian groups don't do much there either. It's very hard though to judge when we have so little information. I will say that if the attack was by the two Jordanians working there that suggests a more complex plot but if they were innocent victims then I would suspect a lone wolf attacker. 

As for the underlying tensions between Israel and everyone else, I don't really understand what the issue is. I don't see how anyone could be offended by metal detectors. If a site like the al-Asqa Mosque is under considerable terrorist threat then of course there should be metal detectors. It's sad that things are so bad that they are necessary but I don't see how it is offensive. Other then the fact that many people find anything Jewish people do as offensive. 

I have a long standing policy to not cover Israel on this blog because it is one of those topics that everyone has an opinion on and people generally aren't able to express it without losing their minds. That may be the case for this terror attack as well...