Jordan to Israel: Do As We Say, Not As We Do

“G.I Schmo” Abdullah
Following last week’s Temple Mount attack and Israel’s temporary closure of the site, Jordan was one of the countries to summarily condemn Israel. And today, the Jordanians reportedly insisted the metal detectors be removed, with our promise to do that apparently securing the release of the Israeli guard who was almost murdered yesterday (which I do not understand, since he should have had diplomatic immunity and been released immediately).

Which seems like a hell of a lot of chutzpah given Jordan’s own (aborted) attempt to have security cameras at the site, not to mention the fact they allowed the site to fall in to a state of neglect when they were completely in charge.

But don’t worry – their chutzpah knows no bounds. While demanding all Muslims have unfettered access to the Temple Mount, they deny Jews to right to pray in their kingdom.

Jordanian police on threatened a group of Israeli tourists that they would risk being jailed if they prayed anywhere in the country, an Israeli official said Monday.

The tourists were in Jordan to visit the Tomb of Aaron, the biblical high priest and brother of Moses, who tradition holds is buried on Mount Hor, near Petra, at a site known locally as Jabal Haroun.

“It emerged that they were not allowed [to show] any religious symbols,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told The Times of Israel. He said the incident occurred either Sunday or Monday.

One of the tourists, Rabbi Menashe Zelicha of Bnei Brak, said the police officers told his group that “in all of Jordan it is forbidden for Jews to pray.”

“We are not allowed to pray in the morning, no tefillin, no prayer shawls, nothing – we cannot pray, even in the hotel, even inside our room,” Zelicha told the Kol Chai radio station. “Policemen came into the hotel and were shouting and went wild, saying that in a minute they would take us out of Jordan if we made even a tiny squeak. They told us, ‘Whoever prays will be taken to jail.’”

Zelicha said that when his group went through the border crossing, authorities “began checking the suitcase and checking everything. They refused to let us bring in books. They removed the prayer shawls, the tefillin; they removed one person’s tzitzit.

“One guy had on him a driving written test booklet, they took it. They took people’s skullcaps. People were left with only their shirt and trousers.”

But I’m sad to say we are at least partly to blame for this – like in the case of the Temple Mount, we seem to have caved in.

Israeli diplomats stationed in Jordan asked the tourists to “lower their profile and to listen to instructions from the police,” Nahshon said

Our weakness is really not a good look.

9 thoughts on “Jordan to Israel: Do As We Say, Not As We Do”

  1. Norman_In_New_York

    If I were prime minister, I would tell Jordan to break relations and be damned, then expel the Waqf from the Temple Mount. Since His Majesty in this regard lives in a glass palace, we have nothing to lose by calling his bluff.

    1. I’d be more of a hypocrite: after breaking relations and sending the Waqf packing, I’d take the attitude that we will guard the site awaiting their return, and not allow anyone to interfere with it until then… and I wouldn’t. To be consistent, I wouldn’t allow non-Muslim visitors up there EITHER – a small price to pay for full consistency!

  2. I can’t understand the dilemma. It’s not about subjugation of people, it’s not about discrimination, it’s not about infringing on freedom of religion and it’s not about land ownership. But any country has the absolute right to state “see this line – everything within this line is our responsibility, our rules”. If Singapore doesn’t want people to chew gum, people don’t chew gum. If you want to traffic drugs in Indonesia, you know you may face a death penalty. You don’t go to China and get upset that you can’t access Facebook. If Jordan doesn’t want Jews to pray there, that’s discriminatory, but at the end of the day, Jordan’s rules. But by the same logic, Israel should get rid of the ridiculous rule of no Jews praying on Temple Mount. The Waqf may be in charge of the mosque and the compound, but it is still within the Israel territory. It is not the Israel way to discriminate against freedom of worship. I don’t think Israel needs to subjugate or discriminate, but it does need to exert its authority on its own territory.

  3. We are the strongest country in this part of the world, how frigging embarrassing to bow down to a two bit flea bag like Jordan.

    Likud is a joke. Wish we had an Israeli government instead of the cowards that think that we are somehow subservient to these Islamofascist trash

  4. Stupid Jews wonder why they get no respect.

    In this case, it really is their fault. All the rest is spin.

  5. By the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, they really are terrified of us, aren’t they? The Jews live rent-free in every Muslim head, now that “our” prophecies have come true and “theirs” have not!

  6. Israelis should not visit Jordan. Jordan is not a friend (despite the peace treaty) and why should you give money to the Hashemite Kingdom? Jordan and Israel do need each other – Jordan is a buffer between Israel and Iraq, and Israel covers Jordan’s Western flank – but Jordan is as I wrote not a friend.

  7. If Israel had realised it lives in the Middle East, and not Scandinavia, the moment Jordan breached diplomatic protocol, it should have suspended the part of the Peace Agreement dealing with water supply to Jordan.
    Let the Hashemites and the populace of Jordan be reminded how precious is water in the Middle East in the Middle of Summer!

  8. It’s time to reincorporate Transjordan back into Israel as it was before the British cut it off in 1922.

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