Amer al-Azm and Jordanian Intelligence

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

For a long time now, Amer al-Azm has been writing against Jordanian intelligence for barring him from traveling from the West Bank to the East Bank, where his family resides. He has cried out a great deal, appealing to people and intellectuals to stand with him, and has spared no insult or invective toward Jordanian intelligence, which has still not disclosed why it prevents him from crossing the bridge to the East Bank.

I follow Amer al-Azm’s articles, and I am fully aware that Jordanian intelligence continues to act with ignorance and puerility, that its old, naive methods are still with us, and that its crude measures — which demean the citizen and put his and his family’s safety at risk — remain current and in force. The world develops, advances, and changes, all except the vile, wretched, and degenerate Arab intelligence services, which devote their efforts, always, to threatening the citizen’s security, pursuing him, and tracking his affairs. Jews manage to cross the river to the East Bank with ease, comfort, and respect, and Jordan does not dare object to them, even if they were to damage antiquities in Jordan, or even engage in sabotage and espionage there — yet Amer al-Azm is barred from crossing. There is a clear racist discrimination on the part of Jordanian intelligence against Palestinians in favor of Zionist Jews. To Jordanian intelligence, Zionist Jews are of the superior blue blood, chosen by the Lord to be His people, while Palestinians are of the foul blood the Lord has cursed. May God’s curse fall upon Arab intelligence services, and may God bring down upon them someone who will annihilate them and free the Arab citizen from their evils.

You, the intelligence services, must learn from experience. Repression achieves nothing and provides security to no one, and everything you do rebounds upon you in the end, and the regime and its intelligence men will pay a heavy price, and, regrettably, the people too will pay a price as a result of a conflict that could break out and turn into flowing blood. Jordanian intelligence has learned nothing from everything happening across the Arab homeland, and has not changed its ugly practices — dismissal from employment, confiscation of passports, travel bans, arrest, and so on. Be ashamed of yourselves, and think, for once, about respecting human beings. Enough of this humiliation and subjugation; enough disgrace and shame — and if the Arab suffers defeats, it is because of your own misconduct.

Freedom for Amer al-Azm, and let him confront them however he sees fit — whatever he says of them, he is not to be blamed.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “عامر العظم والمخابرات الأردنية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.