Distortion of priorities

The recent Tennessee shooting incident took many Jordanians by total surprise. A 24-year-old Arab who studied in the United States for many years, graduated from its academic colleges and worked within the mainstream of American society is suddenly influenced by the Medusa touch of radicalisation and reportedly kills five US servicemen on July 16.

The suspected gunman was killed in a gunfight with police after he sprayed gunfire at a military recruitment centre in Chattanooga and then at a nearby Naval Reserve Centre.

The engineer’s family say he had long-standing psychological and substance abuse issues and was taken to stay with his uncle, Asaad Ibrahim Abdulazeez Haj Ali, in Amman for a short visit last year to help his recovery.

It is true that Abdulazeez has relatives in Amman who must have welcomed him in their homes, and shared with him their pride in his original identity as a Palestinian and a Muslim. But such feelings are common among thousands of Arabs who make the pilgrimage to their ancestral villages in Egypt, Jordan or Palestine once in a lifetime.

Recent press reports indicate that friends of Abdulazeez found him a totally different personality on his return from Jordan and Yemen. He dropped the bowtie that he used to wear when frequenting Chattanooga restaurants and grew a beard instead. He stopped his usual socialising with Arab friends and acquaintances days before slaying five American marines.

Haj Ali, his uncle from his mother’s side, did not notice any neurotic or abnormal signs in his nephew.

But there must have been reasons for a young Arab American, with all hopes of a rosy life ahead, to become a killer of innocent people whom he had never met.

Abdulazeez spent months in Jordan where his Palestinian identity was suddenly resuscitated in 2014 when he saw the abominable crimes committed against Gazan children by Israeli F16s and Apache Gunships. His rage would have had no limit when he saw some Arab heads of states watch the massacres in Palestine, while taking a spectator’s role looking at the genocide. But his rage and humiliated identity do not justify killing the five Americans.

It is the same distortion of priorities in the case of another Arab, Nidal Malek Hassan, who killed 13 Americans and wounded more than 20 at Fort Hood, Texas. Abdulazeez and Hassan are American citizens, with postgraduate academic qualifications, and both had blended with the American way of life. Both felt the trauma of atrocities inflicted against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, whether in their homes, mosques, schools or confiscated farms. But their vicarious expression of vendetta should not have targeted innocent Americans in Tennessee or Texas. Such acts, by Arab standards, are neither heroic nor ethical.