The girl who sat in front of me was six years old. Her father
took a seat with us as she showed work pages from nursery school.
The Arabic writing confirmed her story. At age four her teachers
taught her to hate Zionists and Ariel Sharon. A hand-drawn map in the
collection of work pages showed that Palestine covered the entire area
from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The child pointed to
the picture of a purported hero — a Palestinian martyr with an injured
and bloodied face. No, this was not the doing of the Palestinian
Authority. No, she did not go to a Palestinian school. This was in
Jordan. Her school was Jordanian.

Then the father told his story. Speaking out in favor of
coexistence with Israel was a tactical error. He lost his job for it.

Israel has made peace with Jordan. At least the Israeli
government has made peace with the Jordanian government. That
peace, however, has still not filtered down to all segments of the
Jordanian people. King Abdullah II has made a careful effort to clamp
down on the spreading of hate, but in the final analysis he is a
Jordanian ruling over a country the majority of whose population is
Palestinian. Too strong a hand carries the danger of serious
repercussions. The phenomenon of anti-Semitism is too widespread
and entrenched to be totally erased, certainly not by royal decree.

The Union of Professional Associations (UPA) occupies an
undistinguished building in the Shmeisani neighborhood of Amman,
the Jordanian capital. The architectural style is not worth mention,
even though architects are members of the UPA. The building is the
seat of some of the fourteen groups that comprise the UPA, an
organization with more than 100,000 members “engaged in activities
that seek the advancement of the professions they represent … by
organizing lectures, conferences, seminars, and continuous [sic]
education courses.”

The flavor of professionalism is clear as one enters the
building. Signs denouncing the Zionist enemy are ubiquitous. Maps
deny the existence of Israel. During my visit two days after the
simultaneous suicide bombings at the old Central Bus Station in Tel
Aviv on January 5, pictures of the “martyrs” (murderers) were
displayed on walls and bulletin boards. Charity boxes are to be found
throughout the building — Support the Intifada!

In December 2002 a UPA committee was outlawed, its leaders
arrested, and its propaganda confiscated. The Anti-Normalization
Committee, “concerned with confronting the infiltration of the Zionist
enemy into Jordan,” was no more. Yet, its message still can be heard
throughout the UPA building. Its posters were still on display a month
later.

Elections held in May by the 22,742-member Jordan Engineers
Association are perhaps a gauge of current sentiment. In an atmosphere
heavily laden with praise for the intifada and the Palestinian cause,
Islamic candidates were overwhelmingly elected to the positions of
president and vice-president of the association, as well as to all but one
seat on the association`s governing council. The anti-Israeli platform of
the Islamists gained strong support.

Politics has overshadowed professionalism. The Winter issue
of the Engineering Society bulletin, distributed to all takers without
charge, features a front-cover picture depicting a Palestinian child
firing a sling shot at Israeli tanks. Another photograph inside the back
cover shows the funeral procession for five Palestinians whose bodies
are covered with the national flag.

Not to be outdone, the Dental Society in its Winter magazine
shows such professional “dental” cartoons as Jewish footprints leading
away from the burning World Trade Center and Ariel Sharon as a
saluting Nazi. Another illustration equates a Magen David with a
swastika. On page after page the cartoons of hate continue. The
magazine is quite direct. These messages are not only anti-Israel. They
are crudely anti-Jewish.

Nor does one have to visit the professional societies to see an
ode to hate. Uncompromising Islamic extremism is spreading in
Amman and other Jordanian cities. It is not the historic Islam of
learned treatises and deeds of charity. It is a threatening wave of
politicized religion.

One street vendor in the busy downtown area was offering for
sale a two-volume Arabic edition (printed in Jordan, 1984) of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In one of the half-dozen “new Islamic”
bookstores in the Al-Abdaly area one unique volume (printed in
Jordan) stood out from among the tomes of anti-Israeli tracts. This
book claimed on its cover (illustration: American flag with Star of
David) that the Torah foresees the destruction of the State of Israel.

The problem is not only that these materials are offered for sale
in Jordan. A much more serious hindrance to true peace is that people
buy these publications and support the ideas they contain.

Dr. Jay Levinson is retired from the Israel Police where he
served as the Disaster Victim Identification Officer for most of his
career. He has traveled extensively in Jordan. This summer he is an
adjunct professor at John Jay College in New York.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2003 and is filed under news.