Well, many interesting developments have taken place following the publishing of an inflammatory article in al-Ghad. First, Iraqi Shia protested the involvement of the Jordanian bomber in the blast.
Hundreds of Iraqi Shias have staged protests in Baghdad and Karbala against the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a devastating bombing in al-Hilla two weeks ago. Crowds gathered outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad on Sunday shouting: "No, no to Jordan, close your embassy, we do not want to see you here."
They urged the government to file charges against the family of Raed al-Banna. They also demanded compensation for victims from Amman, which rejected the accusations against it and insisted it condemned the al-Hilla bombing, the worst single attack in Iraq since the US-led invasion in
March 2003.
Also, AFP is reporting that the father of the bomber is denying his son might have been involved in the attack:
"He [the father] said he received a phone call on 3 March from someone speaking with an Iraqi accent telling him his son had become "a martyr." Al-Banna’s family says it had not heard from him since mid-February when he went to Saudi Arabia and called them to say he had found work in the oil-rich kingdom.
His relatives say he was a devout Muslim who became more religious about six months ago, but denied that he had links to Jordanian born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, blamed for attacks in the violence-torn
country.
Meanwhile, the Jordanian government is denying claims that Jordanian-Iraqi relations are "threatened under Iraqi bloodshed." Shia religious leaders in Iraq issued a statement saying they were surprised by the Iraqi interim government’s "silence over Jordan’s interference in Iraq’s internal affairs by instigating violence and hatred among Iraqis … and sending their terrorists to Iraq."
Al-Ghad, on the other hand, published a statement (in Arabic) from the Iraqi embassy in Jordan saying there were no Americans killed in the attack as the paper previously reported. In addition, King Abdallah visited the paper yesterday, urging the press (Arabic) to "denounce violence."
I have also noticed that over the last two days al-Ghad has been running a series of editorials from different writers denouncing the attacks on civilians in Iraq. Very interesting no? It seems that the paper is learning from this huge mistake.
I’m still hoping, however, that the paper publishes a formal apology. What is interesting here is that in this day and age, media — primarily Arab media — cannot get away with publishing half-truths. Now, in this world connected by the Internet, satellites and blogging, everything reported is being scrutinized and analyzed. The media can no longer get away with publishing inflammatory articles. People are always watching!
metalordie thank you for the information.
see how difficult it is to pass judgement before all the information is in.
thanx again.
Jordanian Media Inciting Martyrdom
Check out this interesting example of the delusional Arab press writing favorably about the Jordanian suicide bomber who murdered more than one hundred Iraqi civilians in Hilla last month. The murderer in question was evidently a 32 year old lawyer fro…
sorry,
6. should read: The anti-Jordan demonstrations and the burning of the Jordanian flag were organised by supporters…
flag replaces attacks
thanx
I just called a well-placed source I know in Iraq to clarify some points about the Jordanian bomber and the spat of suicide bombings.
1. The identity of the bomber is still unknown. It has not been confirmed that he was Jordanian or otherwise. The source told me that various groups vying for financial resources will make false claims over attacks. He pointed to some group called the Islamic Jihad Army in Iraq claiming two weeks prior to her release that Italian journalist Sgrena had been beheaded.
2. There are over 80 attacks a day on US and Iraqi forces in Iraq. Only one or two are claimed by some group and the rest are not addressed. The source said the media has been focusing on the claims and disregarding the other 78 attacks.
3. There have been no reports of Iraqi suicide bombers but the source believes some Iraqis may have conducted such operations. He points to the Mosul US barracks suicide attack which killed US soldiers as being conducted by a young Iraqi medical student at the University of Mosul.
4. Iraqi resistance groups will not attack Shia, Shia mosques, Shia funeral processions or otherwise. However, they will attack members of the Iraqi National Guard whom they regard a force of criminals.
5. Iraqi resistance groups issued a communique two days before the elections and said they will not target polling stations or voters. They said although they bitterly opposed the vote, they will not punish the Iraqi people for it.
6. The anti-Jordan demonstrations and the burning of the Jordanian attacks were organised by supporters of Ahmad Chalabi who took the opportunity to embarass the Jordanian government. It is noted that Chalabi is wanted in Jordan.
Arash,
Heard of social responsibility theory in journalism?
Neither has the Arab world press.
But…hold on…neither has the western press.
Journalism is for wagging your tail. It is a profession that is as damnable as murder.
Hubby, you said it reads like propaganda. So true. What Arab toilet-paper-passing-for-a-real-newspaper isn’t?
Once again, NON-IRAQIS OUT OUT OUT OUT OF IRAQ and take your filth with you.
A bunch of lowly cowards who can’t take the US enemy head on so they send some misbegotten cur to kill himself and whoever is around him.
The foreigners have done more to serve Israeli and Bush interests in Iraq than 14 years of sanctions. They give the Iraqi resistance a bad name allowing the foreign press to lob all anti-US or anti-Iraqi puppet government action into one big bread basket.
That is simply not true.
The Vichy government in France also tried to discredit La Resistance.
Where were all these high-and-mighty warriors when Iraqis were dying wholesale under the most punitive sanctions regimen ever devised against a nation of peoples?
Enough interference. Maybe I should immerse myself in the Fatah-Hamas comedy of errors and give my educated two cents worth.
Or engage in Jordanian diatribes on unions?
How about the Malaysian-Indonesian war of words?
No. I’ll stick to what I know best.
There is NO calling in Iraq. A lot of the Iraqi populace wanted the invasion, and then lived to regret it.
A lot of former prisoners and tortured activists endorsed the removal of Saddam Hussein by any means possible, and then lived to publicly renege and claim they were misled.
You reap what you sow. Iraqis are suckling the rotten fruit they imagined would come to bear when the American boot defiled Iraqi soil.
Jordanian, Saudi, Syrian, Iranian, Turkish and Israeli intelligence officers roam Iraq. It is the master chessboard.
Foreigners out.
Yes, given the previous testimony I was surprised to see this item from al-Ghad. And I didn’t say this wasn’t a big deal, I just don’t see any good coming from coercing them to toe the official line. This whole martyrdom thing is a joke to me anyways, this kind of “news” is an everyday thing in Iran.
issam, i dont understand your closing statement. Allah swt has told us that when we are under attack to defend ourselves. Do you want iraqis to open their arms and embrace them with flower power? Now they are actually physically occupied.
all i was saying is that one should not judge all these operations based on this one. we leave it up to God to judge between them and allahu a3lam what his intentions were, the effects of what he did were obviously wrong and he did not die a martyr but at the time we had no details and were already condemning him…al-ghad to heaven and everyone here to hell.
Well, I’m not sure that there are contradictory reports so much as there might be a contradictory statement coming out of the father. Pictures and such of the festivities seem to suggest that some kind of celebration did occur. In fact, much between the two stories is different. AFP didn’t seem able to confirm that this guy is actually dead. That casts a shadow of suspicion on the father’s statement.
My bet is they allowed this reporter from al-Ghad in, talked openly and joyfully about their son/brother and then the story broke. Since that time they’ve either been encouraged to be quiet about the incident entirely or to change their story, forcing people to question the truth of the original story — a story that already contained one major factual error: that he killed mostly Americans.
More to the wife’s point, the problem was the story read as propaganda, glorifying the ‘resistance.’ Arash you suggest that people could just dismiss it, just read something else. But if you recall the wife’s previous posts, this paper was heralded, regarded as a new coming of a free, independent and accurate newspaper that gathered the best and brightest. For them to publish propaganda is not the same as some little unknown paper letting such a story out. This was a big deal, they have become a major player in Jordan’s newspaper wars.
Ending people’s lives shortly, is no one buisness except God. I am sure that people who endorse such acts would have different opinion if their father or brother were among the casualities. For someone to come and claim that God called him into a holy mission to kill others(other people’s children, brothers and sisters) and himself is pure insanity.
I am a Psychologist and deals sometimes with people who suffers from the “Messiah Complex” where they imagine themselves to be in a mission from God to save the World and others. These patients need medications and therapy, not encouragment and praise.
If someone really believes that it was God’s will for one to go and kill other civilians who have no faults besides praying in mosques or churches, shopping in markets and attending schools, then why would not God kill those people, or why did He create them at the first place?
Additionally, any society that embraces such brutal acts is a sick one and risks the possiblity of lawlessness. As people start to take their rights using their hands and bombs. The American society endorsed rasism for hundereds of years where people’s worth was correlated to the color of their skin, till a young man came ( King) and said enough is enough.
We should not have this kind of conversation here. We should talk about that helpless, hopeless Jordanian guy(Al-Bana) and how did he reach to that desparate stage? We should be talking about the 100 families or so who lost beloved ones, about the children who will grow without fathers and mothers who will miss their children for the rest of their lives.
Nas and Arash, you are entitled to what you believe in but please do not put God’s signature on these acts, for God is Love and His heart is saddned by each casuality(Iraqi was or American).
Issam