3arabiyah

It’s frustrating and quite shocking how little media attention was received by yesterday’s Jordan protests. After a group of 2,000 protesters in Amman were attacked by baton-wielding pro-government thugs, 8 protesters were injured and given a blind eye by both the Jordanian government and the global community. The number is minuscule compared to what’s being suffered by our brothers in Libya and Bahrain, but what’s most enraging is the coverup being committed by a monarchy that prides itself on hearing out the demands of its people.

In raw video footage, large numbers of police are seen present at the protest, all of which remain idle when the attacks are taking place. Some accounts say that the pro-government thugs were standing behind the police to avoid being fought back by the protesters. Of course the police wouldn’t interfere— those are their fellow servicemen in plainclothes defending their monarch, the one who bribes them with high salaries and provides them with countless benefits to keep them benign and loyal to the throne. The government has not taken any actions or made any public statements regarding these thugs and they will seemingly get away without any prosecution, let alone a punishment.

It’s as if King Abdullah ripped a page right out of Mubarak’s playbook. He’s committed yet another foul crime of treason by turning Jordanian against Jordanian to preserve a throne founded upon betrayal and treachery. He is lowering the dignity of our country through violence that demonstrates his only grip on power is through scaring the people into silence. However, what he seems to have overlooked is that the Egyptian people endured this trial unscathed and stronger than before; Jordanians must recognize this moment for what it is. It is a moment of governmental tactics to create a fabricated sense of division and fragmentation in our society, and it is a moment that needs cohesion and unity more than ever before. The King’s actions cannot be overlooked or mistaken - these are acts of aggression against the people, and the people must not let up from their demands.

This is a response to Moey’s article “Leave Jordan Alone.” I’m writing this as the daughter of a native Jordanian man and a native Palestinian woman, as a young woman proud of her faith and her roots, and as a citizen who has spent time living in both rural and urban Jordan.

Contrary to what our previous generations have been taught, being a proud Jordanian doesn’t mean unquestioning allegiance to the king. It means actively pursuing the betterment of our country and our people. Our society is rapidly changing; for the first time, an “upper class” is developing in Jordan and widening the economic gap between the top and bottom. The fact that almost a third of Jordan is unemployed cannot be overlooked simply because upperclass families can’t feel the difficulties that many Jordanians have to face everyday. When young men and women with Masters degrees have to sit at home unable to find jobs, we are letting the great potential of our country rot away without so much as allowing it a chance to shine through.

We deserve more than petty concessions made by the king to silence us and preserve his lineage of an illegitimate royal line. We deserve the ability to choose who will lead our country, we deserve the ability to decide our own foreign policy, and we deserve to actually be represented by the government that runs our nation. We deserve democracy; we shouldn’t have to settle just because it might be difficult to fight for something better. We are indeed grateful for everything we have, but that does not mean we’re not being cheated out of something better.

The government relies on sedating the educated population of Jordan within the cloud of a leisurely lifestyle to make it perceive that everything is great the way it is. They gladly provide us with the distractions we need to stay satisfied within our homes and not out on the streets protesting a government that was given power by the same authority that gave Palestinian land to Zionist militias not too long ago.

The problem isn’t the many superficial issues that these “cockroaches” (who may have to resort to online aliases out of fear of persecution by the Jordanian secret police) are complaining about on the useless #ReformJO hashtag. The problem is the government itself. It’s time to break free from this mental prison. It’s time for us to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. It’s time for Jordanian youth to reclaim their country.