The Arab Street Awakens

Die Welt opines:

Al-Qaida's triple hotel bomb blasts may backfire because the victims were ordinary Jordanian Muslims rather than members of the police, the army or royal family.

The money quote:

"Even diehard fanatics should now finally realize that the totalitarian nihilists of al-Qaida are waging a war against the whole of humanity, at least against all who don't want to bow to their demand for total domination."

On one level they certainly are right. The terror is increasingly nihilistic and the vast majority of the population throughout the Arab world have been disgusted by the excesses of the radicals. But that is not going to stop them. You don't need many people to sustain a terror campaign. The terrorists know that, and that is why they do not shrink from committing atrocities that horrify sane people.

Read it here.

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Amir Tehari notes that Jordan has so far been pursuing a duplicitous policy of rhetorically supporting the US while in fact giving support to Iraq's insurgents.

The half a dozen or so groups that constitute a political facade for the insurgents have been allowed to set up shop in Jordan, hold conferences and coordinate a propaganda campaign against the elected government in Baghdad. The up-market quarters of Amman have become home to the Iraqi Ba'athist nomenklatura, including Saddam Hussein's several wives and daughters.

Jordan has always been a safe haven and playground for the Ba'athists. In 1990, the late King Hussein opposed the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. That encouraged Saddam to use Jordan as an extension of his Iraqi hinterland: He and his henchmen created shell companies in Jordan to beat the U.N. sanctions, taking over a couple of Jordanian banks, investing in real estate and laundering vast sums of money.

After Iraq's liberation, Jordan became a refuge for Ba'athist criminals and their families — who brought with them some of the estimated $500 million that Saddam's Vice President Izzat Ibrahim reportedly stole from the Central Bank in Baghdad before the regime's fall.

Since then, Jordan has emerged as a center for anti-Iraq — and, more specifically, anti-Shiite — propaganda. Members of the elected Iraqi parliament and government have become persona non grata in Jordan, while Jordanian diplomacy has worked overtime to isolate Iraq within the Arab League. Last year, Jordan's Vice-Premier Marwan Muasher prided himself in what he claimed was the success in "not taking sides" in Iraq....

Now, however, as a result of the hotel bombings, all that may be coming to an end.

Just hours after the attacks, hundreds of Ammanites had gathered on the scenes of the carnage to express horror and condemn the perpetrators. By yesterday morning, the crowds had grown to tens of thousands of people — shouting slogans that the Jordanian leaders, starting with King Abdullah II, would be foolish to ignore...

As cries of "Burn in Hell, Zarqawi!" reverberated in central Amman, speakers described Zarqawi and other Islamist terrorist figures (including the fugitives Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri) as "traitors and miscreants" and called for their arrest and punishment.

The demonstrations, organized by trade unions, attracted some of Amman's poorest people. This was a clear message: Islamism and Ba'athism may have support among Jordan's elites — but they are rejected by the people.

Until not so long ago, Palestine was supposed to be the cause that justified any abominable crime. Now Iraq is used for the same purpose. But one thing is clear: The Jordanian man-in-the-street does not believe that it is right to kill innocents in the name of any cause.

So, the fabled "Arab street" is speaking and it's message is "Burn in Hell, Zarqawi."

Read it here.