That's like saying C doesn't have an if statement, you're just adding it to the AST, it's the CPU that does the actual jump not C. In short: a distinction without a difference.
The C language have an if-statement because it is part of the specification of the C language.
YAML does not have an if anymore than JSON have an if because you can write {"if": "foo", "then": "bar"} and some processor can process this with if-semantics.
