The Black Yesterday!

Yesterday's most remarkable news was with no doubt the assassination of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in Iraq. I am not going to put my own views about the guy, whether bashing or praising, as I believe we only have half of the story, that is of course if we do have a true half first of all. What concerned me rather were the reaction of us as Jordanians, both the people and the government. I think Jad's post "Do we really need a better reason to celebrate than this one? I don't think so" symbolises very accurately the majority of Jordanian bloggers' reactions toward the incident while Naseem went through many of these reactions and summarised them in this latest post. Reading many of those posts I came out with the very dangerous and scary conclusion that whoever wrote the posts had serious rancor and animosity deep in their hearts. I cannot believe that any of us can give the chance for all that hatred to penetrate their faith, their soul and their humanity and find its way to their heart. I have two messages here, the first is for those who were directly affected by the terrorist attacks in Amman a couple of months ago; May Allah accept those you lost in the heaven. If these attacks are to add to you something it should be strength, solidity, and determination that your lives shall continue fearlessly no matter of the obstacles some cowards are throwing in your way. It is via positive feeling and thinking that you can add positively to your life and to the lives of those surrounding you. Do not give the evil-minded the joy of satisfaction that they succeeded to implant bad blood into your body. My second message is for all my Jordanian brothers and sisters; and that is what applies to me in regard to the lack of the full story does in deed apply to you. I wasn't in Jordan when Amman's attacks took place, so I had an exceptional advantage of watching, reading and analyzing the event and its consequences from the top of the ivory tower, yet I can tell you that for me there are still many gaps and holes that need to be filled before I can understand what actually happened and before I can make my ownjudgmentt on who actually committed the crime. Linking this to those who lived the event in Jordan I am certain that most of their knowledge about the event came from the local media or from spoken rumors or fish stories. And I'm not blaming anyone here but rather stating the fact that people in such circumstancess usually tend to lose their temper and therefore can accept any piece of information that they receivewithouth the need to dig deeper to examine its truth or falsehood. Hence we should refrain ourselves fromadoptingg stories or scenarios that have cuttings or ambiguity somewhere even if we have full trust in their resources, as those resources may themselves be unaware of the deficiencies in their narrated stories. The reaction of the government exceeded even the worst of expectations; the detention of Aljazeera's correspondent Yasser Abu Hilala live on TV while he was interviewing one of Al-Zarqawi's relatives would ruin any claimed reputation for Jordan in the field of human rights and freedom of speech and press. I always condemned and rallied against the Israeli and American violations of human rights covenants and other agreements protecting journalists and against the attacks on Journalists in the hot spots of the world, including Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Philippines and Columbia, but even in these places security forces have always made sure that their crimes are completely hidden away from the eyes of Journalism. It is the first time in my life to hear that the intelligence officers dared to arrest a journalist live on front of the camera while doing his normal legal work and unashamed of the millions watching it. This should be considered very seriously and I am afraid the Jordanian government will need to work very hard to gain the forgiveness of human rights protectors and activists among Jordanians and around the world. Questioning the officers responsible for that shameful detention and making them accountable for it should be thethee first but not the only effort in that directionn.