Reading Al-ghad’s article and reading the comments left by the readers regarding the Jordan festival, many questions popped up in my mind. I wonder till when we will have zeal to boycott musical and cultural events more than the zeal to improve ourselves and stop complaining and nagging about stuff everybody previously agreed.
For the past 25 years, the Jerash festival was an event that put Jordan on the map. It was a rich fusion of cultures, traditions and art bringing nations from all over the world. Did any one complain back then? Do you remember those evergreen Milhem Barakat’s and Majida el Roumi’s wonderful concerts on the south theatre in Jerash?
After an extreme failure in the past few years, the administration of the festival had to do something to revive the event. Although I admit it, there were some organizer’s faults in those failures but they did a great job reviving the festival by creating a new name, a new logo and a new theme. Celebrating the novelty they decided also to bring probably the most famous singers and performers in the Arab world.
Isn’t it all performed in Jordan? Isn’t it designed to serve Jordan and Jordan’s tourism and economy? So whether the company that organized everything is French or Arabic, that doesn’t matter at all and whether the company also organized the celebration of the Israeli state that’s totally irrelevant. We have been dealing with companies that somehow are related to Israel one way or another since the peace treaty but people didn’t argue because they were “satisfied” money wise.
So the real question in my opinion is who is desperately in need of money to the extent that he is willing to use patriotism as excuse to wage such war against Jordan’s interest and benefit. I’ve always believed and still believe that patriotism can’t be expressed with boycotting music, patriotism is that shivering feeling you get when you see Jordan’s flag up high and when you are ready to do anything just to raise the flag even higher everyone to see. But apparently many believe that by singing Omar Abdallat’s songs they are entitled to use the Patriotic adjective. Which resulted in an interesting turn of event, as of yesterday Omar Abdallat won’t be participating in the festival… because of the whole banana French issue! Or is it banana money issue… mmm...
Quit playing with people’s minds and let Jordan be part of the cultural and musical scene. Lets face it this is not the way to end the Israeli occupation but on the opposite its destructive act towards Jordan. And yea there is something called find proves before accusing randomly and let’s stop following every single rumor!
peace
