This appeared in Columbia Journalism Review magazine.

By Alice Su

When Hazm al-Mazouni shows his press pass at the entrance to the sprawling Zaatari refugee camp in the Jordanian desert, the guards don’t let him in. A 42-year-old native of Hama, Syria, Al-Mazouni’s status in Jordan is clear: refugee. But the guards are wary of his Radio al-Balad badge. “This is proof that we did something,” Al-Mazouni says, smiling. “A good thing.”

Al-Mazouni has been a refugee for 11 months and a journalist for seven. He wears brown, horn-rimmed glasses and walks briskly, a laptop bag hanging from his shoulder and two cell phones in hand, one for personal calls, the other for work. Zaatari administrators are well aware of his reporting for Syrians Among Us, a radio news program and online bulletin produced by Syrian refugees.

The program began as pilot project in October 2012 by the Community Media Network(CMN), a Jordanian nonprofit that supports independent media in the Arab world. CMN’s funding comes largely from Western foundations, notably the Open Society Foundations, UNESCO, and the National Endowment for Democracy. A US State Department grant of $77,000 paid for the first phase of Syrians Among Us. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

This week, a Jordanian band went on a tour that includes the Golan Heights, Nazareth, Haifa, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. But the popular music group which is rated as one of the top five in the region faced a concerted social media and online attack as having participated in a politically unacceptable act.

Because the band members received visas from the Israeli embassy in Amman the band was attacked as having contributed to normalising relations with the Israelis.

The band, Autostrad, identifies itself as “an Ammani world, reggae, funk band from Jordan. Fronted by lead singer Yazan Alrousan, Autostrad was formed in 2007 with guitarist Hamza Arnaout, keyboardist Wisam Qatawneh, bassist Avo Demerjian, saxophonist Bashar Abdelghani and drummer Burhan Ali.

The online and social media campaign was launched by a number of young Jordanians and Palestinians, including some who are citizens of Israel .In an article published on a number of progressive sites, the writer says the band is welcome to Palestine only after it is liberated.A hashtag “welcome after it is liberated” also went viral as attacks against the music group mushroomed.

Efforts to boycott Israel are generally focused on international academics wanting to visit Israeli towns, not Palestinian locals inside Israel. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel says that it has developed guidelines on this issue in consultation with Palestinian civil society organisations since 2007. “All Arab-passport holders entering any part of historic Palestine (67 or 48) on an Israeli visa are normalising with Israel. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The content of the poster seems surreal. A well-known Jordanian music group lists the locations of its concerts for Oct. 5 through 12 — the Golan Heights, Nazareth, Haifa, Ramallah and Jerusalem’s Old City for its last show. The decision by the highly successful Autostrad, led by Yazan Rousan, to cross the Jordan River using a visa issued by the Israeli Embassy in Amman has resulted in a backlash among its young Arab fans.

The planned tour has been met with a barrage of online and social media attacks for the band “normalizing” relations with the State of Israel. Autostrad has no publicly stated plans to interact with non-Palestinian Israelis, and the band’s concerts are aimed at Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as Syrians and Palestinians living in the Golan Heights and other Arab areas occupied in 1967.

The most specific and repeated argument has been made by Budour Hassan, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who argued that obtaining a visa from the Israeli Embassy in Jordan is a slippery slope that will make it easier for Arabs to “normalize” relations with Israel, not only to sing in front of an Arab audience. To be fair, Hassan does recognize that the issue of traveling to Israel has many points of view and feels that her criticism does not apply to Palestinians and non-Arabs holding other passports.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx2WogalhQI&feature=youtu.be

Video of the group at a concert in Cyprus, September 2012 (Sonia Breda) Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Analysts often sift through royal speeches, interviews and addresses to find trends in the Kingdom’s senior leadership direction. However, sometimes one must focus on the phrases and themes that are not mentioned in these texts.

Technological development has enabled in-depth, high-speed access to check how often specific words or phrases are used in certain texts.

In the last few months, King Abdullah II issued a fourth discussion paper, held a meeting with the Chinese News Agency’s editorial board, published an article in World Policy Journal and gave a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Musab Shawabkeh, the skinny young journalist who has been involved in investigative journalism since his second year at college came running to my office this week. He had made a discovery about Mawared, the flag ship company owned by the Jordanian armed forces. As part of a report he was researching on financial integrity of top Jordanian officials he sought information about ownership of companies abroad. Working with the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo, Shawabkeh had discovered that the Jordanian army’s Mawared has registered a company in the European tax-haven of Luxembourg and that this company had branched in the UK, the Virgin Islands, Dubai and Morocco.

Shawabkeh is an investigative journalist in Radio al Balad a community radio based in Amman, Jordan who was trained with ARIJ, Arab Reporters for Investigative journalism. Even before publishing a word about it, the integrity of politicians report has been attracting attention and worry. When the head of the Jordanian parliament’s legal affairs committee failed to show up for an interview Musab filmed a stand up in front of the empty desk and made it clear to staffers that this is how his response will appear on youtube. Within minutes of returning to the office, the MP called Musab apologized for not showing up and agreed to give the on record interview.

This newly found courage didn’t come easy. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

An already strong alliance between the Jordanian and Palestinian leadership was made even stronger over the weekend. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat made an unusual public pledge on Aug. 24 by declaring that every document the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) plans to submit to the Israelis in negotiations will be first shown to Jordan. Also pledged was that every document the Israelis present will also be passed onto Amman.

What makes this allies so strong?

Palestinians, who have so far failed to acquire any role for the Quartet in the current talks and have even failed to secure a US presence inside the negotiating room, are now seeking a role for Israel’s best existing Arab peace partner. Israel has signed two peace treaties with Arab states: Egypt in 1979 and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1994. Peace with Egypt has been described as cold, and has been further sidelined by the changes in Cairo since the Arab Spring. With Jordan, which has the longest border with Israeli-controlled areas, the peace treaty has been solid and relations have been stable. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

I thought I would use my column, which appears on US Independence Day, to celebrate one of America’s most valued contribution to the world: the First Amendment.

Here is the exact text of the amendment adopted in 1791 as part of 10 amendments that make up the US Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

At a time when religion is clearly the biggest obstacle to progress in the Arab world, it would be great to have a First Amendment-like clause in all Arab constitutions.

The failed first year of Muslim Brotherhood presidency in Egypt, the failure of Hamas Islamists in Gaza and the sectarianism rocking Syria, Iraq and Bahrain, to name a few Arab countries, are enough to make one dream of a governance structure in the Arab world that is not based on or involves religion or takes sides in a religious sectarian conflict.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution is also a great source of inspiration and support for freedom of expression, freedom of the press and the right of people to hold peaceful protests.

Denying the legislature the chance to pass media-restrictive laws would go a long way in planting permanently the seeds of the right to freedom guaranteed in the 19th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers”. Continue Reading »

Following appeared in today’s Jordan Times

by Daoud Kuttab | Jun 19, 2013 | 23:33

War is a terrible thing with extremely bad results. But this does not mean people should not be ready for it, even if such a possibility is very remote.

Washington’s decision to arm the Syrian rebels (albeit lightly) and the announcement by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi that his country will cut off all diplomatic relations with Syria do not bode well for a quick and peaceful solution to the civil war that has been raging on in Syria for the past two years.

Some Jordanian officials and members of Parliament have asked that the Syrian ambassador to Jordan be considered persona non grata because of some anti-Jordanian statements he made recently.

The decision to ask the US to keep the Patriot anti-missile defence system and to keep the squadron of F16 fighters in Jordan is a hint that a war, or being on the receiving side of a war, is not such a remote possibility. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

In a surprise move only two weeks after promises to the contrary, the Jordanian government ordered three local Internet service providers to shut down nearly 300 news websites that have not been licensed by the government-run Press and Publications Department.

The decision ordered midday June 2 followed 10 months of promises by the government and the royal court that the controversial law ordering the owners of any website that deals with news and commentary about Jordan to be licensed. The order does not include web giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Google or Yahoo. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Thirteen years ago I attended an international event in Amman where then minister of information Saleh Qallab spoke enthusiastically about Jordan’s new media policy. He specifically stressed the fact that the Internet will be an open and free space for everyone. I was so impressed that I decided there and then to set up an Internet radio station in a country that didn’t allow anyone other than government to operate a radio station. Later at that conference in 2000 we were invited to an audience with His Majesty King Abdullah. I asked the King about the radio scene in Jordan noting that Jordanians are receivers of radio content from outside but are not able to be masters of their own radio voices. The King answered that he expects radio licences to be privatised within a few years. I went ahead and set up AmmanNet.Net and it became the Arab world’s first independent Internet based radio station.

A few years I was able to also get a 10-year licence for a FM radio station (Radio Al Balad) in the capital. I was always worried about the FM radio and not the Internet site. Hundreds of sites that focus on news, audio and video commentary have mushroomed since then.

This week, however, in a decision that was clearly not well thought out the government ordered local Internet service providers to block some 300 news websites. The official reason is that these sites had failed to obtain licences from the Press and Publications Department in accordance with a law that Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour himself had voted against when he was a member of the Lower House. The controversial law, which was railroaded in Parliament, became effective last September. Jordanian website owners and relevant international bodies protested against this undemocratic law. The appointment of Ensour as prime minister was welcomed by local journalists and when the new premier visited the tent set up by protesting website owner and promised to deal with the new law with an open mind and goodwill, the protest was quietly halted. Continue Reading »